by Ed Gorman
Monica kept her face carefully neutral. Nothing personal indeed. Would the families of the Federal soldiers slain by the munitions in the Reindeer’s holds view it that way?
George nodded. “As you say, sir,” he replied with a degree of irony, “a lady is present and I wouldn’t want to disrupt the party.”
“Commander, I have a question for you,” De Vere interjected. “And for you as well, Fairweather. All politics aside and speaking purely as naval men, what do you think of Mr. Greenly’s ship and his proposal?”
Under the table, Monica lightly pressed George’s foot with her own. It was rime to begin the show.
George produced another puff from his cigarillo. “Speaking God’s honest truth, Mr. De Vere,” he replied. “I’m not worried by it in the least. You’d have a better chance of getting a cargo into Charleston by heaving it off the end of the pier and hoping that it would drift in the right direction.”
The banker held up his hand, heading off Enoch’s explosive challenge. “Indeed, Commander. How so?”
George aimed a contemptuous glance at the cheap veneer on the salon bulkheads. “This ship is a cracker box. If she doesn’t break up or blow up on her own, she’ll go to pieces the first time she gets a real man-of-war on her tail. And that’s not a Federal officer talking, that’s a sailor.”
“Indeed. And your opinion, Captain Fairweather?”
The English officer took a thoughtful sip of his drink. “Well, in the end, I suppose, the proof shall be in the pudding. However, I must agree that within my own experience, when one purchases a cheap ship, one gets a cheap ship—a fact I wish the admiralty would make note of.”
Fairweather’s calculating gray eyes shifted to Monica. “And what would you say, Mrs. Van Telflin? Your husband was a noted mariner and you’ve spent as much time at sea as many in this room.”
Monica gave a depreciative laugh. “My good captain, you confuse merely riding about on boats with knowing something about them. I would not presume to comment. I’ll leave such matters to you gentlemen.”
Again she pressed her foot down on George’s. Now.
“Indeed, I believe that’s precisely what I shall do. I feel the need for a breath of fresh air, so I shall withdraw for a few minutes, leaving the field free for a brief discussion of these maritime and financial matters.”
The masculine members of the party stood as she took her departure. “Do you require accompaniment, Mrs. Van Telflin?” Garrett inquired, as per their preset script.
“Oh, of course not, George. There’s no sense in your missing what promises to be the most interesting discussion of the evening. Indulge yourself and I shall return momentarily.”
As the salon door closed behind her, she heard the beginning of both Captain Enoch’s angry challenge and Mr. Greenly’s hasty counter to George’s statements. George’s task now would be to keep the kettle boiling briskly as a diversion, Also working in her favor would be a lady’s right to privacy while she dealt with certain bodily functions. Still, every second of her free time would be precious.
Pausing at the quarterdeck hatchway. Monica warily scanned the night. Stars glittered brightly in the moonless sky and a hint of salt mist curled low over the water. With the exception of the watch officer, leaning back drowsily against the binnacle and paying no notice to her silent emergence, the steamer’s decks were still deserted. Noiselessly she moved forward into the total darkness beneath the bridge between paddle boxes.
Safe within the deepest shadows, Monica began flicking open the buttons of her gown.
She’d had this garment specially made for this evening. High-collared and long-sleeved to conceal the multitude of sins to come, it closed up the front. Likewise, both its buttons and buttonholes were large and easily manipulated and its petticoats were stitched to the inside of the skirt waistband.
Monica’s Bermudan seamstress had only smiled knowingly when she had been presented with the design for the dress. Being far more civilized and understanding in such matters than her English or American counterparts, she could understand why a lady might require a gown that could swiftly and easily be removed and redonned. Only the specific motivation behind this particular garment might have surprised her.
Watered silk whispered to the holystoned deck and Monica stood free in chemise and pantalets.
