The Man who Missed the War

by Dennis Wheatley

  It was at this point that the trouble began. Sheila had not only taken an intense dislike to her French-Canadian in-laws but scandalised them by her behaviour with numerous young men in the Forces, who were either going to or returning from the European War, while the unlucky Alphonse was passing through the dangers of the Russian Revolution and later detained by his duties as a journalist in South-Eastern Europe.

  As Gloria said sadly of her erring mother: ‘ ’Twas the Russian in her, and, shamed as I am to say it, she has not the morals of a backyard cat.’

  Whatever the cause of Mrs. Smith’s indiscretions, these culminated in 1918 when she put her babies in a home and ran away to New York with an American officer who had been in Quebec on liaison duties. He soon threw her over, and she lived with half a dozen other men before at last being traced by her still loving Alphonse. She had refused to leave New York, so he took out naturalisation papers and they started married life afresh; but it had not been a success.

  The Russian in her had continued to make Mrs. Smith wayward and temperamental, so from then on it was the sad and sordid story of two quite decently educated middle-class people slipping gradually lower in the social scale through immorality and drink. The children were spared much of it in their early years through being placed by their father in a convent, where the Irish sisters mothered them; but it could not be hidden from them that their own mother spent much of her time in dubious night-clubs or away from home, and that their father had taken to drink on that account. His work had suffered, and his earnings dropped in consequence, and, finally, after a long spell of only intermittent employment, he had drunk himself to death soon after Gloria’s fourteenth birthday.

  By this time, Maureen was a pretty girl of nearly seventeen and, seeing in her daughters a source of income, their mother had taken them both away from the convent to have them taught dancing. As soon as Maureen was old enough, a place had been found for her in a cabaret, but Gloria had jibbed at following in her sister’s footsteps. Although she did not admit it, there could be little doubt that she was the plainer of the two, and she had had constant rows with her mother about devoting the time when she should have been practising her dancing to sketching and painting. Whether she could in due course have got a job in a cabaret had she so wished was not revealed, but the fact was that, her mother having refused to support her further unless she worked, she had gone into a Christmas Card factory, where she earned enough to keep herself and pay her fees at art classes in the evenings.

  Maureen meanwhile had gone the same way as her mother, and was always being pointed out to Gloria as an example of how a ‘sensible’ girl could get herself furs, joy-rides and a good time all round without working for it. This had had little effect on Gloria, as, knowing that Maureen allowed her mother to bully her into handing over two-thirds of her earnings, she had only contempt for her weak-minded sister. The real crisis had arisen when Maureen had fallen ill. Money had begun to get short in the Smith household, so the depraved old mother had first pressed Gloria to go out with one of her sister’s elderly men friends, who had seen and taken a fancy to the younger girl, and on her refusing had stolen the girl’s last week’s pay packet from her handbag.

  This had proved the finishing touch. On discovering the theft Gloria flung her sister’s cornflakes at her mother’s head, retrieved her savings from their hiding-place, packed her best things in a bag and left home for good, with the bold idea of going to Europe to study art.

  When the somewhat garbled recital eventually came to an end Philip could not help wondering how much of it was true. He had never moved in circles where it was even remotely likely that a mother would deliberately urge her daughter to take to prostitution as a means of livelihood; but the young woman beside him spoke of the whole matter with such complete naturalness that it was difficult not to believe her.

  After a little pause she said: ‘Come now, it’s I who’ve done all the talkin’ so far. Will you be tellin’ me something about yourself for a change?’

  As he started off by giving his name and saying that he was an Englishman, she exclaimed: ‘So that’s why you talk so queer! Yet I remember me poor old dad had something of the same high-hat way with him when speakin’ to strangers; only not so pronounced.’

  Philip laughed. ‘Surely the boot’s on the other foot? You talk the queer lingo of an Irish girl brought up in America, whereas you should speak like me, seeing that you’re the daughter of an Englishman, and therefore English.’

