The Man who Missed the War

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘That’s right. I couldn’t do this and the job I’m doing at the same time, so you mustn’t crack yourself up.’

  ‘ ’Tis terrible hungry I am,’ she grumbled. ‘Couldn’t we be gettin’ ourselves some breakfast now an’ finish when we’ve eaten?

  He shook his head. ‘No, that would be fatal. If you stopped pumping for half an hour the water would be back to four feet and we’d have to start the whole job over again. Rest when you feel you must, but remember that every minute of rest means two minutes’ more pumping later on.’

  Having planted this disturbing thought in her mind, he added: ‘Neither of us must let up until the deck is level and I can get at the leak.’ Then he hurried back to the cabin as though his presence were required there as a matter of the utmost urgency.

  He had meant to go round all the rafts that morning to see if any of the cables were showing signs of strain, but that was impossible so long as the launch was out of action. There was nothing else he particularly wanted to do, so he picked up the latest James Thurber, which was among the books he had bought before leaving New York, and lay down on his bunk to enjoy a good laugh over that author’s brilliant nonsense.

  After reading for a little, owing perhaps to his having been roused in the middle of the previous night, he became drowsy, and putting down his book closed his eyes. Over an hour slipped by before he opened them again, and then it was with a start, to find a flushed and enraged Gloria staring down at him.

  ‘So this is the way himself acts the great sailor, is it?’ she flared, planting her feet apart and her hands on her hips. ‘All his talk of savin’ us from sinkin’ by crawlin’ around down in the bilge while I’m sweatin’ blood at that pump. Ah, if only I had the strength of a man I’d be givin’ you the bum’s rush right over the side of the boat!’

  Shooting his long legs out of the bunk, he stood up and faced her. ‘Now, listen to me! The sort of thing you did last night might easily have killed us both. We’re alone here and at the mercy of the ocean.’

  ‘You’re telling me!’ she interrupted, stridently.

  He ignored that. ‘There’s no reason at all why we should come to any harm provided we both play the game. By that I mean take all reasonable precautions and good care of our equipment. But, if the launch or its engine becomes seriously damaged, it may well cost us our lives. A few hours’ hard pumping is not a very severe punishment for having risked both our necks, and there’s at least a chance that the memory of it may help to drive home what I’ve just said. Anyhow, one of us had to pump the water out of the forward compartment, and as it was your fault that it got in there I saw no reason why you shouldn’t be made to get it out. Now that you’ve got the water down I really am going along to try to stop that leak.’

  She turned away suddenly without a word, and he could not tell if it were to hide tears of repentance or sullen anger. Picking up a hammer, blow-lamp and other tools that he had put ready, he went up on deck.

  It was, of course, actually quite impossible to reach the forward compartment by way of the bilge, and the real way into it was through a manhole in the small triangular foredeck. Having unscrewed the trap, he lowered himself into the dark, narrow space below, and, with the aid of his torch, began to look for the leak. It was some time before he found it, and, when he did, it was indicated only by a slow trickle of water seeping between the timbers. He was no expert at repairing boats, but knew just enough to check the flow temporarily at least, while thanking his gods that it was no worse.

  The job had to be done by artificial light, and to complete it he had to kneel down in the smelly water that still remained slopping about the keel. In consequence, he had not once glanced up at the manhole by which he had entered during the half-hour it took to do the work. Now, on getting up from his knees, he saw with horror that while he had been busy the manhole had been replaced.

  Filled with apprehension he first pushed then banged upon it, but it did not budge a millimetre. With rage and dismay he accepted the awful truth which had already flashed upon him. While he had been too occupied to notice, the incorrigible Gloria had stolen up, replaced the mantrap cover and screwed it down.

