“Psst, over here! Take it, quick, before someone sees you.”
Scott edged along the deck and grabbed the plate held out to him by a seemingly disembodied hand – the person behind the hand being shielded by the whitewashed bulkhead.
“Got it. Thanks, Adam.”
The hand disappeared, and Scott heard Adam calling out a new order to the kitchen. “Two apple pie and one caramel pudding.” This time it was a legitimate order for the table Adam was serving, not a bogus order for a friend.
Scott smiled. That Adam. He, Scott, could never pull that off. He’d never make a waiter in the first place, even though waiters were rewarded with generous tips from the vacationing tourists. But Adam, with his quick wit and ready memory, was good at it. Being a deckhand still suited Scott just fine.
Carefully keeping the plate level so the ice cream on top of the pie, melting rapidly in the July heat, wouldn’t slide off, he scooted down the metal stairs to the lower deck where the deckhands stayed. He weaved through the piles of ropes and fenders, looking for a secluded place to sit and enjoy his pie unobserved. But there was nowhere he wouldn’t be seen by the second mate, who was still hanging around.
Then Scott had a brilliant idea. The Packard. Of course! It was parked in the shade of maple trees on the grass fringe alongside the pier, with the side blinds pulled down. He’d seen both the owner and the chauffeur come aboard earlier, so no one would be in it. He could eat his pie on the running board, shielded from view by the trees and by the bulk of the car, then he could have a close-up look at the gleaming Packard, and no one the wiser. Two birds with one stone.
And he’d be back in lots of time to finish up his chores before the ship was due to cast off.
FOUR
Pie in hand, Scott slipped down the gangway and around to the far side of the Packard, where he perched on its shelflike running board. The nicely browned crust and the golden yellow apples made his mouth water in anticipation.
The ship’s passengers got the best of everything. Naturally, they paid enough for it. In the crew’s mess, however, the deckhands got only the leftovers – it would be dried-out caramel pudding for them tonight, not a whiff of apple pie à la mode.
Scott had just picked up the fork Adam had thoughtfully provided and was digging in when he heard a voice nearby. He started guiltily and looked around, but saw no one. Then he heard it again – smooth yet ominously sinister – and he realized, with a sinking feeling, that it was coming from the backseat of the car, behind the blinds.
The man in the gray suit must have come back to his car for something. He was now separated from Scott by only the thickness of a car door!
Scott scrunched down on the running board.
“I want you to get this right, no foul-ups,” the voice said. “Got that?”
A second voice responded. “Got it, Mr. Vandam,” and Scott recognized the voice of the surly chauffeur.
He looked around anxiously. Can I get back to the ship without them seeing me?
“I’ll go over it just once more,” the first voice continued, “so listen carefully. We stay in the car until Heinrik gets here on the Kingston, then he and I will board the Rapids Prince so he can have a look at the layout on the way to Montreal. He’s our explosives expert.”
The Kingston, the sister ship of the Rapids Prince, was due any minute. A paddle wheeler, too big to tackle the rapids, the Kingston made a regular overnight run from Toronto, along Lake Ontario and the Thousand Islands, to Prescott, where its passengers transferred to the much smaller Rapids Prince for the trip through the rapids to Montreal.
“Heinrik’s alerted me that he’s being followed,” Vandam said. “He thinks it’s a government agent and suspects the man’s been on his trail since he landed.”
Scott was riveted. He stayed absolutely still, listening intently.
“Heinrik and I will deal with him on the Rapids Prince. Meanwhile, you drive back to Montreal and wait for us at Victoria Pier, ready to make a fast getaway. Got that?”
“Got it, Mr. Vandam.”
“And take good care of my briefcase. I don’t want to carry it on board. There’s top secret documents in there, with orders from the homeland.”
Secret documents? Homeland? Who are these guys?
The blast of a ship’s horn made Scott jump. The Kingston was arriving, and he realized he’d better get out of there fast before he was discovered.
