After a minute or two, she came back, and beckoned him inside. "She's feeling much better. Dr. Fields came around about an hour ago and said she's recovered from the worst of the shock. A monster, that man, I can't tell you. But I heard what you did later, and I'm very gratified."
"You heard?" Mark smiled.
Alice made a pushing-down gesture with her hands, miming the way Mark had submerged George Welterman in his own bathtub. "The bath," she said. "Drowning was too good for him, if you ask my opinion."
She led Mark across the sitting room to the bedroom. Catriona was propped up on three frilly pillows, looking pale but relaxed. She wore a pair of pleated georgette pyjamas in pale rose, with Brussels lace panelling over the bust, and tight wrist-length lace sleeves. She had been drinking cocoa and reading a copy of Elite Styles. When Mark came in she smiled and patted the bed to show him that he should sit close to her.
"I don't know what I would have done without you," she said. "I think he would have murdered me."
"How are you feeling?" he asked her, taking her hand with all the directness of a longtime friend.
"I'm tired," she told him. 'I still feel bruised. But I don't think I feel as hysterical as I did before."
"Is Mr Deacon going to press any charges?"
"I don't know," she said. "It's really up to me."
"But Mr. Deacon has suggested you shouldn't make too much of a fuss, in case IMM change their minds about doing a deal with you. Is that it?"
Catriona nodded.
"I thought that might happen," said Mark. "And the trouble is that Mr. Deacon is probably quite right. That's why I took the trouble to pay George Welterman a little visit of my own."
"I know," said Catriona. "Alice told me. From what his valet said, you almost drowned him, and then punched him so hard that he couldn't hear in his left ear for half an hour."
"He deserves worse. But he's a very influential man, as well as a very unscrupulous one."
"I can't even think about him without feeling nauseous," Catriona shivered.
Mark said, "You could get your own back, of course."
"I don't even know whether I want to."
"You could hold out against selling Keys to IMM."
"And sell the Arcadia to you, instead? God, you're as unscrupulous as he is."
"I'm sorry," said Mark. "I didn't mean to sound as if I was exploiting your feelings."
"Well, aren't you? Isn't everybody?"
Mark held her hand between his. "Believe it or not, I care about you. In fact, I care about you very much."
Catriona said nothing. She felt jagged and wretched, like a china-headed doll that was coming apart at the seams.
Mark said, "Whatever Edgar tells you, not all of your fellow stockholders want to sell out to IMM. If you were to vote against a sale to George Welterman, then you'd probably find that you had just about enough backing to prevent it, at least for the time being."
"But Edgar keeps telling me that we have to. If we don't, we'll go bankrupt, and everybody who works for Keys will be thrown out of a job. Believe me, Mark, he showed me a family down by the docks, and the way they have to live, you wouldn't believe it. I couldn't be responsible for making their lives any more poverty-stricken. If I did that, do you think I'd ever be able to go back to my father's grave and lay flowers on it?"
"A flapper with a social conscience," said Mark, gently teasing her.
"A person who happens to care about other people, that's all," Catriona retorted.
"Really?"
Catriona said, "I'm twenty-one, Mark, that's all. I want to behave like twenty-one. I want to enjoy everything that there is to enjoy. But that doesn't mean that I have to be completely callous, does it?"
Mark stood up. "You remember that young chap I sent round to see you? Philip Carter-Helm?"
"Yes. What about him? I thought he was rather stodgy."
"Hm," said Mark, "he's not nearly as stodgy as he first appears. In fact he knows a great deal more about Keys Shipping than I do; and I even suspect that he knows a great deal more about it than you do."
"He used to know my father; or so he says."
"I was talking to him in London," said Mark. "He explained quite carefully how the common stock in Keys Shipping is apportioned. The way it works out at the moment, those stockholders likely to vote in favour of selling out to IMM number fifty-one per cent. Those who are likely to vote against selling out to IMM number twenty-four per cent. That, of course, is without counting in your own twenty-five per cent on either side.
"If you decided to go along with Edgar and the rest of the board, then obviously the vote would be overwhelmingly in favour of the sale to IMM. But if you didn't—well, there are one or two waverers in the yes lobby. Mr. Fearson for one. He doesn't like IMM one little bit; and there's no doubt at all that if they bought up Keys he'd be out of a job. And your Aunt Isabelle is something of an unknown quantity."
"How do you know all this?" asked Catriona.
"I have to confess that I was told most of it by Philip Carter-Helm. He's quite encyclopaedic when it comes to the subject of Keys Shipping. He knows your gross annual turnover, the amount of freight, and the number of passengers you carried, as well as their classes and their destinations; the names of all of your agents abroad; how many ships you own; and where they all are. You name it, he knows it."
"He doesn't make a very good Cupid, though. Too dull."
"Well, I'm sorry about that. I thought you were mad at me for mixing business with pleasure."
"I was."
"And I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you mad. The trouble is, we don't have very much time. When the Arcadia arrives in New York, Edgar's got to have some kind of a financial deal wrapped up, at least tentatively; because otherwise Keys may never be able to get her out of harbour again, and you can imagine what that will do for your reputation. I don't know how many return bookings you have already, but I should imagine you're almost sold out. Can you imagine the consequences of having to turn all those people away?"
Catriona closed her eyes for a long moment, and then opened them again and looked at Mark with tiredness and resignation.
"I know what the problem is," said Mark. "The problem is that you don't think you can trust me. What's going through your head right at this particular instant is: Mark Beeney wants the Arcadia, and he'll do anything and say anything to get it. Whereas you, of course, are worried about the chances of the family business surviving on its own, and all those unfortunate poverty-stricken people who work for Keys back in Liverpool."
Catriona was about to say something, but Mark raised his hand. "'Hear me out, that's all. International Mercantile Marine took over the Blue Funnel Line three years ago. Maybe you don't remember the Blue Funnel Line. It wasn't much: a little family business about a sixth of the size of Keys, mainly carrying livestock and peanuts between Galveston and Pensacola and New York. A few business passengers, not too many. But IMM dismantled that shipping line in six months. It sold off all the ships it didn't want for breaking; or to shipping companies in Japan and China; and it sacked all the staff and sold off all the warehouses. By the end of a year, you wouldn't have known that Blue Funnel Line had ever existed."
"But Edgar said that IMM had promised to keep Keys together," Catriona protested. She didn't really feel like arguing, but Mark seemed to be so insistent on having it all out, on explaining his motives, and excusing his lack of sensitivity.