  For ten minutes he pummelled and called and cursed and banged, but all to no purpose; so eventually he gave up and endeavoured to make himself as comfortable as he could until it should please his tormentor to release him. But he soon found that his choice of positions varied only in the degree of discomfort that they offered, since the space under the foredeck could hardly have been bettered if it had been designed specially for purposes of torture by a Gestapo expert. It was not high enough for him to stand upright in it, and the floor, curving sharply away from each side of the keel to form two of the three walls, sloped to such an extent that he could not even find a flat surface for his feet; and, in the meantime, the water washed and eddied round them. Eventually, he found that the least acutely painful position was sitting down in the shallow water on the keel itself with his back against the stem post of the launch, but the keel was not very wide, so its two edges cut into his behind, forcing him to kneel or stand half-bent for relief at frequent intervals. After a time, there being no ventilation, the place became abominably hot and stuffy.

  For hours on end he thought of all the jolly things that he would do to Gloria when he did get out; but when she actually released him at eight o’clock that night he did nothing. After the best part of ten hours in this ‘black hole of Calcutta’ he was so exhausted that he only managed to climb out with her assistance, and she was clearly a little frightened by the state to which she had reduced him.

  It seemed too that she was not only frightened but distressed; as, when he collapsed upon the deck croaking hoarsely for water, the moment she had fetched it she cradled his head on her breast and began to murmur little phrases of comfort to him as if he were a baby.

  When he had recovered to some extent she served the supper which she had already prepared for them both, and during the meal neither said a word about the tricks played on each other, which had caused one of them to spend a most exhausting morning and the other an extremely painful afternoon. Honours were now even, and by mutual if unspoken agreement they entered upon a truce. But they spoke very little over the meal or after it.

  As the launch was still tied up alongside the raft there was no point in Philip going to look at the engine; but, after his suggestion that they should make an early night of it, to which Gloria agreed, he went up for a breath of air on deck. The weather was still fine, the sea calm, and what little wind there was still came from within a few points of South-East. Tomorrow, he thought, I must take an observation and find out where we’ve got to. That is, if that little devil doesn’t play some other dirty trick on me. But he really felt too tired to worry very much at the moment, and going below turned in, to fall asleep almost at once.

  The next morning, again by unspoken agreement, the truce was continued. Immediately after breakfast, Philip took a sounding of the forward compartment and found that the water had risen only three inches since he had patched the leak some twenty hours earlier. Provided it got no worse, ten minutes’ pumping a day would be sufficient to keep it down, and if the flow did increase he could always reduce it by re-patching, so he felt that he no longer had any cause to worry about the results of Gloria’s desperate attempt to get back to America.

  The launch was still tied up to the raft, and he clambered on to it to examine the damage that had been done to the cargo container. In mounting the raft the launch’s bows had ripped a great hole in the container and smashed some of the wooden boxes inside it. The trouble now was going to be that the moment anything approaching a swell got up each wave that hit the raft would pour in and out of the hole and ruin the cargo. Philip had intended to do his best to fix a canvas screen over the hole, but on getting close to the wooden boxes he saw for the first time from the smashed ones that they contained only loose earth.

  Evidently, having planned for the rafts to be aban
doned to drift until they either became waterlogged and sank, or were battered to pieces on some probably desolate coast, Eiderman had felt that it would be absurd to waste good German Secret Service money on providing a genuine cargo.

  At first, Philip was furious at this new trick which had been played upon him. Now only his own goods on Number One Raft could be used to provide evidence that various commodities might be thrown violently about during a crossing of the Atlantic by raft without harm coming to them, whereas he had been counting upon producing scores of additional exhibits from the mixed cargo on the other nine rafts. But he soon realised that the harm done to his experiment would be comparatively small. To have brought nine of the rafts over in water ballast would have been most regrettable, but being filled with wooden cases was a very different thing. If the cases arrived without becoming waterlogged or otherwise damaged, it stood to reason that whatever had been put in them would have done so too; so for his purpose the fact that the boxes were full of earth really did not matter.

