The Man who Missed the War

by Dennis Wheatley

  It was still raining, and the thunder, more distant now, rumbled from time to time. Eiderman had been right about the crew remaining under cover while the deluge lasted. When Philip reached the deck there was no one to be seen, and keeping to the deepest patches of shadow he quickly made his way aft.

  Gazing astern he could see the launch, but only one of the following rafts was now visible. For a moment he feared that some of the cables must have already snapped, but a second later he caught a glimmer of light through the teeming rain and knew that it must be the beacon halfway along the string, on Raft Number Five.

  It looked a long way from the stern of the Regenskuld to the bow of the launch—very much further than he had thought. When he had first had the idea in Eiderman’s cabin of escaping from the ship by sliding down the cable hand over hand it had seemed quite an easy thing to do; but now, as he gazed at the awful gulf beneath him and the dark, turgid waters being churned up by the screw, he feared that he was going to lose his nerve. Yet, behind him lay certain arrest and trial: not just a hold-up of a week while he got together another crew, but months of anxiety and uncertainty, the total waste of his idea if war did come to Britain and, quite probably, at the end of it all the electric chair for himself.

  Steeling himself for the effort, he climbed over the taffrail and, his feet still on the ship, grasped the cable firmly, thanking all his gods that he had chanced to have with him a pair of gloves. He was stooping now, his bag dangling out behind him and proving a much greater weight than he had expected. He had half a mind to take it off and abandon it, but that would have meant climbing back across the rail; and he had an uneasy suspicion that, if he once got his feet on the firm deck again, he would not be able to screw up the courage to leave it a second time. He drew a deep breath, gripped the cable with all his might and swung himself off.

  The next six minutes seemed like six hours. With his legs wrapped round the cable while it slithered between his thighs and hands, he went down monkey-fashion, slipping and checking alternately, and gasping with pain each time the cable, which felt red-hot, cut through the gloves and seared his palms. The last ten yards were the most difficult. He had reached the bottom of the curve and could slide downwards no further, but had to haul himself along hand over hand, while his bag swinging under him flopped and splashed about in the sea. Three times waves washed right over him, and he almost lost his grip, but, at last, with a sudden spurt of energy he reached the prow of the launch, grabbed it and drew himself aboard.

  For some minutes he lay flat on his back up in the bows, panting from his exertions. Then, when his breathing became a little easier he relieved himself of the bag which had proved such an awkward burden, and set about disconnecting the cable by which the Regenskuld was towing the launch. This was not a difficult matter, as he had thought it a wise precaution to have all the cables used in the Raft Convoy fitted with patent release gear at both ends. He had reason now to be glad of his forethought, as he had only to pull out a split pin. There was a faint splash as the end of the cable hit the water, and the first Raft Convoy was now adrift on the open ocean.

  Philip wondered how long it would be before Captain Sorensen realised that he had lost his tow. The Regenskuld had been proceeding at only three or four knots, owing to the great weight she was pulling, but now she would naturally go much faster. The lookouts would not miss the convoy as their attention was concentrated forward, and owing to the rain, it might be some time before the loss was realised, provided the increase in the speed of the ship did not immediately become apparent to those in her.

  As soon as the launch had dropped half a mile behind the ship, Philip took his bag along to the cabin and left it at the bottom of the broad, shallow steps, but he did not dare to switch on a light for fear of attracting attention. It would have been useless to get the engines going, as the launch had nowhere near the power required to tow the rafts in any direction other than that in which the current was already carrying them; so there was no way in which he could increase his distance from the Regenskuld—he could only hope that she would proceed on her course and be over the horizon by the time dawn came. At last, her lights disappeared in the rain, but Philip still felt it wiser not to show a light himself.