“This suspected government agent,” the man called Vandam was saying as Scott slid off the running board, “Heinrik’s discovered his name. It’s Derek Patter …”
The voice faded away as Scott scuttled off on all fours, like a crab chased by a hungry gull. But he’d gone only a short distance when he realized he’d forgotten the plate and fork. He’d been so flustered, he’d left them sitting on the Packard’s running board. A dead giveaway. He crept back and reached out to snatch them, but they slipped from his grasp and fell on a rock with a clang.
He ran for the shelter of the ship as the car door jerked open and the man in the gray suit stepped out. The man stared down at the plate, then up at the boy running for the ship.
“Hey, you!” he yelled, but Scott kept going. “Damn kid. What was he doing here anyway, eavesdropping?”
“I’ll go grab him,” the chauffeur said. He started after Scott, but Vandam called him back. “Not now. Heinrik will be here any minute.”
“But he could have heard everything you said, boss,” the chauffeur said.
Vandam turned his icy stare on the lower deck, where Scott had disappeared. “Yeah, but he’s not going anywhere; we’ll take care of him later. When you meet us with the car at Victoria Pier, here’s what we’ll do.… ”
Scott didn’t stop until he reached the upper deck. Yanking open the door to a small storeroom, he squeezed in among the collection of mops, brooms, and buckets. He stood there in the dark, panting, and thought back to the conversation he’d overheard.
Someone called Heinrik was coming, and he and the man in the gray suit would deal with the government agent who was following him, whatever “deal with” meant. His mind flew to the rumors of a German agent landing from a submarine in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Could it have been Heinrik?
And this Vandam – who told the purser his name was G. Phillip Dale – also said they were boarding the Rapids Prince so Heinrik, an explosives expert, could have a look at it. Are they planning to blow up the ship? Why would they want to blow up a boat full of tourists? It didn’t make sense. The Rapids Prince didn’t carry war supplies. So what is it all about?
When Scott got his breath back, he went below where the deckhands were, to be out of sight when this Vandam and Heinrik came aboard. But he couldn’t stop thinking about them.
Should he tell someone what he’d heard? He had no proof of anything, just a suspicion. Maybe he was being carried away by the rumor of an enemy agent landing from a U-boat. A rumor many scoffed at.
Meanwhile, he knew the captain was prowling around – as he did before each trip through the rapids – checking that everything was shipshape. He’d better get back to work. Scott knew the captain’s temper. He’d not been on the receiving end yet, since joining the Rapids Prince, but his friend Adam certainly had. Adam, unfortunately, had a way of antagonizing the captain.
Like Scott and Adam, most of the crew on the Rapids Prince were high school students, working for the summer. Before the war, these jobs would have been jealously guarded by men who’d return to the Rapids Prince year after year. Low-paying, with long hours and hard work, the jobs had been almost impossible to come by in the Dirty Thirties.
But times had changed with the war, almost overnight, and those men were either in the armed forces now or earning better money in a war plant. Consequently, Captain Plum had to recruit sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds from high schools, many of whom were itching to join up too, as soon as they were of age. Sixteen-year-old Scott had two more years to wait. Captain Plum could only hope that a few of them,
at least, would turn out to be capable seamen as the summer wore on.
Scott had heard about the job from a boy in his class who’d worked on the Rapids Prince the summer before. A job on a ship sounded far more interesting than packing groceries in a local store! It had a romantic ring to it. He’d tried to talk his friend Adam into applying with him.
“A sailor?” Adam had said. “I know absolutely nothing about boats.”
“Ships,” Scott corrected. “If it carries passengers, like the Rapids Prince, it’s called a ship.” It was one of the few times he’d been able to tell Adam something he didn’t know.
“Boat, ship, whatever,” Adam said. “What would the job be?”
“Deckhand,” Scott said. “Sixty bucks a month and meals.”
“Plus tips?”
“For deckhands? Are you kidding?”
“Hmm,” Adam said.
