'I, er, no, thank you," Harry told him. Then, "I've lost my way, actually. Can you direct me to the nearest lift?"
There was only one thing to be done. To go straight down to the automobile hold and set off the dynamite himself, by hand.
While Harry was making up his mind to detonate his bomb by himself, Dick Charles was hurrying along the corridor to Lady Diana FitzPerry's stateroom, with a spray of irises and gladioli, and a box of Charbonnel et Walker's marzipan gingembres with paper-lace ruffles all over it, and a paper swan on top.
Dick was in a state of high excitement. Last night had been outrageous, ferocious, hilarious, and at times even frightening. But it had persuaded him beyond any doubt that a lady like Lady Diana was exactly the woman he needed. She had the breeding of a prize borzoi bitch, the wealth of a minor sultana, the etiquette of a lady-in-waiting, the language of a sailor, and the vaginal grip (and here had to borrow the phrase that Ralph Peel used so often) of a drowning woman clinging to an HB pencil.
Dick knocked hurriedly at Lady Diana's door. Then he straightened his necktie, wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand, polished up his shoes against the side of his trousers, cleared his throat, and waited.
There was no reply.
He knocked again; and this time as he knocked the door eased open a little way. Somebody had closed the door, but had obviously forgotten that the lock had been held back on the latch. Dick hesitated, him then pushed the door open and stepped into Lady Diana's living room. Flowers in one hand, candy box in the other, and that little sprig of hair that stuck up on the crown of his head plastered down with water. He said, "Hullo?" and then he listened.
He heard panting. It certainly sounded like panting. Then he heard tiny cries of pleasure. "Oh, my darling. Oh, my darling. Oh, deeper, deeper! Oh, my absolute darling!"
He looked down at his flowers and his candy and suddenly he he felt completely ridiculous. How could he have imagined that a lady like Diana FitzPerry, a lady who had been pleasured by some of the most celebrated and eminent men in England, a lady who had been taught to blow champagne corks out of her bottom by the Lord Chancellor himself—how could he ever have imagined that a lady like that could have seen him as anything more than a momentary plaything?
He wasn't going to rush into her bedroom and surprise her in flagrante delicto. He was too shy and too sensitive for that. Instead, he quietly laid his flowers and his candy on the sofa, and then went across to the bureau and wrote in pencil on a pad of the Arcadia notepaper,"My dearest Diana, It appears that I have been foolish. Nonetheless you may be sure that I will conduct myself for the remainder of the voyage with extreme decorum. Regards, Dick."
Next door, in the bedroom, he heard Lady Diana squealing in passion, and her feet bicycling madly against the sheets. He waited for a moment longer, but then he quietly left and closed the door behind him.
It was only when he was halfway along the corridor, next to a magnificent gold fire-extinguisher with the coat-of-arms of Keys Shipping on it, that he let out a loud and awkward sob.
Harry, meanwhile, had reached the orlop deck and was half walking, half running towards the door of the automobile hold. He opened it up with the key which he had lifted from Monty Willowby's board, and then quickly crossed the deck between the lines of cars until he reached Mark Beeney's Marmon. The screwdriver which he had wedged into the lock was still protruding from it, and so Harry gripped hold of it and tried to pull it out.
He strained and sweated, clenching his teeth, but he had driven the screwdriver into the lock too far. He tried waggling it from side to side, but after two or three waggles, the blade of the screwdriver snapped off, and the lock was irreparably jammed.
He stood by the car, panting loudly. There was nothing he could do. If he couldn't open the trunk, he couldn't detonate the dynamite. He began to realise with an extraordinary mixture of frustration and relief that he had actually failed. He hadn't been able to sink the Arcadia after all. And even though she would arrive in New York harbour as the floating embodiment of everything he detested in modern society, at least Lucille Foster would be quite safe, and so would Philly and Lydia, and so would all of those third-class passengers who had sung and danced in the saloon with him, and those first-class passengers who had treated him with friendship and generosity when they might have treated him as if he were tmmething swept up from steerage.
He tried prizing open the Marmon's trunk just once more, but his heart wasn't in it, and he gave up. There would have to be another way, another time. Perhaps when the Arcadia was in dry dock in Liverpool. He knew plenty of the lads in the maintenance yards. Any one of them would help him to slip into the dock with six or seven hundred pounds of dynamite.
The thought of returning to Liverpool quite cheered him. He had old friends in New York, old political comrades, and old schoolfriends. But it had been years since he had seen them, and who knew how much they might have changed. Besides, he was beginning, quite unexpectedly, to miss Janice. The thought that he would still be alive to sail back and see her was suddenly very appealing. He would knock on the door and surprise her, and then what a reunion they would have. Fish and chips in the Echo, two or three bottles of Newcastle Brown, and the bedsprings wouldn't stop complaining all afternoon.
Harry walked across the deck of the automobile hold, his footsteps echoing against the steel sides of the ship. He had almost reached the door when he became aware that Derek Holdsworth and two seamen were waiting for him, at ease, their hands neatly clasped a their backs.
"I'm afraid you're in serious trouble, old man," said Derek Holdsworth.
"Trouble? What kind of trouble?" Harry asked him. He glanced towards one of the blue-jumpered seamen for support, but the seaman did nothing except to give him a pursed-up little grin.
"This part of the ship is quite out of bounds to passengers. You're trespassing. Apart from that, you were seen by myself and these two men to be attempting to break into one of the automobiles here. I'm afraid to say that we're going to have to confine you to your cabin until we reach New York, and then report what you've been doing to the police."
"The New York police?" asked Harry. "But this is a British ship. The New York Police don't have any jurisdiction on board a British ship."
"You're an American citizen, aren't you? Or so Mr. Willowby tells me, having examined your passport. An illegal act committed on board ship by an American citizen is subject to US law."
"I wasn't doing anything. I was only looking at the cars."
"How did you get in here?"
"The door was open. I just walked in."
Derek Holdsworth said, almost casually, "Johnson, Pettigrew, will you search him for me, please?"
Harry took a step back. "If I was a first-class passenger, you wouldn't talk to me that way."
"Well, perhaps not," smiled Derek Holdsworth. "But you're not a first-class passenger, are you? You're not even a second-class passenger. And so I think I shall address you as I damn well please."
"Listen," said Harry, "all I was doing was looking at the cars."
"You'd like me to think that was all you were doing?"
"Go see for yourself," said Harry. "I haven't touched anything. Not a thing."
One of the seamen was examining the Marmon. At last, his suspicion was aroused by the scratches on the paintwork around the lock of the trunk where Harry had been trying to force it open, and he called out, "Here, Mr. Holdsworth. I believe I've found it."