  Then he suddenly saw something else. The very fact that the boxes were filled with earth might prove his salvation if he ever had to face his trial for Eiderman’s murder. Provided the rafts reached Britain safely, it would now no longer be his bare word against Thorssen’s when the defence sought to establish that the Norwegian’s late co-director had been a Nazi agent. Down in the cabin, Philip had the Raft Convoy’s manifest with the long, long list of goods that the Norwegian Company were supposed to have shipped with him. When it could be proved that all these bales and boxes contained only earth they would have to do some pretty remarkable thinking to provide any sort of explanation.

  Although his thoughts had been occupied by Gloria for a large part of the two days and nights, since he had made his escape from the Regenskuld he had, mainly subconsciously, been very worried indeed about the probability that when he did reach Britain he would find himself arrested and extradited for trial to the United States. Now, if that happened, the boxes filled with earth would put a very different complexion on the matter, and this did a great deal to relieve his mind.

  All the same, he felt that it would be wise to stick to a decision he had taken on his first morning at sea; not to send out any message on his radio until he was within one hundred miles of the coast of Europe and actually needed tugs to come out and tow him in. It was annoying, as before sailing he had promised to let his father know every few days how he was getting on by sending a short message which, it had been arranged, would be relayed by any of H.M. ships that picked it up. Fortunately, as it now turned out, Eiderman had persuaded him to avoid any publicity, so, although there was a definite news value about his voyage, he had no hook-up with any American Press or broadcasting services, which might have sent an aircraft out to look for him if he had failed to radio to them; and Thorssen’s firm, with whom he had arranged to communicate, doubtless assumed that he was lying low in some American coastal town or village. In consequence, although his silence might cause his father considerable anxiety, his best hope of reducing any chance of his being hunted by the American authorities and taken back to New York lay in maintaining it.

  The raft with which the launch had collided as a result of Gloria’s desperate attempt to regain her freedom was Number Three in the string. Casting off from it, Philip started the launch’s engine and did a tour of his whole convoy, stopping for a little at each raft in turn. He did not board any of them, but came near enough for him to have a good look at the sails on each and the coupling of the cables. The ten rafts were no longer in a line, but formed an irregular zigzag spread out over a mile of water, but none of the sails had so far blown out, and all the cables were in order. Ending up at Raft Number One, Philip next set about hauling in the cable that Gloria had disconnected. This was no light task but eventually he got it hitched to a small winch and, once he had recovered the sunken end, it was easy to re-shackle it to the gear in the stern of the launch. An hour later, having set an approximate course by the sun, he had the satisfaction of seeing that each of the cables in turn had gradually taken up the strain, so that now the string of rafts was once more in a straight line.

  Just before midday, he got out his sextant and at twelve noon took an observation of the sun. For the thirty-odd hours during which the launch had remained tied up to Raft Number Three he had no exact record of their course, or the speed they were making. However, he knew that, owing to the favourable wind, their speed had been considerably greater than he had anticipated, and, having taken approximate figures, after half an hour with his book of logarithms he had completed his ‘day’s work’, which gave the surprisingly satisfactory result that the Raft Convoy had, by midday, covered some hundred and sixty miles of its journey.

  Over lunch he told Gloria, hoping that she would be persuaded of the folly of making any further attempts to get back to America, and become resigned to the voyage, but her only comment was to remark darkly: ‘Ah, just you wait till we strike one of those hurricanes that whisk away whole houses and tear up great trees by their roots! ‘Tis then you’ll be askin’ me pardon on your bended knees for bringin’ me to me death in a watery grave.’

  However, that afternoon she suggested that he should sit for her, and he willingly agreed, as he was both intrigued by the idea of having his portrait done and interested to see how good she really was. He was somewhat peeved when after a two-hour sitting she refused to let him see what she had done, but she protested that to complete it several more sittings would be necessary, and she did not wish him to see it before it was finished.