The voluminous skirts of her gown had also served to conceal the other required items of the night. The length of copper telegraph wire wrapped around her waist. The spare evening gloves, the large silk scarf that she used to shroud and protect her face and hair, and, finally, the coil of light but strong cotton rope with the steel hook at its end and the knots spaced down its length.
Leaving her dress concealed in an out-of-the-way niche behind the forward stack, she stole portside to one of the great deck ventilators that flanked it. Fitting the hook of the climbing-rope onto the lower lip of the ventilator bell, she flipped the line down the duct, the free end whispering away down the sheet-metal lining. Blessing her childhood love of tree-climbing and general tomboyism, she sprang upward, gripping the upper rim of the bell and jack-knifing herself into the airshaft.
A few moments later, she thumped down on the deck in the Reindeer’s forward boiler room, silently cursing at the sloppy metalsmith who had left that silk- and skin-shredding rivet protruding from the side of the shaft.
As she had projected, she was in the cramped flue spaces just ahead of the triple row of boilers. The stack ducting and the belt drives of the forced-draft blowers loomed around her, outlined in the faint glow of a single low-trimmed ship’s lamp. Squeezing between the boilers, she working her way aft to their rear facings.
During the ten years of her marriage to Captain James Van Telflin, Monica had voyaged with him to all the corners of the world aboard a variety of different vessels, steam and sail alike. And contrary to her statement in the salon, one could learn a great deal about ship handling and marine engineering during a decade at sea. Especially if one was of an instinctively inquisitive turn of mind and had a husband who enjoyed discussing his profession with a knowledgeable and intelligent mate.
Directly over her head, a service gangway ran back between the great cylindrical pressure vessels, a narrow ladder running up to it from the boiler facing. Cautiously, she peered out from between the iron rungs.
The stoke hold was deserted. There would still be an hour or two to go before the steaming watch would be set for the morning’s departure. Ignoring her rapid accumulation of soot, engine oil, and coal dust, she squeezed out from behind the ladder and scrambled up it to the overhead gangway. Moving back into the shadowy darkness between the boilers, she found her objective. The safety-valves assemblies.
By touch Monica explored the mechanisms. In structure, a steam-engine safety valve is the essence of simplicity. A massive steel spring, mounted on a threaded stem, forces a metal plug down into a vent in the top of the pressure vessel. The holding strength of the spring is set below the estimated bursting pressure of the boiler. When the internal steam pressure approaches the danger level, the plug lifts and the excess steam is released up a vent pipe.
In theory the system is foolproof. In reality, catastrophic failures were far from unknown.
Monica selected the central boiler. As was usually the case, the sheet-metal vent pipe housing over the valve had not been bolted down, permitting the engineers a rapid access to the critical mechanism. She slid the housing up and off the valve, exposing the spring. A brush of a fingertip across the heavy coils confirmed what she had suspected. The Reindeer was already running with tight valves, very tight indeed, for maximum pressure and power output. So much the better.
She unwrapped the lengths of wire looped around her waist, rewinding them between the coils of the safety spring. In maritime insurance circles, this was called “gagging the safety,” a favored method of disposing of a vessel that was proving uneconomical to its owners. The binding of wire stiffened the spring to immobility, locking the vent pl
ug in place.
With the safety valve wired, she hastened back to the deck of the stoke hold. From her prior tour of the boiler room, she knew of the tools neatly racked on the rear bulkhead. Selecting a heavy pair of pliers, she returned to the central boiler and very carefully squeezed a pinch into the brass feed line of its pressure gauge, choosing a point just below the gauge fitting where it would be difficult to note. With luck, it would prove enough of a block to make the gauge read low.
Returning the pliers to the exact place she had taken them from, she dunked her hand into the engine wiper’s grease bucket. It was hellish treatment for a pair of the best ladies’ kid evening gloves, but in exchange for a blockade runner, it was a worthwhile trade.
A dab of the thick lubricant went onto the pressure-gauge line to conceal the mischief there. Then Monica climbed back to the gangway and returned to the doctored safety valve. She slapped the remainder of the grease over the copper gagging wire, concealing it from any cursory examination of the valve mechanism.