  ‘I am nothing of the kind!’ she declared hotly. ‘Was I not tellin’ you but a moment back that me father took out his naturalisation papers in nineteen-twenty, an’ but for a few months as a wee babe I’ve lived in the Bronx all me life. ‘Tis American I am, an’ one hundred per cent American at that.’

  Having soothed her down, Philip went on to describe his home at Alverstoke, his family and his education, with the sudden realisation that so far there was little in his life to interest a stranger.

  Apparently his companion felt that too, as when he paused for a minute she took the opportunity to ask him what time he thought they would get back to New York.

  Actually, he had just been considering the best way of leading up to the subject of the Raft Convoy, and, instead of replying direct, he asked her a question.

  ‘If you had managed to stow away in a ship going to Europe today, as you planned, do you think you would have succeeded in avoiding discovery for the whole voyage?’

  ‘Well, I would have to come out to eat, wouldn’t I? An’ I hadn’t figured on trying to stay hid all that time.’

  ‘You evidently don’t realise, then, what the accepted treatment for stowaways is when they’re caught.’

  ‘What would it be?’

  ‘They’re put to work on some menial task, like washing the dishes, to earn their keep.’

  She shrugged. ‘A gal like meself wouldn’t be minding that.’

  ‘But wait a minute! That’s not all. When they reach the port on the other side they’re locked up in a cabin. Then they are let out on the return journey to work their way back; and when they arrive at the port where they originally stowed away they are handed over to the police as vagrants.’

  ‘D’you mean the shipping people wouldn’t let me land in Europe?’ Her blue eyes blazed.

  ‘That’s right. I’m not fooling,’ he assured her.

  ‘Well, what d’you know—of all the lousy bums!’

  ‘Still,’ he said, nerving himself for the plunge. ‘You don’t have to worry about that now. It may take you a bit longer to get there this way, but when we do reach Europe I wouldn’t dream of preventing you from landing.’

  ‘Say that again,’ she murmured, coming slowly to her feet.

  ‘I was just trying to break it to you as gently as I could that we’re not going back to New York.’

  She looked wildly round her. ‘D’you mean you’re figuring to cross the ocean in a cockleshell of a boat like this?’

  ‘That’s the idea.’

  ‘The guy’s crazy!’ she announced.

  ‘No,’ he countered. ‘I’m perfectly sane and I’ve been planning this trip for a very long time. Actually, it hasn’t turned out by any means as I originally intended, and your presence provides yet one more unexpected complication; but I have no intention of turning back just because you smuggled yourself on board, so you’d better make up your mind to grin and bear it.’

  At this she became really angry, and stooping down waved a small clenched fist in his face. ‘Say now, you can’t do this to me! I’ll not be browned because some sap of a boy gets it into his head that he’s a new Christopher Columbus. ‘Tis back to New York we’ll be goin’ an’ that quickly now, or ‘tis meself ye’ll have to reckon with.’

  ‘Sit down!’ snapped Philip, his eyes hardening.

  ‘I’ll not sit down,’ she screamed. ‘ ’Tis you who’ll be gettin’ to those great feet of yours an’ turnin’ the boat around. Me poor ould dad was born in Engla
nd an’ ‘twas himself used to say that all the English are crazy. But I’ll not be murdered by one of the crazy English. Put a sock in it now an’ take me back where I belong this instant!’

  ‘It’s no good,’ said Philip. ‘As a matter of fact, I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. You saw that big raft we were tied up to when you first came up from the cabin—it’s bobbing along there behind us now? Well, we’re towing that and nine others like it. At least, not exactly towing, but guiding to some extent; and if we turned round we’d be heading against both the current and the wind, so we couldn’t possibly make it. In fact, the best we could hope for would be to slow them down a bit, because their pull would be much greater than ours, and they would slowly carry us further out to sea.’

  Gloria cast her eyes up to heaven. ‘Holy Mother of God preserve me from such imbecility! Poor sap that you are! Has it not entered that thick skull of yours that if we untie the big wire to the raft the boat will be free?’