  When they woke next day they found that the wind had freshened and the sea was quite choppy, but Gloria did not appear to be affected by it, and cooked and ate breakfast without any suggestion that if it got worse she might be ill. Actually by ten o’clock the wind had dropped again, so Philip took the precaution of refuelling the launch from the main supply of oil, which was stored in one of the cargo containers on Number One Raft. Then, in the afternoon, he sat once more for his portrait.

  During the following two days they were again blessed with sunshine and light winds from the south-west, so that their progress filled Philip with a quite justifiable elation. Having worked out his position as at noon on August 17th he found that in five days they had travelled three hundred and ninety miles from their starting-point, and, so far, every mile of it had been in the right direction.

  It was just after supper on the 17th, after a fifth long sitting, that Gloria declared the portrait finished. She had rigged up a makeshift easel to which it was pinned, and getting up Philip walked over to look at it.

  ‘By Jove, that is good!’ he exclaimed, as he studied the excellent drawing. He had never before realised that he was such a goodlooking fellow, but she had brought out his fine forehead, kind eyes, and the line of his determined chin, so that, while it remained an unmistakable likeness, these gave the impression that he might well be a great leader of men in whom brains were coupled with physical attraction.

  ‘I think it’s absolutely grand,’ he continued enthusiastically. ‘And if you can do this sort of thing you ought later on to make a packet of money as a portrait painter.’

  ‘Sure an’ I will!’ she agreed with a laugh that had a slight edge to it. ‘ ’Tis a thousand bucks a time I’ll be charging for a portrait in oils the like of that when I get back from me studies in Paris. And d’you know why? But, of course, you don’t, so I’ll be tellin’ you. It’s like enough to that long face of yours for yourself to be thinkin’ you look like that. But you don’t. Not a bit of it! That’s how you’d like to look—and maybe flatter yourself you do. An’ that’s why you’d pay me the big money if you were a rich guy and meself rented one of those Ritzy studios in Greenwich Village. Now, just take a look at yourself as you are.’

  As she finished speaking she unpinned the drawing and disclosed another beneath it, on which, unknown to Philip, she had also been working during these long sittings.

  It was again an undeniable liken
ess, but no one could call it a pleasant portrait. This time she had stressed the thinness of his face to the point of emaciation, made his strong jaw look sullen and given his big forehead a narrowness that suggested the bigot. It was the face of a stubborn man with a one-track mind, and it entirely lacked any quality which might be expected to appeal to a young woman.

  The sight of it was admittedly a shock to Philip, although he knew that it was as much a libel as the other one had been an outrageous piece of flattery. He swallowed hard, stared at it for a minute, and then said quietly: ‘If I had needed anything to convince me that you have real talent this would have done so. It’s damn’ unpleasant. It isn’t true. But it is the work of a very clever artist.’

  Gloria was so taken aback that she remained there tongue-tied until, after a moment, he turned and strolled away towards the engine-room.

  He knew very well that Gloria had made the second drawing because, for some reason best known to herself, she desired to humiliate him; most probably in revenge for his keeping her with him against her will. That must be so, as had she done it only as a practice study she need never have let him see it. In consequence, he decided that it would do her a great deal of good to know how it feels to be humiliated, and he planned a sharp lesson for her, which he took the opportunity to deliver after supper that night.

  ‘You know, Gloria,’ he began, ‘I’ve been thinking about that second drawing you showed me this afternoon. Quite possibly I do look like that, and you obviously feel that it does us good to see ourselves as others see us. Unfortunately, I lack the talent to do a pair of portraits of you, but perhaps I can achieve the same effect by a word-picture. We won’t bother about the first, as I have no doubt that you think of yourself as a Venus, although, actually, apart from the colour of your eyes and hair, you’re rather a plain little girl. What I should like to get at is the you behind the face, as all really great artists succeed in doing with their sitters, and as you did in a way with those two travesties of me on which you’ve been working so hard these past few days. But then again, I don’t profess to be a psychologist, and I don’t really know you well enough yet to name the things that are really good or bad in your character.’