  The night was warm and the rain soon decreased to a steady drizzle, so, although Philip was wet through, he did not feel cold and remained on deck. He had plenty to think about with his recent escape and the uncertainty of what now lay ahead. After all, he thought, people had crossed the Atlantic in canoes, so there was no earthly reason why he should not make it in a forty-foot launch. He knew the boat’s engines like the palm of his hand, and enough about radio to signal if he wished to. He had food enough for months and a great variety of other supplies. Having no crew he thought it unlikely that he would be able to service the rafts so far as their sails were concerned, but he could make an occasional inspection to see that the cables were not fraying.

  At the first sign of the sky lighting, Philip began to haul on the cable by which the Number One Raft was attached to the launch. After a steady quarter of an hour’s hard work the two came together with a slight bump. He next proceeded to push and pull with a boathook until he got the launch flat alongside the raft, and then tied her up there.

  As dawn began to break he anxiously scanned the eastern horizon, and soon his worst fears were realised. He could make out a ship, which he felt sure was the Regenskuld, and she was coming towards him. Evidently some time during the past two hours she had discovered her loss and turned round. He knew that since he had failed to lose her in the night he had only one hope. It was the chance that the people in her would not see the launch but imagine that he had abandoned his rafts in order to escape in it to the coast. It was with this in mind that he had hauled the launch close alongside the raft and tied her there on the side where she would be furthest from the ship if she had turned back on her track.

  For the next half-hour he waited and watched from his concealed position as the Regenskuld gradually grew nearer. His throat was dry and his lips parched from his anxiety. If they spotted the launch it was all up, and his attempt to escape would make things look blacker than ever against him at his trial.

  The ship came to within half a mile, then she altered her course slightly. With his heart in his mouth he watched her for another few minutes, then he gave a sigh of relief. His ruse had succeeded, and she was coming no nearer.

  A quarter of an hour later he had to perform the tricky operation of easing the launch round to the east side of the raft, otherwise anyone looking astern from the Regenskuld might have seen him. But the ship continued on her course, and by half past six she was hull down over the horizon.

  Looking back at her, he felt a tremendous elation. Not only had he outwitted his enemies but he was at long last setting out on the great venture of which he had dreamed for so many months. What matter now if it was him alone against the ocean? All the more glory! He laughed suddenly out loud at the thought: ‘Himself alone against the ocean!’

  As his laugh echoed across the water he heard an angry voice say behind him: ‘What are you laughing at? An’ where the hell are we?’

  Swinging round he saw that a girl was standing scowling at him from the cabin steps.

  6

  The Uninvited Guest

  Just as some four and half hours before—although it seemed as many days ago to Philip—he had hardly been able to believe his ears when he overheard Eiderman give orders for his murder, so now he could scarcely trust his eyes. Yet there could be no doubt about it: a girl was glaring balefully at him from the steps that led down to the cabin.

  ‘Where are we?’ she repeated angrily. ‘What would we be doin’ at sea here in a little boat like this?’

  Philip did not reply immediately; he was still busy taking her in. She was, he guessed, about twenty, of medium height with well-developed bust and hips, yet smallish in appearance; this, as he realised later, being accounted for by the fact that her ab
surdly high-heeled shoes gave her a tallness out of proportion to her figure. Her hair was of the violent red that small boys rudely call ‘carrots’ and in its present state of disorder looked as though it had not been brushed for a week. Her face was round and freckled, its only striking feature being a pair of not very large but very bright blue eyes. Although it was high summer, she was dressed in a pleated cloth skirt of strawberry tartan with a jacket to match, and a cheap, nondescript fur tie round her neck. A large brooch, earrings, three bangles and two rings—the exaggerated size of the stones showing clearly that they were all imitation—completed the picture. By and large, Philip summed her up as an unattractive, tawdry-looking little thing.