  ‘What, abandon the rafts!’ cried Philip. ‘No damn’ fear!’

  ‘Is it then that you mean to stay hitched to the rafts till we get some place? But no! That cannot be. ‘Twould be craziness piled on craziness, for nowhere at all would we get but spend our whole lives driftin’ roun’ and roun’ in the ocean.’

  ‘No, we shan’t. The Gulf Stream will carry us to Europe in two months—or three at the most.’

  ‘Three months, is it? Now Saints hear him! An’ if there’s a wee bit of a storm it’s dead we’ll both be in three hours.’ Suddenly Gloria dashed across the short afterdeck and, flinging herself on the release gear that held the towing cable, strove to undo it.

  Jumping to his feet Philip was at her side in a flash, but she did not understand the mechanism, and was bruising her fingers in vain.

  ‘Stop that!’ he shouted, grabbing her by the wrists and pulling her away. ‘If you won’t behave sensibly I’ll have to lock you up.’

  For answer she kicked him with all her force on the shin and, as he released her with a cry of pain, followed it up by striking him on the side of the face with her clenched fist. Dodging a second blow, he seized her arms again and lugged her, scratching and wriggling, towards the cabin. While he was half-pushing and half-carrying her down the broad flight of steps, she suddenly swivelled her head and sank her teeth savagely in his arm. As he jerked himself away, one of her high heels twisted under her, and she sat down with a wallop on the cabin floor. Snatching the opportunity, he grabbed the key from the door, backed up two steps and, pulling the door to, locked it from the outside.

  Having looked to his hurts, Philip angrily plumped himself down in the stern to consider how best to deal with his uninvited and now hostile guest when next they came face to face as, sooner or later, they were bound to do. As his temper cooled he had to admit to himself that the girl had done no more than seek shelter for a night in the cabin of the launch, and it was certainly pretty tough on her that, as a result, she should be compelled to go on a long voyage, during which acute discomfort must be faced in times of bad weather, and possibly great danger. Yet there could be no question of taking her back. No inducements, no threats, no pity for anyone else concerned, would now have influenced Philip to abandon his rafts. In bitter mockery she had called him a new Christopher Columbus, but he felt much more like a Crusader. He had a self-imposed mission that might be the saving of his country, and he meant to see it through.

  There was, of course, still the possibility of sending an S.O.S to the nearest westbound ship. When it approached he could request that his passenger be taken aboard for transit to New York, and Philip considered this seriously for some time; but he decided that he simply dared not risk it. If Eiderman’s body had not already been discovered, it almost certainly would be before the day was out. As soon as that happened the New York police would be informed, and Mr. Philip Vaudell’s description circulated with the information that he was wanted for questioning in connection with murder.

  Philip could not be certain that his ruse of hiding the launch behind Raft Number One early that morning had succeeded, but he had every reason to suppose so; and, if his hopes were justified, the police would devote all their energies to hunting for the launch among the hundreds of miles of creeks and bays in which he might have attempted to conceal her anywhere between Cape Cod and Delaware Bay. On the other hand, if he stopped a passing ship to put Gloria on board, it would be known in New York that night that he had not fled back to the coast and landed at all, but was still at sea with his rafts; and the following day an aircraft would be sent out to spot them so that a patrol boat could pick him up and bring him in to stand his trial.

  There was, he knew only too well, the very considerable risk still to be faced that, on sighting the rafts, a passing ship might alter course to investigate and, coming too close for the concealment of the launch, compel him to reveal himself and supply the answers to questions prompted by idle curiosity. But the further the rafts drifted from the vicinity of New York the less danger of that there would be, owing to the divergence of the many traffic routes from the great port; and Philip, as a sailor’s son, had a very good idea how seemingly illimitable, desolate and empty the vast open spaces of the ocean could be.

  After some thought he decided that when a suitable opportunity offered he would tell Gloria all about the origin of the Raft Convoy and see if he could reconcile her to the long voyage, through interest in its purpose and the prospect of the reflected glory if the venture proved successful.

