"There aren't going to be any arguments," said Harmer coldly, and then, seeing the young man's crestfallen face, he added, on a more friendly note: "But I don't mind saying a bit more about my point of view. It boils down to my personal responsibility as Master. Suppose you find one of your patients has signs of T.B., and for some reason you feel you want to hush it up. Because I know nothing about it, I allow that patient to land somewhere, and so I break half a dozen port health regulations, and maybe endanger a whole community. Who gets sued? The company. Who does the company take it out of? Me. . . . Suppose you have a patient who develops some sort of violent delusion, and before I can have him locked up—because I haven't heard anything about it—he chops somebody up with an axe? Who takes the blame for that? The Master. Because he ought to know what goes on in his ship." Harmer drew a deep breath. "I know it's a hard rule, Tom, and I know exactly why it worries you. But whatever—whatever—is wrong with anyone on board, I have to know about it, so that I can take the necessary steps to protect the company, and incidentally myself."
"But surely there are some cases where it can't matter."
The Captain shook his head. "I'll be the judge of that," he said, with a return of his forceful manner. "As far as you're concerned, you're an employee of the company, and you'll obey the company rules. And my orders. When somebody is ill on board, I have to be told what's wrong with him. There aren't any exceptions, in any circumstances."
That seemed to be that. . . . Tom Hillingdon had never subsequently argued about it, and he had never held back any information in his daily reports. He did not do so now, when he saw Captain Harmer at five o'clock the same evening.
"But how serious is this?" asked Harmer, when he had digested the news.
"Not very," said Hillingdon. "It's really just a local inflammation. Over-enthusiasm, I would say. Or an infection somebody picked up in the Caribbean." He grinned. "Anyway, now it hurts, like the girl said. But it clears up in a day or two, under proper treatment."
"If she lays off?"
"If she lays off."
"You told her to do that?"
"Yes, sir."
The Captain nodded. "Very well. We'll leave it like that, for the moment." He caught Tom Hillingdon's eye. "In my young days," he said rather primly, "people had more sense of decency. Here's a girl who can't be more than twenty-four or -five, apparently sleeping with everyone on board who happens to ask for it. It really is disgraceful!"
"It's the way a lot of people behave nowadays, I'm afraid."
"These girls seem to think of nothing but enjoying themselves."
"It might conceivably be profitable as well."
The Captain, brought up short, eyed him again. "Oh. ... I hadn't thought of that. Did she say anything to indicate—" he waved his hand.
"No, sir. But some of the people she's been with aren't exactly young and handsome." He paused, rather awkwardly, and then added: "It's just an idea."
"It's a bloody good idea," said the Captain unexpectedly. "When you go down, ask the Purser to see me."
The Captain usually sent for Foxy Cutler when he wanted to talk something out; there was no man on board more likely to come up with a fresh slant on any problem. He was not to be disappointed on this occasion.
"Well, of course there's been the usual gossip," said Cutler, when the Captain brought him up to date on the doctor's report. "You know how it is—everyone takes it for granted that X is sleeping with Y, even if all they do is to have a drink together before lunch. But I must say, I didn't know the Loring girl had been getting around so fast."
"Well, we know now," said Captain Harmer grimly. "Do you think she's actually making a racket out of it—taking their money— call-girl stuff?"
"Could be," answered Cutler. "Perhaps with a bit of blackmail on the side."
"Blackmail?"
"Let's call it pressure. If the wife's actually on board, it wouldn't be too difficult for the girl to make the man pay up very handsomely."
He mused, tapping his teeth with an empty pipe. Then he went off on another tack. "Now I remember, there was even some talk about her and the awful child."
The Captain stared at him, genuinely amazed. "Barry Greenfield? You mean that little boy?"
"The same. There was a rumour that Barkway had seen or heard something. I couldn't confirm it. He won't talk."
"I'll make him talk, if necessary. . . . But how could that possibly be true? The kid's only fifteen! He couldn't—well, think of the age difference."
"No more of an age difference than young Scapelli, and some of those old girls he's been trotting around with." Foxy Cutler's eyes narrowed. "You know, there's the germ of an idea there."
"What idea?"
"I'm just thinking as I go along. The Loring girl is sleeping around with a lot of older men—maybe for money. Scapelli is doing the same sort of thing, almost certainly for money; it could hardly be anything else. It begins to add up to a funny sort of family. And that's not all." He paused.
"What else?"
"The father, or uncle, or whatever he is. Wenstrom. He's been cleaning up, too, at poker. And I understand their stewardess is very hot on the idea that he and the other girl—our little Kathy— aren't father and stepdaughter at all, but something much cosier."
"Any evidence of that?"
Cutler shook his head. "No. Just the way they sometimes behave to each other."
The Captain looked out of his cabin window, at the broad sweep of sunshine on the water, and the far horizon twenty miles away. He was not shocked by what the Purser had just said; years of sea-going had demonstrated, beyond any doubt, that people often told lies about their relationships, with not much harm done. Father-and-daughter, uncle-and-niece, the more traditional executive-and-secretary—these were conventional couples who often turned out to be something quite different. In this area, a hotel-clerk's easy morality was the only appropriate reaction; as long as people were discreet, it did not really matter what their closed doors hid from sight.
But Cutler had started him on another train of thought. He had raised a suspicion that the family might not be a family at all, but something like a gang, operating on the principle of plunder. That was much more serious; it came under the heading of discipline, whereas the other was merely a matter of social conformity. If it were really true—if they were operating like that—then something would have to be done about it. His sixth sense of the irregular was telling him that this was going to be necessary.
"Have you talked to Barkway about this?" he asked presently.
"I've given him a chance to talk to me," answered Cutler. "But there's nothing doing there, at the moment. He's been bloody-minded this whole trip, and he won't help. He just says he hasn't noticed anything."
"You'd better have another talk with him, Foxy. Or get Brotherhood to do it."
"I'll do that."
"And I'll do a bit of thinking myself." His eyes came back from the horizon. "Well, the girl's out of action for a bit, anyway. And Scapelli? What's Scapelli doing, these days?"
"Mrs. van Dooren."
Louis Scapelli had got himself cornered again, though in reversed circumstances of enslavement. It was like a bad film, or a nightmare; fleeing from the yoke of Mrs. Consolini, who only wanted him as a messenger-boy, he was now ensnared by Mrs. van Dooren, whose desires, it seemed, were exclusively animal. In her service, all he had to do was to pour the drinks, and make love to her. But her capacity for both was insatiable.
The start of the affair was auspicious—too auspicious; he should have been put on guard by her controlled handling, but he thought he could make things go his own way. He had come up to her one evening in the ballroom, when she was sitting by herself, imbibing the first of many after-dinner slugs of rye and water. Stopping by her table, he said: