But he was again brought very sharply face to face with this, and the ground was altered, when the Professor, preparing to leave, said out of the blue:
"I would be extremely grateful also if you would not mention this—ah—matter to Mr. Wenstrom."
This was, in the circumstances, such an extraordinary request that later, when the Professor had gone, it was the thing the Captain remembered most vividly, of the whole interview. Reduced to its essentials, in the light of what he knew and suspected, it could only mean that what the Professor regretted above all was to have been involved in failure.
Sitting alone in his cabin, debating what to do next, the Captain's suspicions returned in full flood. His hunch had been right. The Professor had been stealing; he was part of a gang; and they were all involved, all five of them. What they would do next was a matter of guesswork; but whatever it was, he had to be ready for it.
2
Kathy was not at all sure how she came to be leaning over the rail of the boat-deck, side by side with Tillotson, towards midnight forty-eight hours later. It was simply that he was that sort of man; when he wanted to, he made things happen, he fashioned events to his own will. He was like Carl. ... In his case, it had seemed a most natural sort of progress; they had met while ashore, had a drink at the Mount Nelson Hotel, made a vague date for later on, and kept it. Clearly he had planned it that way; but the planning had not shown at any point, the manoeuvres had not been perceptible. The two of them were there, according to schedule—his schedule. That was all.
It was a wonderful night. Their berth in the inner harbour gave them a view, across pitch-black water, of the glowing aura of the city; and beyond it, straggling up the hillside, the yellow pin-points which were street lamps, and lonely houses, and then the vast inky looming of Table Mountain. Their side of the ship, away from the quay, was completely silent; voices came to them, but they were far away, like echoes off the mortal stage; only the night, and the pale quarter-moon, and the hot smell of Africa, were real.
Real also was the man beside her; she could feel his presence, the force of his personality, the coiled spring of will and determination which set him apart from many other men. He drew evenly on his cigar; its recurrent red glow was like a signal flare, marking the nearness of an unusual hazard. He was silent, he was thinking— but what was he thinking? This was an extraordinary, even fantastic situation for a man of his quality. Was he thinking of that? Or had he passed that self-regarding stage?—was he merely wondering how to begin?
She straightened up, and turned away from the water, and then leant back against the rail again, pencil-slim, the line of her body candidly displayed. It was an advance she had to make; this much was due from her. It came as no surprise when he moved suddenly, and took her in his arms, and kissed her fiercely.
He smelt of cigars, and expensive after-shave lotion, and his body, pressed against hers, was as she had imagined—small and tough and thrusting. It meant nothing to her—she had expected that also; he could not communicate sensuality, because there was not an atom of sensuality in him—not for her. But he communicated other things, in disconcerting abundance. Strength, determination, and a burning hunger were among them.
She said: "Oh!" on a neutral note of acceptance, as she always did, and waited.
He had turned back to the rail and was staring down at the water again, as if he had completed one part of a pattern and was taking his time over the next section. Presently he said, quite calmly:
"I knew you would feel like that. . . . But you should have sounded more surprised."
"I wasn't surprised," said Kathy.
"Oh, I know that. . . . But isn't it part of the act?"
If there had been the slightest edge to his voice, the words would have been deeply offensive. But there was none; he might have been making casual conversation; he might have been saying: "Isn't it warm tonight?" Nonplussed, she waited for more; and more came, in a controlled confessional flow like nothing she had ever experienced before.
"I'm not a fool," he said quietly. "You must have realized that, by now." The cigar glowed brightly as he drew on it. "I know what you're doing, I know what your stepfather is doing, I know all about the others, too. I know you've been available, ever since you came on board." He paused; a slow drift of smoke crossed between them, like a gauzy curtain falling and lifting again. "Available isn't exactly the right word, is it? It sounds cheap, and in spite of this racket you're running—" on the word "racket" his voice was briefly contemptuous, "—you are not cheap. I really meant ready, ready for selected customers. