The Callipygic had been a very sizeable theft, however: even bigger than Monty had expected, and it was still remembered in marine Insurance circles with considerable wrath. If it ever got out that Monty has been responsible for it, he would probably end up in Pentonville. No— not probably. Certainly. Ten years and no remission, and nothing to look forward to on his release but poverty and doss houses.
That was why—absurd as Mr. Fribourg's scheme appeared to be—Monty was still industriously unscrewing toilet seats.
Maurice said in his blandest voice, "I don't know whether I ought to report this or not, but I've just seen a boat."
Monty raised his head. "A boat? I beg your pardon? A boat?"
"That's right," said Maurice, trying to sound like an enthusiastic but hopelessly naive amateur. "About five minutes ago, off the left side. At least, it looked like a boat."
"What kind of a boat? A fishing boat? Something like that?"
"Well, no. Not really. More of a lifeboat."
"A lifeboat? Was there anyone in it?"
"I don't know," shrugged Maurice. "I really couldn't see. It's pretty wild out there, after all. It was just a lifeboat, with a couple of oars sticking out of it."
Monty stood up and scrabbled through the papers on his desk to find his telephone. He cranked the dial, and then said, "Bridge? Is that you, Mr. Peel?" To Maurice, he said, "Don't go away."
"I won't," smiled Maurice.
"Mr. Peel?" said Monty. "It's Mr. Willowby. I have a passenger here who says he saw a lifeboat adrift off the port bow. About five minutes ago, he says. That's right. No, he couldn't see; but he says there were oars visible. That's it. Yes. I'll bring him up to the bridge."
The chances of locating a single drifting lifeboat in a sea that was rising all around them now like the black slate roofs of Victorian churches were almost nil. But the code of the seaways was quite clear: survivors were to be sought for, no matter how remote the chances of finding them might be. And that was why Sir Peregrine testily ordered the Arcadia to be turned off to port in a wide circular sweep that'll would take her back on her course by five or six nautical miles. The lookouts aloft were told to keep an extra-sharp watch; and the promenade decks were crowded with passengers in raincoats and yellow oilskins, all glad of a little ocean drama to help them forget their seasickness.
Maurice Peace, of course, didn't bother to look. Instead, he went to the first-class cocktail bar and began gathering in more bets for the Wilkes-Kretchmer eating contest. He had already assured the outcome of the ship's pool for today, and won himself $500 from Mark Beeney, and so he was feeling quite pleased with himself—pleased enough to order a mimosa for his elevenses, and to put it on Mark Beeney's tab.
Beeney, he was sure, would be good for quite a few thousand dollars more.
THIRTY
At one o'clock, after an hour-and-a-half of futile wallowing in the wild seas, Ralph Peel ordered the Arcadia to resume her course. The wind had now risen to gale force, and the ship was rolling more than twenty degrees from one side to the other. Only the bravest and the sickest of the passengers remained outside, while the wind screamed in the wires, and thousands of gallons of green water thundered onto the foredeck. The noise was devastating, like a hundred Alpine avalanches all at once, accompanied by the shrieking and keening of a cathedral full of professional mourners.
Despite the storm, however, luncheon was being laid out as usual. In the first class dining-lounge, there was supposed to be a special lunch in honour of the Arcadia's designers and engineers, although most of the honoured guests were still huddled in their cabins, their faces buried in their pillows, praying that their designs and their engineering would stand up to a Force Ten gale. The first-class stewards hurried up and down the sloping carpets of the dining-lounge with the surefbotedness of goats, expertly fitting the edges of the tables with mahogany "fiddles'—those raised flaps which were supposed to prevent a passenger's meal from sliding into his lap in rough weather.
Catriona had gone back to her stateroom to change for luncheon. The great grey waves she could see through her porthole were now twenty or thirty feet high, which was well on the way to what the commodore of the Cunard Line had described as "a precipitous sea'. Waves that were eight to twelve feet high were only "rough'. Alice made her lie down for a while, with a cold flannel on her forehead, while Trimmer brought her a glass of iced champagne.
"I never thought a huge ship like this would roll about so much," she said. She was beginning to feel distinctly queasy.
"A few hextra tons don't make no difference to han hocean," said Trimmer.
"No," said Catriona. "Apparently they don't."
By one o'clock, however, she felt well enough to put on a royal-blue Poiret day dress with a floppy white embroidered collar, and accompany Edgar into luncheon. Edgar was noticeably quiet, and the unusual pallor of his cheeks made his dark chin seem even darker, as if he hadn't shaved this morning.
To assemble in that glittering dining lounge, and to sit at tables for lunch while the entire room leaned twenty-five degrees one way and then twenty-five degrees the other, was for most of the Arcadia's first-class passengers an experience they would remember all their lives. It was quite useless trying to keep one's cutlery to oneself. Every time the ship rolled, all the knives and forks and spoons would shower noisily down to one end of the table, and then shower back again when she rolled the other way. Wineglasses were held in special compartments to prevent them from tipping over; but all the same they could only be a third rilled. All the chairs and tables, of course, were securely anchored to the floor.
Mark Beeney appeared a few minutes before the soup was served, with Marcia Conroy on his arm. He caught Catriona's eye for a moment before he sat down, and gave her a quick, questioning smile. She tried to smile back, but her mouth wouldn't respond in time. When she turned away, she saw Edgar looking at her with undisguised thoughtfulness.
"Are you feeling sick?" she asked him.
"Perhaps," he replied, rather cryptically.
Next to her, Douglas Fairbanks said, "It's all in the mind. You should just pretend that you're sitting down to lunch at your favourite restaurant. Forget that the table's tilting from side to side. Tilt with it." Mary Pickford retorted, "You always say that every thing's in the mind. Well, maybe it is. But the trouble with all this rolling about is that it's in the stomach as well."
A bread roll, half-broken, tumbled down the table between them, bounced off the fiddle, and dropped onto the floor. Catriona looked up the table to see where it had come from, and saw Baroness Zawisza with her butter knife raised, her empty hand still cupped in the shape of her escaped bap.
"Well played, Baroness," remarked Douglas Fairbanks, winking at Catriona.