  Meanwhile, she had been using her sharp blue eyes on him. She put him down as twenty-one—two years younger than he actually was—six feet in height, with an attractive, loosely knit figure. He was wearing a pair of old grey bags and a pale blue, short-sleeved sun-shirt; but nearby lay his Glenurquhart tweed jacket, which he had spread out to dry, and she knew that had cost good money. The early morning sun glinted on his fair hair untidily tumbling across his forehead; it also lit up the stubble on his chin and the patches of greasy dirt with which he was still blotched from his monkey-like journey along the cable. Yet, beneath the dirt she read in his well-proportioned, ascetic face the signs of culture; so she decided that he was a college boy who had taken the motor-boat out to sea for some crazy notion, and bet herself a new mascara outfit that he would prove both a highbrow and a sourpuss.

  ‘Say, are you as dumb as you look?’ she cracked suddenly. ‘Or is it jus’ that your mother never taught you to talk?’

  Philip smiled. ‘I may be dumb the way you think but I’m certainly not dumb physically.’

  ‘Then give, will you! What’ll we be doin’ here, right in the middle of the ocean?’

  ‘We’re not. We can’t be much more than fifteen miles from the American coast yet. If we were higher out of the water on the deck of a ship you could still see it, I expect.’

  ‘Holy Mary and all the Saints be praised!’ exclaimed the girl. ‘We’ll have no difficulty in gettin’ back then. And I scaring myself into thinkin’ I’d been asleep for a week and woken up heaven knows where!’

  Letting any question of ‘gettin’ back’ pass for the moment, Philip enquired: ‘How do you come to be on this launch?’

  ‘ ’Tis quite simple. By the time I’d gotten through the dock gates the evenin’ had caught up wit’ me. The night is no time to choose a ship to go to Europe in, an’ there was this motor-boat bobbing alongside the steps. It sure seemed a good place to sleep in; and sleep sound I did till ten minutes ago.’

  ‘D’you mean to say you never heard the hooting of the tugs, or the thunderstorm, or anything?’

  ‘Would I be tellin’ you the contrary if I did; an’ do I look the kind of dumbcluck who would be wastin’ her time joy-ridin’ in this boat instead of gettin’ her a liner?’

  ‘So you are going to Europe, eh? But when one does that one doesn’t just walk down to the dock and choose a liner—one books a berth through a travel agency,’ Philip explained in humouring tones, not altogether free from superiority.

  Looking up again she smiled for the first time. ‘Have a heart now! What’s a poor girl to do? ‘Tisn’t all of us can afford the passage money, even to go steerage. When I get to Paris I’ll be needin’ my savin’s if I’m to live respectable; an’ what harm will it do one of those big shippin’ companies to take me over an’ me weighin’ next to nothin’ at all?’

  Philip was completely puzzled. With her gaudy clothes and trashy jewellery the girl looked like an East End tart, yet she spoke of going to Paris and living respectably on her own savings in the same breath as she confessed that she had deliberately intended to cheat some shipping company out of her passage money.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked, with a smile.

  ‘Me name’s Gloria,’ she replied, and seeing his smile deepen added with asperity; ‘An’ what may there be to laugh at in that?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, sobering hastily. ‘But you’re Irish, aren’t you? And I somehow expected you to be called something simple, like Mary.’

  She flushed to the roots of her red hair, and looking down began to fiddle with her ring. ‘Ah, just fancy you thinking that! Well, Mary’s me christened name if you must know, but I chose Gloria for meself. Don’t you like it?’

  ‘Yes, I think it’s very pretty. What’s your other name?’

  ‘Smith, but I spell it with two “t’s”,’ came the rather astonishing reply. ‘ ’Tisn’t so easy to change a surname, an’ how would an artist ever succeed with a name like Mary Smith?’

  ‘So you’re an artist,’ said Philip, wondering if she were a juggler or contortionist or merely did the usual small-time song and dance act.

  She nodded. ‘That’s why it’s crazy I am to get to Paris. The masters in the Latin Quarter are the tops. Oh, jus’ to think of the pictures I’ll be painting this time next year!’

  ‘Have you been studying art for long?’ Philip enquired, once more endeavouring to adjust his ideas about this strange companion Fate had seen fit to thrust upon him.