The job was done, but she had used up every minute of her time doing it. She had to get back to the salon before suspicions were aroused.
Monica had just finished easing the valve shroud back into place when she heard noises in the passageway leading to the boiler room. Instantly she went prone on the plank gangway, freezing in place. In spite of dank, belowdecks warmth, a shiver rippled down her spine as an extremely large silhouette loomed in the dim light.
Then she heard the mumbled verse of a Caribbean chantey and caught a whiff of alcohol and sour sweat over the sulfur-and-oil background stench of the engine spaces.
It was one of the Bermudan stokers, hired on for the Reindeer’s dash to the coast. A towering and muscular Negro seaman, currently with a towering drunk on. A rum bottle glinted in his hand, probably a prize smuggled aboard from an earlier spree. He must have returned from the beach early and was now seeking out a quiet corner to finish his pre-departure binge. Unfortunately for Monica, he’d chosen the forward boiler room as an opportune locale.
The stoker missed Monica’s huddled presence deep in the shadows between the boilers, but, mumbling contentedly to himself, he collapsed at the foot of the inspection gangway ladder, his back to the rungs.
Savagely Monica mentalized some of her late husband’s extensive vocabulary of seafarers’ language. She was pinned up here and she couldn’t afford to wait for the stoker to drink himself into oblivion. All too soon Fairweather or one of the Reindeer’s officers would start to wonder what had happened to her. It wouldn’t take much of a search to find her discarded dress on deck and after that everything would go to pieces.
Monica wasn’t sure which would be worse. Failing in her mission and being turned over to the British authorities, or being yarded out of this boiler room clad only in her nether garments and a coat of coal dust.
That consideration spurred up an idea. The silk scarf she had used to protect her hair and face.
Silently unwinding the fine cloth, she twisted it into a tight cord. What had they called it in the Indian Ocean ports, a thuggee’s noose? Lifting up onto her hands and knees, she crawled along the splinter-studded gangway until she knelt directly above drunken seaman. Lightly, she rapped on the top rung of the ladder.
The stoker’s meandering song broke off.
Not daring to breathe, Monica repeated the rapping.
The stoker cursed and struggled to his feet, blearily looking about. As he stood, his shaven head rose to the level of the inspection gangway.
Monica lunged, looped the corded scarf around the stoker’s thick neck. Heaving taut, she hauled back with all her strength, taking the stoker off his feet and adding his own weight to the strain she had on the scarf.
The stoker’s rum bottle crashed to the deck. Had he been steady, the big man could have yanked the scarf out of Monica’s hands or readily dragged her completely off the gangway. As it was, his drunkenness worked against him. He clawed wildly but ineffectually at his throat, uncomprehending of what was happening. Ten frantic seconds later, the cutoff of blood to his brain had its effect and his legs buckled. Monica released her hold on the scarf as he collapsed to the deck.
She swarmed down the ladder. Kneeling beside the still form of the stoker, she unwound the scarf. A quick examination of his throat verified that the soft cloth had not lifted a welt.
Unfortunately, it also indicated he was no longer breathing.
“Damn! Damn! Damn!” Monica screamed in a whisper. At the moment she was less concerned about the morality of the seaman’s death than she was about the presence of his corpse. The discovery of a stoker, sodden drunk and unable to account for what had happened to him would be one thing. A dead body in the boiler room was another. It would almost certainly trigger a minute inspection of the entire plant that would reveal Monica’s sabotage.
“God blast it! Breathe!”
With all of her strength, she drove the heels of both hands into the stoker’s stomach. Constricted air wheezed from the man’s lungs, followed by a long, shuddering inhalation as respiration resumed.
Monica tore off the grease-saturated gloves and wadded them up with the scarf, hurling both through an open furnace door to the rear of the firebox where they would be mistaken for a wad of discarded wiper’s rags. She was past having no rime left. She had to get out now!
