PART THREE
"You will thrill to the colourful, pirate-haunted Caribbean, surrender to the fiesta mood at Carnival Time"
As usual with an old man, the Professor rose early; indeed, the pale light creeping through his porthole at 6 a.m. found him already wakeful, already primed for the new day. At his bedside was the spirit-stove, the miniature kettle, and the earthenware tea-pot which accompanied him everywhere; when he had made tea, with slow ceremonial, he sipped it delicately, savouring every moment of this private initiation, the start of another prized twenty-four hours. There was no flavour like Lapsang Soochong, no warmth like its scalding fall upon a tongue furred by alcohol, no comfort to match it, save in the forgotten areas of love and triumph. After the third cup, he lay back on the pillows and dozed peaceably for five minutes; then he rose, and wrapped his thin shanks in a threadbare dressing-gown, and walked through to the bathroom to shave off, for the twenty-thousandth time, the white stubble of seventy years, the last evidence of an ancient virility.
He dressed carefully, as always; he had bought no new clothes for more than a decade, but those that he had, ordered and paid for during some vanished era of prosperity (in England? in Paris? in San Francisco?—only the labels could confirm this aspect of the past, and he never looked at labels) were well-cut, still infinitely durable. As he dressed—the pace was slow, as all things now were slow, but pleasurable and reassuring all the same—he kept returning to the writing table, to read what he had added to his manuscript on the previous night. He had written half of a whole paragraph—sixty-one words! It was another solid pleasure, another pledge that the wiry thread of life persisted, that it was still good. He touched and stroked the very surface of the page as he read it over again.
"We come now," he had written, in his spidery long-hand, "to one of the most iniquitous characters ever to stain the pages of the long, bloodthirsty history of piracy. This was a Frenchman, of noble or at least honourable birth; he was called Simon de Montbars, but by reason of his wickedness he came to be known by the frightful pseudonym of The Exterminator'. Simon de Montbars-"
There the writing petered out, as his energy and interest had failed, at midnight last night, when the whisky finally took its toll. But it was tangible progress none the less, it was part of The Book, it would on page two hundred and thirty-two when it was formally transcribed, in the midst of dressing, his hand returned again and again to the tattered manuscript book, and to the typescript that lay by its side; hope mounted afresh, as it had done on successive dawns stretching far back into the past. At this rate, another year or two— say five, to be on the safe side—would see his task completed, his great work acclaimed as the definitive one. Let them then laugh, when he mounted the rostrum to receive the Nobel Prize from the King of Sweden's own hands! Let them laugh—and then crowd round him to claim, if they could, a bare acquaintance!
He knotted his stringy tie with a firm hand, drew on his blue blazer, pinched the creases in the old, yellowing flannel trousers; then he tilted his beribboned Panama hat at a lively angle and stepped out— jaunty, ageless, and undefeated—to meet the promised day.
It was now half past seven; when he reached it, the boat-deck of the Alcestis gleamed cheerfully in the early sunshine, freshly sluiced down by deck-hands who were now rolling the hoses towards the after-part. As far as the eye could see, the sun sparkled on a calm wide sea, translucent, green—the peerless colour which the Caribbean seemed to have at its command always. They had now advanced twelve days on their voyage, with three of them spent in harbour at Bermuda and Puerto Rico; today they were nearing Antigua, threading their way through the magic island necklace of St. Croix and Anguilla, Barbuda and St. Kitts. The weather after the first day had been very kind, and the mellowing sun a blessed comfort for an old man's bones. Under its benign influence, the whole shipload of people had blossomed anew. Clothes became casual and often bizarre; the traditional drinks of North America—martinis, old-fashioneds, Scotch-on-the-rocks—had given place to rum in all its garish aspects—Bacardi cocktail, planter's punch, frozen daiquiri. It was as if the whole passenger-list were melting into a beachcombing informality. The process had advanced their own affairs considerably.
The Professor began his customary constitutional, a circle at easy speed past the port-side boats, across the back of the bridge, round the funnel, and down the other side towards the after-rail. There were a few people about already, and he gave them each a cheerful greeting; to those who rose early, he was by now a familiar figure. But on all these morning walks, he surrendered as far as he could to the pleasure of speculative thought. There was to be a meeting later that morning with all the "gang" (really, no other word could be used), and at this meeting they would give an accounting of the progress they had made up to date. Later still, alone with Carl, the Professor would present his own report of what he had observed so far—a report not on the other passengers, but on their own personnel. That was his true job within the party, and if it put him in the category of company spy, he was still content. It was an essential job, and he was proud to have been assigned to it.
He had known Carl Wenstrom for many years; known him, admired him, and (the most important aspect of all) trusted him. Carl talked to him as he talked to no one else—unless it were to Kathy, and that was bound to be love-talk, pillow-talk, traditionally inaccurate and vague. It was himself that Carl relied on, to keep track of what was happening, what might go wrong, what major or minor dishonesties might be coming into practice. The Professor had an idea, for instance, that Diane Loring had lied about the extent of her first killing. A thousand dollars was a lot of money, but this sum, as reported, was too pat, the figure too round. No one carried exactly one thousand dollars in his wallet. Since it could not have been less, it was likely to have been more—twelve hundred? fourteen hundred? There was no accurate way of checking, but it was certainly worth a mention, in private.
Rounding the funnel for the fourth time, he came face to face with another early riser whom he felt he must greet personally—Mr. Walham. Mr. Walham was, from their point of view, an unattractive prospect; he was so monumentally mean, so eternally worrisome about money, that it was already a ship-board joke. But he was also monumentally rich, and there were still many days and nights in which to ensure that he went ashore with less money to worry about.
"Hallo, Mr. Walham!" said the Professor cheerily. "Trust you to be up and about early!" (Getting your money's worth, he added privately, but it was not a thought to be voiced save in an entirely complimentary sense.) "Are you looking forward to our visit to Antigua?"
Mr. Walham, as lean and disagreeable as ever, gave the matter some thought, as they stood together in the long shadow of one of the ventilator cowls. Finally he answered:
"God knows. I expect we'll all be gypped again."
"Gypped?" echoed the Professor.
^Yeah—short-changed. Like at San Juan, Puerto Rico."
"What happened there?" asked the Professor, puzzled.
Mr. Walham looked at him as if he were half-witted. "Gee, doesn't anyone around here read the programme? Remember what it said? 10.00 a.m.—Excursion to the casino'. Did we get there? Did we hell! We finished up at the airport, with a free pass to the public concourse! What kind of a deal is that?"
But I understand," said the Professor equably, "that the casino was closed for redecoration. They really can't help that sort of thing, you know."
"Of course they can help it!" said Walham violently. "They say we go to the casino, why don't we go? I tell you, they're trying to shave this trip all the time. A bit off here, a bit off there. Next thing, we won't get to Cape Town, or something. We'll go straight home from Rio, and they'll say they ran out of fuel."