“You must attain the crow nest!” replied the Swede with unforgivable jollity.
Lenox gulped and resumed the slow, arduous climb. As one went higher every small wavelet that slapped against the ship seemed greater, resonating through her timbers, until, when he was only twenty feet from the top, a gentle whitecap almost knocked him loose.
“So close!” said Andersen, who was hanging upside down by his legs, evidently having been as inspired by Follow the Leader as Lenox had been.
At last the crow’s nest seemed to be within his grasp. It was larger than he had expected, a wide circle of solid oak that could have fit six men snugly around, their legs dangling through the hole in the center. Lenox’s knuckles were white with the strength of his grip on the rope, until, almost reluctantly, he accepted Andersen’s boost through the center.
“Who’s that?” a voice called out as Lenox fell in a lump into the corner of the crow’s nest, panting.
The detective, not as young as he had once been, was trembling, sweat-soaked, and shaky; all he had wanted while aloft was a moment of peace. Instead he had found Evers, McEwan’s friend. The one who thought he was an albatross.
Andersen’s cheerful face popped through the center of the crow’s nest. “Rest now, Mr. Parliament! I have brought you reward as well! From Mr. McEwan—he suspects where you need it.”
To Lenox’s immense gratitude Andersen revealed that he had brought with them a small thermos, which proved to be full of hot, sweet tea, and a napkin wrapped around seven or eight gingerbread biscuits, studded with pieces of rock sugar. Jane had packed them.
Gradually Lenox’s breath returned to a steady rate and his reddened face began to cool. When he had at least some of his composure back he looked at Evers.
“Excuse my intrusion,” he said.
“Not at all, sir,” said Evers, in a voice that seemed to contradict the graciousness of his words. “They said you was going to try to make it up here. I didn’t think it would happen.”
“Why have you come up?”
“No reason.” As he spoke Evers shifted his hands, and Lenox saw for the first time that he was trying to hide something in his lap, his knees drawn up to his chin.
Lenox’s guard went up: was this the murderer? Evers was a large, strong man. Thank goodness for Andersen’s presence.
“You’re not on watch?”
“No, which it’s my time to myself.”
“Do you come up here often?”
“Fairly often, sir.” Again he said this last word with as much insolence as he could muster. He shifted his hands again and something spilled out onto the bare wood of the crow’s nest. Lenox grabbed it just as it seemed to be pitching for the hole at the center.
“Look here, that’s mine!” cried Evers.
Lenox held up the object. It was a charcoal pencil, chunky, with black charcoal on one side and white on the other, for shading. “This?”
“Yes!”
“Are you a draughtsman?”
“No,” said Evers, but this was plainly a lie; as he reached forward to grab the charcoal from Lenox it was easy to see an open sketchbook.
“May I see?” Lenox asked.
A battle took place in Evers’s face: pride and resentment fighting against each other. At last the pride won out, and with a great show of antipathy he handed Lenox the book.
Lenox flipped through it. On almost every page was a different sketch of the same vista, at different times of day—the view from this high perch, sometimes with other masts and even people showing, sometimes with a horizon, and always the sun and clouds and water.
“These are wonderful,” said Lenox.
“Oh?” said Evers hoarsely.
“You draw?” Andersen said.
“No!” Evers roared, and snatched the book back.
“Let me see it for myself, this view you draw,” said Lenox.
He stood. The crow’s nest was high-walled enough that it had concealed the panorama it offered from him while he was sitting, but now as he rose he took it all in.
It was one of the most miraculous moments of his life; he had known the pleasure of rest after exertion, and he had known the heartswell one gets from a sweeping view of the natural world in its beauty. He hadn’t known them in combination, however, and together they overwhelmed him. There was the distant deck, populated by miniatures of the men he knew; the masts of the ship, ahead and behind him; there were the cliffs of grayish clouds, and between them, breaking through now and then, the brilliant golden sun.
For five, then ten minutes he gazed out upon the sea and the sky. Raindrops fell on his face. His spirit felt full.
“I don’t blame you for drawing it,” he said at last, sitting down again. “Will you tell me how you came to start drawing?”
Evers wanted to speak, it was plain, but couldn’t with Andersen there. He gulped, and then said, “Some other time, if you don’t mind, sir. I need to be on duty.”
“Not for hours!” said the Swede cheerfully.
“Bugger,” Evers muttered, and set off down through the hole in the crow’s nest and back down the rigging, his sketchbook in his teeth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
So absorbing had life on board been that Lenox had half forgotten the reason he was there at all. But it had been nearly a week now. They would make landfall in Egypt after only five or six more days, four if the wind was exceptionally kind.
So that afternoon he went to his cabin and removed the papers Edmund had handed him at the Plymouth docks from their leather satchel. After coming down from the crow’s nest he had had a good lunch, of roasted chicken, peas, and potatoes, washed down with a half bottle of claret, and then he had slept for an hour or so, physically exhausted. Now he felt refreshed, his mind sharp. He was prepared to read his orders.
There were three sheets of paper, each a mess of jumbled numbers and letters, none of them ever forming a word, much less a sentence. They had been written in cipher by a cryptographer working for the British government.
Thankfully Lenox knew the key to the cipher. For his sake it was a simple one: the first thirteen letters of the alphabet corresponded to the second thirteen, so that the letter A in fact denoted the letter N, the letter B in fact denoted the letter O, and so on. Meanwhile the cardinal numbers one through thirteen corresponded to the first thirteen letters of the alphabet, so that a one denoted an A and a thirteen denoted an M. Numbers more than thirteen were used as line breaks or spaces. The first enciphered word of his brother’s letter—4-5-1-E—therefore translated in plain English into the word Dear.
Edmund had told Lenox of this system and made him recite it back several times, until the older brother was satisfied that the younger brother would remember. Now Lenox made a key for himself and set about translating the first of the three documents, his brother’s letter. This took half an hour or so of lip-biting effort. In its translated version the letter read:
Dear Charles,
Two documents are enclosed with this letter. We have enciphered both, believing that it would draw attention to have enciphered only one. The first, marked
Alpha
in the upper right-hand corner, details your official responsibilities in Suez, and the second, marked
Omega
in the upper right-hand corner, your covert ones. It is a matter of the highest importance that you should destroy both this letter and the document marked
Omega
as soon as you have committed the simple details of
Omega
to your memory.