"You heard what 1 said, Scapelli," she answered brusquely. "Do 1 have to tell you twice?"
He remained staring at her in silence. He had had enough, certainly, but now that the moment of crisis was at hand, he was not quite determined enough to make the break himself. Let her be the executioner, he thought, and himself the injured party. That way, he would be left with a grudge, which was the way he always preferred it.
"Scapelli—" she began again.
"Don't call me Scapelli!" he snapped. "My name's Louis. Use it."
"Scapelli," she repeated, as if he had not spoken—and instinctively he knew who would be the next character to appear. Her husband —the man always at hand to settle any arguments. "My husband always said that—"
"To hell with your husband!" he answered. "I'm sick of hearing about him. I don't believe he ever did anything worth a damn. He's dead anyway. Maybe he's better off, at that."
She looked at him levelly. "Now we're getting at the truth. It sounds as though you want out."
"1 want out of this sort of thing." He swept his hand around the cabin, which in its untidy luxury seemed to reflect all the things about her he most disliked. "Doing the chores for you—I've had enough of it!"
But she did not intend to allow so quick a break; the dismissal was to be staged in her own good time. "Who's next on your list, then?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know darn well what I mean. You'll be losing five hundred dollars a week. You must have thought up another prospect, before you started acting so tough. Who's it going to be?" She smiled unpleasantly. "Maybe it's a pity Grace Stewart-Bates got away. People like her don't grow on trees."
It was not a pity, of course; it was the best thing that could have happened. Mrs. Stewart-Bates had left the ship at Rio, alleging ill-health; but before she had cut her losses, there had been, for Louis, a very uncomfortable period during which she appeared to be haunting him. He had run into her at every corner, every party, every shore excursion; there were times when the entire passenger-list seemed to have been reduced to a single pair of sad, accusing eyes, staring at himself and Belle Consolini as if the two of them were jointly responsible for all the misery in the world.
He had not felt threatened by it—he knew she would never dare confess what had happened—but it had been discomforting all the same. It was the more discomforting because the same thing did not seem to be happening to Diane, who had just as much on her conscience, if not more. She appeared to feel no embarrassment over the fact that she had to mingle with yesterday's victims; indeed, neither Bancroft nor Gerson, for example, showed any signs of resentment, and she could be seen having drinks with them, separately or together, at any hour of the day. Maybe they were coming back for more. . . . But he was not coming back for more; not from Mrs. Stewart-Bates, not from this tough old bitch who treated him like dirt. Money was money, but, as Carl had pointed out, there were better ways of earning it.
"Don't you bother about that," he answered her roughly. "I'll get by, without any help from you."
But she still wanted to slow it down, to enjoy the victory on her own terms.
"What'll you bet? I'll give you any odds you'll be back here in a week, looking for a free hand-out. I know your kind. My husband always said—"
"Oh Christ, not him again!" He faced her squarely at last. "Look, let's pack this thing up. You don't want me, I don't want you. I'm sick of running errands, and you don't need me in any other way."
"You're no good in any other way," she interrupted.
"O.K., O.K." He was prepared to let it go. "Let's not tangle over who's alive and who's dead."
"Are you saying I'm dead?" She was suddenly furious; her eyes were snapping fire as she looked at him. "By God, I've picked up better men than you off Skid Row!"
"I wouldn't doubt it."
She began to swear, at that. It was no ordinary cursing; she dredged the gutter for her language, and flung it at him in great heaps of abuse, handfuls at a time. Something had caught her on the raw. Perhaps it was a sexual thing, perhaps it was the fact that the dismissal was turning out to be mutual; but whatever the trigger, the weapon spat fire. He took the tongue-lashing without reprisal, without really listening attentively; if it made her happy, it was no skin off his nose. When she paused for breath, he said: "Good for you," as if praising a child's best efforts, and turned to leave the cabin.
Opening the door, he caught her glance inadvertently, and found there the most baleful expression he had ever encountered. As he went down the corridor towards his own cabin, he suddenly realized that in the last fifteen minutes he had made an implacable enemy.
Mr. Kincaid, who had the professional politician's trick of being able to button-hole anyone in two easy moves, cornered Carl after dinner in the smoking-room. In evening dress, Kincaid looked at his most senatorial; across the ruffled cream shirt a broad black ribbon wandered, anchored to his eye-glasses which themselves set off the bushy white mane of hair. But behind the eye-glasses, his blue eyes were singularly alert, and his manner was very far from vague.
"What's the matter with the old guy?" he asked Carl, without preamble.
"Old guy?" Carl, contentedly nursing a small brandy which would last him out until he joined the poker game, an hour later, looked at Kincaid with only moderate interest. Even if he had wished to be interrupted, he would not have chosen this corrupt old weasel as a companion.
"You know—the Professor."
From the first, everyone on board had always called him the Professor; Carl was probably the only one who knew and remembered his proper name.
"What about the Professor?"
Kincaid said: "Let me top up that drink for you," snapped his fingers at the attendant steward, and said: "Two brandies, son." Then he turned back to Carl. "He was talking a hell of a lot of crap to me before dinner, that's all. Half the time I couldn't make sense out of it."
Carl smiled, not encouragingly. "Vague reminiscence is the privilege of age."
"Maybe, maybe. Only this wasn't reminiscing."
"What was it, then?"
"God knows. More like the stuff you hear on some egg-head lecture-circuit. I tell you, he was 'way out! 'Course, no one minds him being fried all the time—let's face it, everyone on board gets plastered, most days—but he certainly talks queer when he lets go."
"How do you mean, queer?"
"Oh, I don't mean queer." Kincaid grinned, with wolfish humour. "Guess he's too old for that sort of stuff." He signed the bar-chit which the steward offered him, and took a noisy gulp at his brandy.
"He was talking in parables, he said. I'll say he was! I can't give it you word for word. You know the way he spouts it when he gets going."
"Yes," said Carl. For some reason he had become alerted. "But what was the general sense?"
"General nonsense, I'd call it." Kincaid rubbed the side of his chin with a faint, unpleasant rasping noise. "Well, I'll tell you. He said this ship was a—what the hell's that fool word—micro-something."
"Microcosm?"
"That's the one. Never have occasion to use it myself. A microcosm of the world today, that's how he put it. It's financed by the Americans, but it's really owned and run by the British. He said as long as we stay on board and do as we're taught, we're safe; we're looked after and protected by the sailors—that's the British. But as soon as we get ashore by ourselves, the natives—that's the rest of the world—take us for suckers, rob us right and left. Get it?"
"Oh yes," answered Carl easily. "But I don't really think—"
Kincaid held up his hand. "Oh, I don't mind that kind of talk," he said. "You know what the British are like—always bitching about how we've edged them out of the sunshine. I've never met an Englishman yet who wasn't in mourning for the good old days before we took over world leadership. That's standard operating procedure. Take that stuffed-shirt Beckwith bastard, for example. To hear him tell it, we stole Buckingham Palace when the Queen wasn't looking!"