Fribourg stared at Monty for a long time, as if this idea hadn't even occurred to him. Then he shook his head quickly, and said, "No. You think I want to be caught for fraud? I'm an honest man."
The orchestra was playing soothing selections from Tonight's the Night. The huge chandeliers sparkled and glittered. As the soup was finished, the dining-room stewards hurried between the tables gathering the plates. And all the while the Arcadia's turbines thrummed through her superstructure as she forged ahead through the evening Atlantic at nearly twenty-eight knots.
In second class, they were eating asparagus soup and beef Wellington, and listening to a solo lady singer in a fringed frock whose soprano version of "Under The Laburnums" was compared by the sixth officer, a cynical young man called Spratt, to "the strangling of geese by an inexpert foraging detail from the Salvation Army".
In third class, it was tomato soup, liver pate, and roast chicken with lemon stuffing and peas. The topic of conversation at nearly every table was Harry Pakenow, whose rescue of Lucille Foster had elevated him so abruptly to the upper decks. Not just to second class, under whose rubber revolving heels the steerage lived and dined, but to first class, whose kid-soled dancing pumps beat a soft and superior tattoo on the ceilings one storey above. Philly, however, did not miss Harry for longer than an hour or two. Soon she was making eyes at a young physics teacher from Bangs, Texas, who wore a brown and yellow checked three-piece suit and ate everything that was put in front of him. Whatever Philly said, he answered "Yes'm" and "No'm".
Upstairs, in the first-class dining lounge, as the stewards were clearing away the glass dessert dishes with a clatter that sounded like Tibetan monastery wind chimes, Edgar Deacon crossed over to Rudyard Philips' table where George Welterman was sitting, and leaned over George's chair.
"Is everything all right?" he asked, quietly.
George screwed up his napkin in his left hand. "No, Edgar, everything is not all right."
He turned around, so that Edgar could see his raging red bruise. "This," he said, "was courtesy of Mark Beeney."
"Beeney did that?" It was as much as Edgar could do to conceal his pleasure.
"You bet Beeney did it. He forced his way into my stateroom, paid my valet fifty dollars to look in the other direction, then he half drowned me in my own bathtub and beat me up."
"I don't know what to say, old man," said Edgar.
"Well, don't say anything," George told him. "Just put that jumped-up young ape behind bars."
"You're not lodging a complaint for assault, surely?" asked Edgar.
"You want me to lodge a complaint that he was blowing kisses at me?"
"Please," said Edgar, involuntarily colouring at the idea of men blowing kisses to each other. "You have to understand that if you lodge a formal complaint against Mark Beeney, then it's all going to come out about Miss Keys."
"Miss Keys? That harlot! And that's another bone I've got to pick with you, Edgar. I thought you told me she was a flapper. A real hot young sheba, that's what you said. Jesus, it was like trying to get it off with a mountain goat. I've got bruises all over me."
"Perhaps this isn't the time to discuss it," said Edgar, glancing up at the interested faces of the other diners. "Let's talk later in my cabin. Maybe a bottle of Hine will help you to see things a little more calmly."
"I'm calm," gritted George. "On my mother's grave, I'm calm. But don't you or Miss Keys ever try anything like that again. Because Keys Shipping would look pretty sick without IMM's support, don't you agree? And Miss Keys herself would look pretty sick if I got some of my friends from the yellow papers onto her. "Heiress importunes rich passengers for sake of saving her shipping line". How about that? The whore of the high seas."
Edgar, still smiling, said, "I think you'd better withdraw that remark, George."
"I'm not withdrawing anything. Either like it, or stuff it in your ear. Now, will Miss Keys back up an outright sale to IMM, or what?"
Edgar said, "Nobody is backing anything. Not until you withdraw that remark you just made about Miss Keys."
"What are you?" George demanded. "Another one of those knights in armour?"
"You're supposed to be a gentleman, George," said Edgar. "Even when my back's against the wall, even when I don't have a single card left to play, I still expect the people with whom I deal to be gentlemen."
"Forget it, then," said George. "Forget the whole damned deal. Let's just see how Keys can make out without IMM."
"George," said Edgar firmly, and he knew that he didn't have to say anything else. It wasn't in George's interest to let Keys go, and George was only indulging himself in some bad-tempered bluffing. George himself was quite aware that the time wasn't right for that kind of endgame, either, and he allowed his temper to expire, and his head to sink back between his bulky shoulders like the head of a falling pressure valve.
"Very well," he said. "I'm sorry I called her a whore. But, believe me, it's a pity for her that she didn't behave like one. We could have had this deal almost sewn up by now."
"Is that all you expect?" Edgar asked him. "That the people around you should behave like whores?"
George looked back at Edgar with those strange old/young eyes. "When I'm paying yes," he said.
Edgar stood up straight. He looked very correct and Anglo-Indian. There were a hundred things he could have said. But saying what one wanted to say was nothing at all to do with good business. Instead, he laid a hand on George's shoulder and told him wryly, "I'll make sure you're not too disappointed in us."
There was a sharp, impatient knocking on the captain's table. It was Sir Peregrine, who had risen to make a speech. Rudyard Philips, at the next table, allowed his hand to close at last over the hand of Louise Narron, who was sitting beside him, and she gave him in return the kind of look that a white houri might have given an Arabian sheik in one of those softly pornographic Victorian paintings entitled "The Prize of the Hareem." Whatever George Welterman thought, real affection was still possible, even in the advanced age of 1924, and there were still people who would go to bed with each other for no other reason than for love.
Sir Peregrine tugged down his white vest, and then let his arms drop down by his sides. He spoke in a clear, carrying voice—a voice that could be (and had been) heard between two vessels at sea, without the aid of a loud-hailer—and everybody in the long sparkling dining lounge could understand every word. The only trouble was, they couldn't quite understand what the words meant when they were put together.
"My lords, ladies, and gentlemen... today is an auspicious day for all of us, despite the fact that we are at sea. Today is the first day of Ascot, and you will be delighted to know that the storm which afflicted us so ferociously earlier in the day blew itself out... and that Ascot opened in a gay blaze of sunshine."
There was a brief, embarrassed spatter of applause, and Rudyard Philips said, in a voice which he hoped sounded hearty, "Bravo!" Ralph Peel, at the next table, turned away in disgust. He didn't bear a grudge against Rudyard for standing up for Sir Peregrine, but he didn't : want to hear any more of it.
Sir Peregrine acknowledged this applause by lowering his head and staring at his half-eaten strawberry souffle for nearly a minute. Then—just when everybody was beginning to get restless—he snapped his head up again and announced, "I have heard on the ship's wireless that Scullion, belonging to Mr. G. Hardy, won the Ascot Stakes, by lengths from Keror. I think we should all be tremendously pleased. For what reason... well, I think each of us can make his own mind up. Or her own mind up. Or its, in the case of a horse.