"I'm glad we've reached an understanding," said Edgar, and then slowly drained his glass of pink gin to the bottom. He opened his mouth just a line wider so that the cocktail onions could roll in.
The telephone rang. Trimmer picked it up, and said, "Miss Keys" cabin?" Then, "Mr Deacon, sir, it's for you. Mr Fearson."
Still munching onions, Edgar took the telephone and said, "Percy? What's going on?"
Catriona had already gone through to her bedroom and closed the door as Percy Fearson explained about the Drogheda, and Rudyard Philips" arrest. That was why she didn't see him snap his fingers peremptorily at Trimmer for another pink gin, and sit down on the end of the sofa with his face as grey as the North Atlantic in winter.
TWENTY-FIVE
At twenty-one minutes past seven in the morning of Wednesday, June 18th, a number of things were happening simultaneously aboard the Arcadia: Edgar Deacon and Percy Fearson were grimly making their way to Sir Peregrine's quarters, to confront him with their discovery that the Arcadia had run down the Drogheda; the wireless officer was jotting down a message from Dublin that the mangled remains of Mr. Thomas Dennis had been recovered by a shrimp boat from Dublin Bay; Catriona, in a mask of Swiss face creams that cost over $95 the one-ounce jar, at a time when you could buy a refrigerator for $87.50, or a radio for $37.25, was slowly closing her eyes in sleep; Harry Pakenow, scratching himself, was coming out on deck to take some early morning air; and all over the Arcadia the cabin stewards and dining stewards and smoking-room stewards were hurrying to set tables and trays with silver cutlery, fold up clean linen napkins, and set out hundreds and hundreds of plates and coffee cups and jars of marmalade for breakfast.
In the kitchens, the underchef was supervising the frying of hundreds of rashers of prime English bacon; the whisking of scores of eggs; the devilling of huge casseroles of beef-bones; and the wholesale squeezing of oranges and grapefruit and tangerines. Tea was being brewed in six varieties, from Darjeeling to Lapsang-Souchong. There were also three different coffees—Colombian, Kenyan, or a dark-roasted Continental.
Breakfast included cornflakes and Post Toasties for those who wanted cereals; or kedgeree with fresh buttered haddock for those who wanted a taste of the English country house. There were West Country pork sausages, Loch Fyne kippers, and cured hams. For those who had really developed an appetite during the night's festivities, there was the crowning breakfast speciality of roast Norfolk gosling, served with quince jelly and cinnamon toast.
Below the waterline, the ship's laundry was a scalding purgatory of steam and shouting and the churning of electric washing machines, as the mountains of linen that had been soiled at last night's banquet were cleaned and pressed: over 150 tablecloths, more than 1,100 linen napkins, as well as. scores of aprons, chefs hats, shirts, collars, and white jackets.
In the bakery, the day shift, in their tall white confectioners" hats, were already starting on the fancy pastries for the afternoon's tea (the night shift, a more lowly caste, baked the rolls and the loaves). In the cold-rooms, huge carcasses were being swung out on hooks, ready for butchery for this evening's banquet. Electric vacuum-cleaners growled up and down the endless carpeted corridors.
The Arcadia was a small town afloat on the Atlantic Ocean, and as the day began she bustled with all the necessary activities of a small town. Her lifts rose and sank, her cisterns filled and flushed, her pipes flowed with steam-heated water. It had been pointed out that when the Titanic sank, the magnitude of her loss in human and social terms had been equal to the utter disappearance in the space of just three hours of a community the size of Middleport, New York, or Bradford-upon-Avon, in England. The Arcadia was even larger than the Titanic, and apart from her elite human cargo she carried millions of dollars" worth of valuable cargo and precious jewels. The money spent on insurance premiums for the ship and her passengers alone was marginally higher than the annual municipal budget of Plainfield, New Jersey.
Harry Pakenow, in a grey and white work shirt and a cotton jacket, sat on one of the varnished benches on the after poop deck, smoking a cigarette, and thinking with intense steadiness of the moment when he would trigger his bomb.
The enormity of what he was planning to do was becoming increasingly vivid to him now that he had been sailing on the Arcadia for a day, and had already become acquainted with the ship and some of its passengers. When he had bombed Wall Street, it had all been different. He had planned for weeks, but when the moment for the explosion had actually arrived, it had been nothing but a clatter of horse-hooves, a quick jostling through the crowds on the sidewalk of Broad Street, and then a teeth-jolting bang. He had hardly known the locality, and he had known none of the people he had killed. But by the time he came to sink the Arcadia, he would know her as well as he knew Bootle, or Mersey Docks; and he would certainly know Philly and Lydia, if nobody else.
Earlier this morning he had been brought a cup of tea and two digestive biscuits in his cabin by the third-class steward, but he wasn't sure if he felt like any breakfast. The Arcadia was rolling and wallowing much more heavily now, and Harry had already seen four or five passengers emerge from their accommodation with their faces the particular hue of overcooked veal.
A steward went past with a tray which smelled of greasy broth and said, "Anything you want, mate?"
Harry shook his head.
"Stiffening up a bit," the steward said cheerfully, nodding towards the cumulus clouds which were stacking up on the southwestern horizon. "In for a vomity afternoon, I shouldn't be surprised."
"You don't have to sound so cheerful about it," said Harry. He was beginning to wonder if he ought to have smoked this cigarette or not.
The steward caught his balance. "Seasickness," he said, "there's nothing like it. Good for the system. Clears you out like nobody's business. Do you know what they used to do at Bantry Bay in Ireland? They used to offer you a sail around the bay for sixpence, and if you didn't chuck up by the time you came back, they gave you your money back. Guaranteed, it was. Just the thing after too much drink, or a greasy lunch."
"I'm glad you told me that," said Harry.
"Well, that's nothing," said the steward. "I was on the Aurora once in mid-winter, crossing from Boston to Southampton. Rough, I couldn't describe it. We thought we'd have to turn back to America. Everybody was so sick, we had to roll the carpets up. That's the nice thing about a maiden voyage, like this one. The cabins don't smell of sick already."
"Will you please go away," Harry told him, "and take that broth with you?"
"Only making conversation," said the steward cheerfully, and disappeared inside.
It was not only the rolling of the ship that made Harry feel so bad, although he prayed that just for five minutes, just for one minute, she would stop tilting first to one side, hesitating, and then tilting back the other way again. Just long enough to get my equilibrium back. Just long enough for me to remember which is horizontal and which isn't. It was also the butterflies in his stomach that afflicted him: the nervous janglings of anticipation at what he had committed himself to do.
I am going to blow this whole damned ship up, he thought. All this massive pride, all this overblown vanity, all this ill-gotten and grotesquely-flaunted money. It will sink to the bottom of the sea and then we'll see who the bosses are. But, my God, what an act. What a commitment.