"Mr Peel," said Sir Peregrine. "You may now summon those fireboats. Warn the men that we are seeking assistance from outside; I don't want anyone hosed overboard. And you may break out those half-bottles of champagne for the passengers."
"Sir?"
"Mr. Willowby knows where they are, Mr Peel. Each one of them has a Blue Riband tied around the neck."
"Very fortuitous, sir," said Ralph Peel.
"And, Mr. Peel?"
"Yes, sir."
"Please instruct the stewards that the third toast, after the King and the Arcadia—the third toast is to be drunk to the memory of Mr. Rudyard Philips."
There was a pause. Then Ralph Peel said, "Yes, sir."
SEVENTY
It took two hours to extinguish the fire. Then, smoke-stained but still magnificent, the Arcadia was manoeuvred towards the Keys Shipping pier. The ship's orchestra were out on deck playing "Land of Hope and Glory", and the passengers crowded the decks singing and cheering. A BBC microphone was lowered over the stern to make a recording of her propellers for listeners in England.
Mark and Catriona stood on the promenade deck, arm in arm, gazing at New York's towers—the Flatiron Building, the Times Building, the City Investing Company Building, the Singer Building, and the breathtaking Woolworth Building. Grey spires of wealth and romance, rising like castles in the summer mist. Catriona saw them through a blur of happy tears.
George Welterman was one of the first to disembark. Furious, speechless with disappointment and humiliation, be stood on the dock with a grey summer coat thrown over his shoulders, impatiently tapping his cane while they unloaded Mark Beeney's Marmon for him. He was still vengefully determined to drive it up Third Avenue.
Two people had come to George Welterman's cabin while he was packing the last of his possessions. One had been Maurice Peace, to collect a banker's draft for $25,000, as his "consultation fee" for keeping the real mileage of the Arcadia on the second day of her sailing a secret. The other was Monty Willowby, to thank George for stowing his priceless relics on the automobile's rear seat (the trunk had been inexplicably jammed) and to promise him that he would be rewarded in Heaven, if not in Weehawken.
"Well," said Mark as George Welterman drove away from the dock with a squeal of tyres. "There goes my dream motor."
"Do you really mind?" asked Catriona.
Mark thought about it, and then said, "Yes. I think I do."
They both laughed.
An ambulance had already parked on the dock to take Philip off to the East Side Clinic, and a long black Austro-Daimler arrived a few minutes afterwards. "That's ours," said Mark. "I bought it by wireless as soon as I lost the Marmon."
"It's very staid," said Catriona sniffily.
"That's okay, Mrs. Beeney-to-be. We can always trade it in for a Pierce-Arrow Runabout."
After the Austro-Daimler came a procession of Cadillacs and Rolls-Royces and Hispano-Suizas, in every conceivable hue, from sable to iris. The rich had arrived in New York, and were being swept away in the manner to which they were accustomed.
Just then, a pageboy came up, and said, "Miss Keys?"
"Yes?"
"Flowers, Miss Keys. From Mr Welterman."
They were orchids in cellophane. A huge spray of twenty or thirty of them, purple and white. The note which was tied to them read, "These are a particularly rare flower known as Enid Cattleya, a cross of Mossiae and Warscewiczii. As rare, and as perverse, as you. With all my adoration, George."
"Well, what do you think about that?" asked Mark, reading the card.
Catriona lowered her eyes. "I don't know," she said. "I think I would rather have had a wreath."
George Welterman drove away from the pier clumsily and impatiently, scraping the Marmon's side against a metal railing. He wasn't used to the car's gear-shift, and he drove it erratically and badly until he reached 25th Street, when he began to get the hang of the clutch and drive pore smoothly. He reached the intersection of Third Avenue and 28th Street at twelve noon precisely, and sat waiting for a red light, drumming his fingers on the car's steering-wheel and wishing he was already changed and bathed and back in the office. He glanced towards the back seat, where Monty Willowby had left an untidy collection of brown-paper parcels.
That was the last voluntary movement of his life. For the sear in the timing device in Harry Pakenow's bomb, jolted back into position by the offloading of the Marmon from the Arcadia's automobile hold, triggered the mechanism which exploded the dynamite. Right in the middle of Third Avenue, the Marmon blew up in a huge cloud of brown smoke, and a shower of metal, mudguards, silver, glass, and splinters of lavatory seat. It stood blazing for over ten minutes before the fire department arrived, with the charred body of George Welterman still gripping the steering wheel, his face fixed in a cindered grin. The noise was heard for twenty blocks, and windows were broken in the Haslett Building, two blocks away.
Two poignant moments finish the story of the Arcadia's maiden voyage. The first was when Harry Pakenow, waving goodbye to Philly, ran across the pier with his suitcase, his cap pulled down over his eyes, looking for the Halls' Rolls-Royce. He caught sight of it just as it was pulling away from the customs shed. Lucille Foster was sitting in the back with Mrs. Hall and another woman in furs. She was wearing a cream-coloured cloche hat, and she looked suddenly very poised and mature. Harry cantered up to the car as it drove sedately along by the waterfront, and waved, and whistled. When nobody took any notice of him, he banged on the window.
"Lucille! It's me! Harry!"
The Rolls-Royce drew to a halt, with Harry running along beside it. The window was wound down, and Mrs. Hall looked out. Her face was white with powder.
"The job," said Harry, smiling expectantly. "You didn't forget, did you?"
"The job?"
"Lucille said—" began Harry; but then he paused, because he could see from the expression on Lucille's face that it had all been a fantasy, a way of being nice to him, a childish favour without any substance.
"It's okay," he said, stepping away from the car. "Wrong car, I guess. Sorry."
Mrs. Hall gave him an uncomprehending twitch that was the nearest she could manage to a smile; and tapped on the partition with her diamond rings for the driver to pull away. But Lucille suddenly sat up in her seat and cried, "Harry!"
Harry hesitated, and then stepped back up to the side of the car again. "Lucille," he said, gently.
There were tears in her eyes. "I'm sorry, Harry."
"You don't have to be. What was it? Nothing. Just one of those shipboard romances."
"Please forgive me," she said. "I didn't mean to hurt you."
He shook his head. "Don't think anything of it. I'm thinking of catching the next boat home, in any case. I've got somebody waiting for me, too."
Then there was the moment when Catriona, still carrying the orchids which she had been sent by George Welterman, met Edgar Deacon on the promenade deck, overlooking the Hudson.
"Mr. Deacon?"
He turned. Then he looked away again and said, "Miss Keys?"
She stood beside him; and for four or five minutes they said nothing, listening to the tooting of tugs, the distant warbling of jazz music, and the sound of New York's traffic.
She said, "I didn't mean to hurt you, you know."
He gave a quick grimace. "You didn't. Not really."
"What will you do now?"
"Oh, well, I don't know. With your permission, perhaps I'll stay here in America for a while. Out of jurisdiction's way, if you know what I mean. Then, I don't know. Perhaps I'll go back to India. Friend of mine plants tea; always said that he'd like me to give him a hand."