The Professor, now fully alerted, sought to pass the matter off. "Well, well. . . . Perhaps Honi soit qui mal y pense would be an appropriate motto in this case."
"How's that again?"
"I don't think we should jump to conclusions."
"The trouble with you, Professor," said Mrs. Kincaid, "is that you're too darned sweet. Personally,I'm jumping to conclusions, and it's not such a hell of a big jump, either." She stretched, raising her thin pointed nose to the virgin air. "Well, I must see what that husband of mine is getting up to. "Bye now!"
She left him, and the Professor, now deep in more urgent thought, continued his walk. He had been brought to the alert because the recurrent nocturnal visitor to Mrs. Stewart-Bates was almost certainly Louis Scapelli; if his visits were already public property, it could be dangerous. Our boy, thought the Professor, as near to a sneer as he had ever been, getting his name into the Alcestis gossip columns. . . . It was something else which he must raise at the meeting later; it might mean that Louis would have to change his tactics, whatever those tactics were. So far, he had not been given the go-ahead by Carl; if his movements were being watched, and if (say) Mrs. Stewart-Bates became suddenly distraught, or publicly embarrassed, then wo-and-two could be put together with uncomfortable precision y those in authority. The whole strength of their operations, as Carl had long ago pointed out, lay in their not causing the smallest ripple of public interest. One woman—or one man, for that matter— who betrayed, even inadvertently, the fact that they had been under pressure, could put Carl Wenstrom out of business in a single hour.
He had reached this stage in uneasy thought, and reached also the after-rail of the boat-deck, when there was another interruption, this time the most intrusive of all. Above the noise of the hoses sluicing down the decks, there came the sound of an argument; the broad Liverpool voice of one of the sailors suddenly called out: "Get out of the road, you little booger!" in a tone of final exasperation; then there was a sound of running feet, and Master Barry Greenfield, seemingly propelled from behind, shot into view and landed squarely in the Professor's midriff. He was dishevelled, and very wet; the Professor was glad of this, but it failed to soothe his anger at the onslaught.
"Look where you're going, boy!" he said crustily. "You nearly knocked me down!"
Barry Greenfield shook himself, then darted a furious glance behind him. "He kicked me!" he said angrily. "The lousy son of a bitch kicked me!"
"I am sure you deserved it," said the Professor tartly. Young Master Greenfield, during the past twelve days, had attained a position approximating to total loathing throughout the ship. "I have not the slightest doubt that you were making yourself insufferable, as usual."
"I'll have that guy fired," said Barry, with another dark glance. "Who the hell does he think he is? Just one of the stinking crew! I'll get him thrown off the boat."
The culprit, a broad middle-aged man with a hose in his hand, suddenly appeared from behind one of the boats. He pointed a stubby finger at Barry.
"You try that lark again," he called out, with refreshing lack of deference, "and I'll haul you up before the Captain, and he'll kick your bloody arse off, same as me." He then withdrew.
"But what did you do?" asked the Professor, intrigued in spite of a natural distaste. The entire crew of the Alcestis normally behaved so angelically, putting up with every kind of passenger misbehaviour as an inescapable part of their duty, that the outburst could only have been provoked by an unmistakable act of barbarism.
"Nothing," said Barry sulkily.
"Don't lie to me, boy!"
Barry Greenfield, recovering his self-assurance, looked at the Professor.
'•What's with you, old-timer?" he asked derisively. "You got a candid camera or something?"
"You must have done something," answered the Professor, weakening already. This was the younger generation, he supposed; across such a yawning chasm, he could never compete, nor even enter a token appearance. It must be true, what one read from time to time in the newspapers. . . . "People don't get angry for no reason at all."
"That stupid jerk!" said Barry malevolently. "I'll fix his wagon for him. . . ." He looked again at the Professor, his surly eyes turning lewd in the space of a single instant. Under the warming sun, it came as a disgusting shock, like indecent exposure in surroundings of the utmost innocence. "How are those two broads of yours?"
"I beg your pardon?" said the Professor.
"You know—those girls. Especially the one with the—" his small claws sketched twin balloons of obscene size. "Boy, what an operator!"
"I don't know what you mean," said the Professor, and in truth he scarcely did know.
"O.K., Daddy-oh! Play it stupid if that's the way you like it. But you'd better watch out, or you'll be raided. I've seen a few things going on. We're not all dopey, don't you kid yourself!"
"You are talking nonsense," said the Professor firmly.
Barry Greenfield shrugged; it was difficult to tell, at that moment, if he were fifteen or fifty-five. "O.K., O.K. . . . You know what? There's an old guy on board, he's even older than you are."
"Indeed?"
']Yeah. But he's dying."
"I am going down to breakfast," said the Professor dismissively.
Barry Greenfield spread his hands, in a terrible caricature of Jewish well-wishing. "Eat it in good health," he said, and walked away whistling.
2
It was mid-morning, an hour of great variety. For some it meant bouillon and gossip on the promenade deck, for others the first cold beer of the day; there were already some bridge-players imprisoned in their private world, there was ping-pong, and shuffleboard, and deck-tennis, all played with plodding devotion. There were people bathing in the lime-green open-air pool in front of the bridge; there were people reading thrillers, and writing letters to be posted at Antigua, and speculating about their ticket on the ship's daily run, and trying to cure their hangovers. Some were thinking about money, some about politics, some about their children left at home, some about the homes themselves. There were a few—a very few—thinking about love. There were dining-room stewards eating before they went on duty, and stewardesses making up beds and collecting soiled towels. There was a trio of officers on the bridge taking expert care of their southward progress.
There was, in Carl Wenstrom's stateroom on A deck, an incipient row.
It was probably the Professor's fault, thought Carl, sitting at the head of the table and surveying his quarrelsome brood. The old man was obviously dying for a drink; the way he passed his hand across his lower jaw every few moments was a dead give-away, to anyone who had watched the 10 a.m. tortures of representative citizens outside a Sixth Avenue bar. But he was ashamed to ask for what he craved; instead, he had channelled his misery into comment which, though it fell short of nagging, had a fussy air of criticism. He was unsure of this, he could scarcely recommend that—the pinpricks were only occasional, but they were enough to inject a measurable poison.
Carl himself was irritable; he had been up till four o'clock that morning, in a poker game which, though profitable, had taken toll of his energy. Everyone else in the room seemed wonderfully fresh; even Diane, who, he knew, had stayed up at an advanced sort of party at least as late as he. Perhaps it was this which was the irritation—the knowledge that the time was past when he could keep the hours of the young without paying the price of the old. There was no aspect of age more mortifying than this.