"All right, Mr Pollard. But I can't promise miracles."
Harry and Dennis waited for almost five minutes after the door had slammed shut again before they dared to move. Then, without exchanging a single word, they pushed the wooden chest deep into the Marmon's trunk, and quietly relocked it.
"I've fixed it so that it's only held shut by one lever," explained Dennis in a hoarse voice. "All you have to do is push a metal strip into the lock, twist it, and it should spring open straightaway."
"What if it doesn't?"
"Then try again."
And what if it still doesn't?"
"If it still doesn't, you can assume that God is on the side of the rich,and enjoy the rest of your trip as per normal."
"You daft bugger."
They crept across the warehouse as quietly as they could. Dennis peeked through the outside door to make sure that nobody was looking their way, and then they both strolled back to the workshop, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible. They were given a suspicious stare by a man in a droopy moustache and a Derby hat who was obviously keeping his eyes open for pilferage, especially now that the Arcadia had been fitted out with her brass firehose rings, but when they turned in to the workshop instead of making for the main gate he lost interest in them.
"If only he knew," hissed Dennis, inclining his head back towards the security man.
"Nobody's going to search the cars now, are they?" asked Harry.
"Why should they?" said Dennis. "There's nothing in that Marmon's trunk that anybody's going to want until they get across the Atlantic. Relax. All you have to do now is creep down to the hold one night, set your clock, and you're done. Well, when I say you're done..."
"You don't think any of the dockers might break into the car before the Arcadia sails?"
Dennis led Harry back into the workshop, and picked up his leather apron.
"Well, there's always a risk of that. Dockers and shipfitters have always believed in their divine right to supplement their wages with just about anything they can lay their hands on. Do you know we had to replace the copper piping in the first-class staterooms three times in some cases? What the fitters do is bang a nail through a likely-looking pipe, and if no water comes out, they rip it out. Then they walk out of the gate with it stuffed down their trouser legs. Most of the pubs around here take copper pipe instead of cash."
Harry picked up his cap. "I guess that's nothing more than social justice. The capitalist robs the working man, and the working man tries to rob the capitalist in return. I just hope that none of the working men decide to take a look inside of that Marmon, that's all."
"They don't usually tamper with the cars, not as a rule."
Harry said, "You don't know whose car it is, do you? It would be real social justice if it was somebody very respectable, and they got blamed for sabotage."
Dennis smiled. "That's part of the fun of this particular car."
"What do you mean? You mean it really does belong to somebody special?"
"Oh, yes. That was part of the reason I chose it. It belongs to Mr Mark Beeney, the fellow who owns American TransAtlantic. He's the biggest rival that Keys Shipping have got. If there's anybody in the whole world who would like to see the Arcadia sink to the bottom of the ocean, it's him."
Harry looked at Dennis for a while, his mouth slanted in amusement. Then he ruffled Dennis" blond hair, and said, "I have to be going, okay? But I think you're a genius. You know that? I think you're a complete genius."
Past the window, as round-shouldered as before, Wally returned from the Queen Victoria to take charge of his automobiles again. "There he goes," said Dennis with a grin. "I hope he gets his name in the newspapers too."
EIGHT
Dottie tapped on Catriona's bedroom door and said, "Are you ready, miss? Mr. Deacon says you have to leave in a moment. No more than five minutes, he said."
Catriona had been ready for almost half an hour. She had been sitting at her dressing table staring at herself in the mirror and wondering who she was and whether she actually liked herself. She had drunk two large gin-and-bitters since teatime, and smoked three Craven-A cigarettes, and if it hadn't been for the fact that whenever she tilted her head her mirror image tilted her head, too, she would have been quite sure that it was some other girl in the glass altogether.
She had to admit that Edgar had arranged everything spectacularly. Since her return to Formby last week, he had brought a hairdresser around to the house to bob her hair; as well as a milliner with so a cloche hats that her bedroom had looked like a multicoloured mushroom farm; and a dressmaker who had brought her gowns of velvet and silk and crepe-de-chine, gorgeous evening gowns that floated as she walked, short day dresses in vivid Japanese prints, smart touring suits in French brocades, tennis skirts and sun-frocks and bathing costumes with designs by Pablo Picasso. There hadn't been time for Catriona to have her whole new wardrobe made to measure, but after a morning in which she had felt as if she were drowning in voile and rayon and marabout-trimmed velour, she had spent on the Keys Shipping account something approaching 3,200 pounds and she owned a lavish modern wardrobe which was going to take eleven trunks to pack.
Then there had been shoes—handmade pumps and high-heeled slippers in pink and purple and eau-de-Nil—and pocketbooks in everything from lizard to sequins. And jewellery—rhinestones and emeralds, paste and platinum, enamelled peacocks with rubies for eyes, zig-zags of lightning made out of pave-set diamonds.
Her pleasure and vanity, however, were both sharply reduced by her grief at losing her father. He would have adored to have seen her now; even if they would have argued over which dresses were too saucy, and which ear-rings were too ostentatious. It hurt her, too, to think that if her father were still alive, she might not have agreed to come at alclass="underline" and yet there on the list of first-class passengers, in her father's own stubby handwriting, was the name "Miss Catriona Keys" nest to the number of her stateroom. Had it been optimism? Or pride? Or a fatherly knowledge that she would have said yes, after all?
She hoped very much that it hadn't been a premonition that he himself wouldn't be sailing.
It was Monday evening, just past six o'clock. The marmalade-coloured sunlight glistened through the cypress trees in the garden, and somewhere very far away a young dog was yapping. Catriona lit another cigarette and sat with her elbow on the glass top of the dressing-table, her eyes lowered so that her reflection in the mirror wouldn't see what she was thinking.
Her eleven trunks were already aboard, and Edgar had announced to the Press that if they gathered at Liverpool's landing-stage at eight o'clock tonight, they would have their first opportunity to photograph the fashionable young "Queen of the Atlantic'.
It was all so glamorous. Nigel would have called it "ritzy'. But she knew that it meant an end to her freedom, and even an end to herself—at least, as she knew herself now. She had already changed beyond instant recognition. She could have strutted past Nigel in Royal Hospital Road and he wouldn't have known who she was. At least she thought he probably wouldn't. She didn't feel like herself at all.
She went to the open window and stood there smoking, her right elbow couched hi the palm of her left hand, her eyes half-closed, watching the smoke stream out over the window-ledge.
There was another knock. This time it was her mother. She was wearing a black V-necked dress and two strings of pearls, and there a circles under her eyes. Dr Whitby had prescribed her some new sleeping pills, but she still woke up every night at three or four o'clock in the morning and walked around the house with her hair plaited, like Lady Macbeth in search of Cadbury's Cocoa.