Eventually, Scott did manage to convince him, and they applied for jobs on the Rapids Prince. They were interviewed by Captain Plum, who lived in Kingston in the winter and knew Scott’s father from the Rotary Club. Whether that had anything to do with it or not, Scott didn’t know, but they were both duly accepted as deckhands.
In late June, as soon as school was finished, Scott and Adam had set out to hitchhike to Prescott, where the ship was docked. They joined the line of hitchhikers on the King’s Highway 2, many of whom were soldiers on leave from the army camp. Hitchhiking was a common way to travel during the war, with overcrowded trains and gas rationing.
It took awhile, but Scott and Adam eventually got a ride to Gananoque with a farmer in an old Ford pickup, then a second ride to Prescott with a hardware salesman, whose traveling job qualified him for extra gas coupons. In Prescott, they walked down to the waterfront and had their first glimpse of the ship that would be their home for the summer.
The Rapids Prince was a handsome one-stacker with three decks, no Queen Mary but sturdy and solidly built for shooting the rapids. With their kit bags over their shoulders, the boys stood on the pier looking up at the ship with apprehension.
“Well, don’t just stand there like landlubbers, get yourselves on board!” a voice bawled from the bridge. It was Captain Plum, staring down at them. And so they climbed the gangway to begin their summer as sailors.
Scott took to it better than Adam. Not naturally coordinated like Scott, Adam was awkward when it came to leaping onto a dock to catch a mooring line, or clinging to a scaffold to scrub rust off the side. At night his joints were so stiff, he could barely climb into his upper bunk in the hold where the deckhands lived. Then, in his off time, he had to put up with the constant horseplay of the other deckhands while trying to read one of the many books he’d brought.
Not being one to sit back and accept things, Adam had kept his eyes open for a chance to change jobs. When he heard that one of the experienced waiters, who’d been expected to return for the summer, hadn’t shown up, he applied. With his gift for the gab and his alert mind, he turned out to be ideally suited for the waiter’s job.
Scott, however, was quite content to remain a deckhand. He liked living aboard ship and hearing the stories of the older hands, like Bert the helmsman, and he’d managed to avoid making mistakes and bringing down the captain’s wrath. So far.
FIVE
Now, Scott watched from his perch on the grassy bank as the chief engineer climbed to the bridge to advise Captain Plum of the extent of the damage from the ship’s encounter with the rock.
“Two plates are stove in on the port side,” he said, “but there’s no sign of a leak. She’ll be all right until we get to Montreal, but we should have a diver examine the bottom there.”
“Right,” Captain Plum said. “We’ll get under way, then.” And he gave a toot on the ship’s whistle, the signal to embark.
Scott jumped up to untie the lines from the trees he had used as mooring posts. Then the lines were winched in, and he grabbed the rope hanging from the end of the boom and swung back on board.
The Rapids Prince was en route once again, minus one passenger, after its ill-starred trip through the Long Sault. And everyone wondered who the unfortunate Derek Patterson was.
Scott was still debating whether he dared go to the captain to report what he’d overheard from the running board of the Packard that morning. It was all a bit hazy now, he’d been so anxious to get away. Did I hear the name of the man the two suspected agents said they were going to “deal with” correctly? It was Derek Patterson, wasn’t it?
He imagined the captain’s response if he did tell him.
“And just what were you doing on the running board of a car, young man, when you were supposed to be working on board ship?”
“I was eating apple pie à la mode, sir.”
“You were what! Where did you get it?”
No, it wouldn’t do. He’d just have to keep his eyes open and see if he could learn more about the two suspected German agents.
When the Rapids Prince finally docked at Victoria Pier in Old Montreal that Sunday, it was nine o’clock – later than usual, but still light. The office towers of the city center were silhouetted in the distance. The passengers streaming down the gangway were boarding tour buses, cars, and taxis, anxious to get away from the tragic events of the day.