  ‘Why, sure I have, ever since I was a wee bit of a thing. But ‘tis only since I began to work in a factory that I could afford the classes. My mother—she’s Irish as you guessed I was—was against it. But me poor Dad—he had education and sent me to a good convent school—was the great one to encourage me. He died of the drink, bless his ould heart, but before he had the final fit that carried him off he made me swear by the bones of the Saints that I’d never give up me paintin’.’

  Philip cast a quick glance round him, scanning the sea to north, east and south, then clambering on top of the launch’s cabin he peered over the raft to westward. There were a liner, two tramps and a fishing trawler in sight, but none of them was less than two miles distant, and, while he could see them clearly it was doubtful if they were even aware of the presence of the Raft Convoy—unless the lookouts in their crow’s nests had reported it—owing to its lowness in the water. Jumping down again he said to Miss Smith:

  ‘Going from the sublime to the practical, d’you happen to know anything about the art of cooking?’

  ‘Why sure!’ The small freckled face lit up. ‘I’m hungry too. Jus’ show me the way to your stove!’

  He took her down into the cabin, the far end of which had been arranged as a small galley, showed her the cupboards that contained crockery and stores, and opened the refrigerator, which he had filled to capacity with fresh food only the previous day.

  Leaving his uninvited guest to cook breakfast, he went back on deck, untied the launch from its position close up against the Number One raft, and, as it floated clear, started up the engine. In less than two minutes he had taken up the slack of cable, and although it could not be said that the launch was actually towing the convoy, it was exercising a definite pull upon it in a northeasterly direction. Having lashed the wheel into position so that the launch would keep its course, he returned to the afterdeck, where the self-styled Gloria was now setting out breakfast.

  She tucked into her grapefruit, scrambled eggs and coffee with such heartiness that Philip got the impression that she must have been half-starved and, curiosity overcoming his good manners, he asked her when she had last had a meal.

  There was a moment’s silence before she cried: ‘Now, come to think of it, not a crust have I had since I threw the cereal dish at me mother’s head yesterday morning!’

  ‘Your decision to go to Europe was quite a sudden one, then?’

  ‘Indade it was, though I’ve long dreamed of makin’ the trip. Me sister’s to blame in the first place for the softie she is, but me mother the more so, for it’s the black-hearted wickedness of her that drove me from me home.’ Upon which pronouncement Gloria suddenly burst into a flood of tears.

  Philip did his best to comfort her and, with none of the shyness he had experienced only the day befor
e in a similar situation, put his arm round her shoulders; but his sensations then had been very different. He felt that he was definitely in love with Lexie, whereas he had only a vague curiosity and pity for this strange little waif to whom he was now making soothing noises. Moreover, the subtle French perfume that had gone to his head from Miss Foorde-Bilson’s beautifully coiffured curls was of an entirely separate world to that of the cheap sickly scent which flowed over him in waves from Gloria’s dishevelled and, he suspected, unwashed tresses.

  After a little he persuaded her to stop crying and during the next hour succeeded in extracting enough further information about her to form a coherent version of her history.

  Her father, Alphonse Smith, was the son of an English father and a French-Canadian mother. He had been a journalist by profession and, being a good linguist, had been sent by the paper for which he worked to Russia as a War Correspondent in 1914. Soon after his arrival in St. Petersburg he had met and married Gloria’s mother, Sheila O’Neill. Sheila was the illegitimate but acknowledged daughter of a rich Irish merchant, with a business of many years’ standing in St. Petersburg, and his Russian mistress. But at an early age she had been sent back to Ireland to be brought up by her father’s relatives, and she had only rejoined him in the Russian capital a few months before the outbreak of war.

  For some two years Alphonse and Sheila appeared to have lived quite happily, but on the outbreak of the first Russian Revolution he decided that it would be safest to send her and their first child, Gloria’s elder sister Maureen, to his mother’s people in Canada. Gloria herself was already on the way and was born some months after their arrival in Quebec.