  However, as he could now see no less than seven ships on various points of the horizon, he decided that he had better keep Gloria locked up for the rest of the day in case she should be overcome by the temptation to signal any craft that came near enough to see her. In consequence, when, half an hour afterwards, there came a violent banging on the cabin door and angry shouts, he ignored them.

  Glancing at his wrist-watch, he was amazed to find it was only a quarter past nine, since to him—as yet not accustomed to noticing the position of the sun—it had seemed that it must be approaching midday. He was now beginning to feel reaction from the great and unusual strain that he had been through during the previous night, and it suddenly struck him that it was well over twenty-four hours since he had had any sleep. That accounted for the feeling of limpness he was experiencing, and the fact that he could hardly keep his eyes open, now that he had relaxed. He did not want to go to sleep during the daytime, while he was still in this busy shipping area, but he could not escape if pursued or avoid any visit that the curious might choose to inflict on him, so there was no vital purpose to be served by his keeping awake; and the subconscious knowledge of that caused him to drop off before he realised what was happening.

  When he awoke it was late afternoon, and his first thought was that he was hungry. His next was of Gloria. The radio had been switched on, and dance-music was coming from the cabin. Since he had locked her in there she was now in control not only of the galley but also of all his edible stores. He wondered if she had cooked herself any lunch—it was not his fault if she hadn’t.

  As he got up he saw with some alarm that an old-fashioned sailing barque, flying the Finnish flag, was no more than half a mile distant and standing towards him. Fearful of attracting attention by moving about, he sat down again, and spent an anxious half-hour watching her tack back and forth on his starboard beam. At last she had definitely passed without hailing him, so he breathed freely again. But not for long. In the distance, from what appeared to be dead ahead, an oil tanker was now coming up. She gave him another half-hour of acute trepidation, although she eventually slid by a good mile away to port.

  Two such close calls in so short a time made him wonder how many others he had had while he was asleep, and convinced him of the wisdom of having left Gloria locked up all day. Moreover, it made him feel that it would be most unwise to release her until darkness had fallen. In consequence, all through the long summer evening, for some four seemingly interminable hours, he endeavoured to
busy himself with little jobs about the deck and in the engine-room, in an effort to stave off his hunger.

  When twilight had come and visibility dropped to about half a mile, Philip felt he might safely switch on his beacons and navigational lights and go below. Unlocking the cabin door, he nerved himself for another encounter with the temperamental Miss Smith.

  He did not, as he had half-expected, receive a crack on the head from a saucepan. She had switched off the radio some time before, and was sitting there quietly in the semi-darkness.

  ‘Hello!’ he said, as he turned on the light.

  ‘Hello!’ she replied. ‘Was it nice bein’ up there on deck all day?’

  ‘Oh, all right. As a matter of fact I slept a good part of the time. Sorry I had to lock you up, but I hope that tomorrow it won’t be necessary. Have you had anything to eat?’

  ‘Thanks, yes. All I was wantin’. But how’s yourself managed all these long hours?’

  He gave a rueful laugh. ‘To tell the truth I haven’t, and I’m darn’ hungry.’

  She stood up at once. ‘ ’Twas your own silly fault, but now you’ve apologised I’m not one to bear malice. Just lay up that table, an’ I’ll have supper ready in no time at all.’

  Evidently she had taken the opportunity of exploring the cabin thoroughly during her enforced confinement, as she now seemed to know where everything was kept, and with a deft, efficient touch which compelled his admiration she very soon had an appetising meal cooked and on the table.

  The eating of it provided him with the best opportunity he had so far had for studying her closely. No one, he decided, could possibly call the round freckled face opposite beautiful, but it certainly had character. There was something about the jawline and the set of the eyebrows above the bright blue eyes which could flash so angrily. Then he thought again of the account of her life she had given him that morning. If it was true—and he now saw no reason to doubt it—she had had a pretty raw deal, poor little wretch, and had put up a darn’ good show in an extraordinarily tricky situation.