Carl, aware that they could not be overheard, took up the subject without hesitation. "Working?"
Diane shook her head. "Nothing to report." Her face was young and mature at the same time, infinitely knowing, corrupt in its competence. "But it was a near thing. It still is."
Now it was Carl's turn to glance sideways at Edgar, but Edgar was still busy. He drew on his cigar, watching the smoke curl upwards towards the ceiling. "What happened?" he asked. "I saw you leave the dance-floor. His name is Bancroft, by the way."
Diane nodded. "Yeah. But call me Jerry, won't you, please? He's in hardware." She smiled, mirthless and amused in the same squalid moment of recollection. "That was some of the hardest ware I've ever met."
"And?" prompted Carl.
She tossed her head carelessly. "Oh, we wrestled. I thought it was too early. He didn't. We've got a date later on, but I can always junk it."
"Later tonight?"
"Sure. Midnight, in my cabin. Knock three times, then once, then wait. How corny can you get?"
"What does he expect?"
Diane grimaced, inelegantly. "Are you kidding? He's hot. . . . Does he get it?"
Carl considered the question carefully. Of course it was really too soon for them to start "operating", in any serious sense; they ought to find out a great deal more about Bancroft—how tough he was, how vulnerable, how rich. But in one area, enough was known already; the omens were good; the bait was tempting. Bancroft was travelling with his wife; he was with another couple, the Gersons, who were friends from the same suburb. There were indications of social pressure there; an inexorable need to stay in line. . . . Presently Carl answered:
"Yes. He gets it. The way we planned."
"How much do I roll him for?"
"This time, whatever he's got in his wallet. We'll take a chance on that. He's just come on board. He might be loaded."
"O.K." Diane was astonishingly matter-of-fact; Carl hoped that her nerve would always be as good. "I'll suspend credit for the duration."
A sudden voice behind Carl said: "Zucco. Good evening."
Carl turned swiftly, to find a mournful man in a white dinner-jacket climbing on to the next stool. Warily he answered: "Good evening to you."
"Saw you folks enjoying yourselves," said Mr. Zucco. "Thought I'd join in and spoil it. How about a drink on that?"
"Well—" began Carl.
"Oh, come on—it's going to be a long voyage." He beckoned to Edgar, and then looked towards Diane. "Perhaps the little lady will join us."
"The little lady is going straight to bed, like a good girl," said Diane, and promptly climbed down off her stool. "Good night, folks."
"Hope I didn't break anything up, there," said Mr. Zucco uncertainly, when she had gone.
"The little lady," said Carl, with a certain austere emphasis, "happens to be my niece."
"Togetherness!" exclaimed Mr. Zucco, unabashed. "Wouldn't you know it!" He raised his glass, and suddenly everything was involved, from Lincoln to motherhood. "Togetherness! If there's any toast in America I'd rather drink to than that, I've never heard it!"
"Togetherness," answered Carl, with modest irony, his thoughts already ranging far afield.
Mr. Zucco shook his head, regaining his status as a mourner. "If you could only get it on film. . . . Tell me, has the little lady ever taken a test?"
After midnight, a deep peace reigned on board the Alcestis; the bars were shut, the elevators stilled, the lights switched out in the public rooms. Though the noise of the fans continued, and the pulse of the engines, and the Master-at-Arms' rounds, yet the ship seemed deserted; silently making her passage southwards, she was a ship without people, self-propelled, supernaturally navigated. The occasional figures—in the corridors, on the stairways—were like ghosts inhabiting a vessel which wandered the seas of her own accord.
Yet some few were still wakeful. Up on the bridge under the enormous stars, the Second Officer, who had the middle watch, stared ceaselessly ahead; occasionally he glanced at the dimmed compass, or made a note in the deck-log, or raised his binoculars to examine a light on the horizon. Behind him, the apprentice who shared the watch stood sentinel over the radar-scan, searching it for the warning of distant ships, calling out the bearings of others near by. In the green phosphorescence of the screen, his face was studious, and intent, and very young. Between the two officers, the stolid quartermaster at the wheel let the spokes slide off his fingers, and gripped them to check the yaw as the ship swung off, submitting to the sea, and stared unwinkingly at the compass card, his only horizon, his only charge. High above their heads, the mast-head look-out in the crow's nest completed the pattern of vigilance.
Four decks below, at the end of a shadowy deserted corridor, a single figure also kept his vigil. Surrounded by forty-four pairs of shoes, male and female, the B-deck shoe-steward worked methodically, at a pace long ordained by custom and his own dejection, to spin the task out till four bells sounded—cocoa time. He was an old man; he had waited on captains and rich folk in his day, and then on tourist passengers; later, the failing years had seen him tend the deck-chairs, and then the lifts, and then the ashtrays; now he was cleaning shoes, in the twilight of all his worlds. The shaded light overhead fell on a bald pate, on sparse grey hairs, on a blue-veined tremulous hand which, polishing and polishing, often paused for a long space, as if the hand itself were dreaming. Without pride or hope he sat enthroned in his grudging corner of limbo, an old man attending, like some ancient acolyte, the last humble ritual of the night.
Tearful, terrified, beseeching, Mr. Bancroft—a ridiculous figure without his trousers—whimpered his prayers for release.
"My wife will kill me!" His voice was hoarse, thick with fright.
"You must be fooling—you asked me to come in! You know you did!"
Stay where you are!" commanded Diane threateningly. Twice as naked as he, she was still in full control. "You forced your way in here, you bastard, and you're going to pay for it."
"Just give me back my pants," he begged. "Then we'll talk."
"You try to take them, and I'll scream! . . . You want my uncle to hear?—you want him to come in and find you here, bare-arsed? He'll beat the hell out of you—and then he'll ring the bell and call the Captain."
"Keep your voice down, for Christ's sake! What is it you want?"
Diane, superbly unconcerned in her nakedness, felt for the wallet she knew was there. "This," she said finally. "All of it."
"It's two thousand dollars," wailed Bancroft, his pudgy face desperate, and started forward. Diane opened her mouth. "All right, all right!" he called out, petrified, trembling. "Take it—take the whole lot. Just let me out of here! Jesus God, what a lousy shakedown!"
She peeled off the notes, and tossed the empty wallet, and then the trousers, at his feet. He drew them over his plump thighs with frantic speed, tripping over, nearly falling. His face was still glistening with fear.
In the heavy-breathing silence: "Don't you want your money's worth?" she asked crudely.
"Why, you ——! I'll see you in hell before I touch you again!"
She shrugged; it was an arresting movement. "Well, don't complain I short-changed you. If I say I'll deliver, I deliver."
He paused then, and looked at her. Ten minutes before, his flabby body had been at the peak of desire; it still pricked him powerfully, even now, even after this vile treachery. "You'll scream again," he said uncertainly.
"Try and make me." She threw the money into a drawer, locked it, and then turned again. Her naked form, poised before him, began a practised undulation, like a fish swimming in warm sluggish water. "Just try and make me," she said, in sudden raw invitation, "for two thousand bucks."