Ducking back into the flue spaces, she groped for and found the knotted climbing-rope she had left dangling out of the ventilator duct. Frantically she swarmed up the rope and up the shaft, striving for the deck. After what seemed an eternity of constricted inching in the metal passage, she could make out the faint glow of starlight beyond the ventilator mouth. Stretching, she curled first one set of fingers and then the other over the rim of the ventilator bell … and almost screamed as another pair of hands closed over her wrists.
The owner of those hands heaved and she shot out into the open air, a dark figure hauling her upright on the deck.
“Damnation, Monica! What were you playing at down there?”
“Oh, thank the Lord, George, it’s you.”
“For the moment,” the attaché whispered back. “When your breath of fresh air stretched out to over fifteen minutes, things started to get tight. I headed off both Fairweather and Captain Enoch with the suggestion that I come looking for you, but we’ve got aroused suspicions.”
“Unavoidable delays, George. I’ll explain later, just for God’s sakes help me get dressed!”
Pristine white gloves were shot on over her grimy hands and forearms, then hastily she stepped back into her gown. The full skirt, long sleeves, and high bodice concealed both the stains and smears accrued belowdecks and the bedraggled ruins of her undergarments.
Monica was just closing the last wrist button when George Garrett’s arm came around her waist and she found herself drawn into a sudden fierce embrace and kiss. Surprise paralyzed resistance and the pressure of his lips on hers smothered her startled yip.
Then, over his shoulder she saw another shadow looming on deck behind them. Well played, George, she thought wryly. Then, closing her eyes, she melted into both the kiss and the experience.
When they paused for breath, Captain Fairweather was looking on, amusement showing on his long-lined face. “Ah, Commander, I see you found Mrs. Van Telflin. I do trust all is well?”
Garrett cleared his throat with just the proper amount of awkwardness. “Quite all right, Captain. No problems.”
Monica was pleased with the deftness of his acting. The fervor of his embrace also provided both a justification for her somewhat rumpled condition and a reasonable excuse for withdrawal. “Quite so, Captain Fairweather,” she replied, coolly brushing back a strayed lock of hair. “I’m quite all right. However, I do seem to have developed a sudden … headache. Commander Garrett has offered to escort me home. Could you please offer our regrets to Mr. Greenly and Captain Enoch?”
Fairweather’s smile deepened. “Of course, dear lady. It will be my pleasure. I r
egret that the fresh air didn’t help.”
Slipping her arm through George’s, Monica allowed herself to be led to the gangway and to her waiting carriage. Garrett’s swift thinking had definitely saved that situation. But there had also been something else; something in the fervor of that kiss beyond the mere requirements of the service. Lightly she squeezed the strong and supporting arm at her side. That would be a matter for further consideration in due course and at the proper time.
* * *
Since the onset of the Civil War, the departure of a blockade-runner had become something of a social event for the Bermudan colonials. The sailing of the Reindeer, with her trailing cloak of interest and controversy, was exceptionally so. As dawn flamed along the eastern horizon, an assortment of horsemen and carriages made their way “up the country” to Daniel’s Head at the western end of the island to wave Greenly’s creation away on her maiden voyage.
Snowy picnic cloths dotted the sun-crisped salt grass on the hillside above land’s end and servants served al fresco breakfasts to the interested onlookers. Monica Van Telflin and Commander Garrett were noteworthy in their presence.
“You realize of course that absolutely nothing may happen,” Garrett commented as he lugged the telescope rube from the carriage to its deployed tripod mount. “They might not have gotten our message in time to get a ship into position.”
“I’m fully cognizant, George,” Monica replied, adjusting the chin scarf of her sun hat. “Just as I’m aware that my tampering could have been uncovered or that I might have made a hash out of fouling that safety or that the boiler might simply refuse to blow up out of sheer perversity. I lay awake all last night considering catastrophes. The point is, there’s nothing we can do about it now except to look on and await developments.”