As Scott waited for Lindsay to disembark, he noticed that the Packard was parked there, with the chauffeur, Twitch, leaning nonchalantly against the hood. To Scott’s relief, he didn’t to seem to be paying any attention to him. He assumed he didn’t recognize him as the one who had fled from the running board just that morning in Prescott. Or, if he did, he chose to forget it.
As Scott searched the crowd for Lindsay, he saw the man in the gray suit, the one who called himself G. Phillip Dale. The chauffeur had called him Mr. Vandam – whatever his name, Vandam/Dale hurried down the gangway and crossed the pier to the Packard. A few moments later, another man – younger, blond-haired, and casually dressed – disembarked and also headed for the car. That must be the one called Heinrik, Scott thought.
This was his last chance to learn more about them before the Packard disappeared into the city. Drifting closer, trying to appear casual, he felt tension in the air, as if something was about to happen.
The tension was broken by a shout from behind him. “Hey, Scott!” It was Adam. “Where you going?” he said. “Here comes Lindsay now.”
Scott hesitated, momentarily torn. But Lindsay was more important to him than these guys. He hurried back to greet her. At least that Ian Day wasn’t with her, whispering in her ear.
Lindsay could hardly wait to tell him about the summer job she’d found as a desk clerk at the Blinkbonnie Inn. “It’s just outside Prescott,” she said, “and we’ll be able to get together whenever the Rapids Prince is back in port.”
“That’s great news,” Scott enthused. To see Lindsay every week, what a break! It was going to be a wonderful summer.
Just then Scott felt someone touch his elbow and turned to see the chauffeur, Twitch, but a far different Twitch than the one who had scowled at him that morning.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said politely. “But aren’t you the one who asked me if you could take a look at the Packard when we were in Prescott?”
Scott nodded.
“Well, the boss says it would be okay if you came over now, before we leave.”
It was tempting. It might be Scott’s last chance to get a closer look at Vandam and Heinrik. Then at least he’d be able to describe them, if necessary, later on.
He turned to Lindsay. “Would you mind? I’ll only be a few minutes.”
“Go ahead,” she said. “We have to wait for our luggage anyway.”
“Something about this smells fishy,” Adam, who’d been observing the scene, muttered to himself. He watched Scott follow the chauffeur across the pier and trailed after them.
As Scott approached the car, Vandam opened the door and beckoned to him. It seemed like a friendly gesture, yet Scott hesitated. There
was something about the look in the man’s eyes.…
Suddenly he understood. It’s a trap!
He turned to go, but Twitch blocked his path. “No, you don’t.”
Adam stepped up. “What’s happening, Scott?”
“Time to get out of here,” he said. “Go!” Scott dodged around Twitch and started running. But where’s Adam? When he looked back, he saw that Twitch was sprawled on top of him. Adam had stuck out a foot and tripped him up.
Twitch scrambled to his feet and started after Scott. That was when Vandam intervened. “Leave him,” he ordered the chauffeur. “That one will do just as well. Grab him!”
Twitch hauled Adam to his feet, dragged him to the car, and pushed him into the backseat. Then he vaulted into the driver’s seat, and the Packard took off with a screech of burning rubber.
“Adam!” Scott shouted. He raced for the car and just managed to grab hold of the luggage rack on the back. He leapt onto the bumper and hung on for dear life.
Across the pier, Lindsay and the others heard him shout and turned to look. As the car vanished into the narrow winding streets of Old Montreal, with Scott clinging to the back, they were left staring after him in bewilderment.
SIX
Scott hung on desperately as the Packard hurtled around a corner, the pavement a blur under him. He could hardly believe what he’d done; it had all happened so fast, he’d had no time to think. He’d reacted automatically to the sight of Adam being forced into the car. Now it was too late to jump off, even if he wanted to.
Another corner and the centrifugal force almost threw him off. The car charged through a stop sign, then a red light, with Scott struggling to hold on. Through the oval of the rear window, he caught a glimpse of the two men in the backseat. They were staring straight ahead and didn’t seem to know he was there. The top of Adam’s head was just visible, sandwiched between them.
Man Overboard! Page 2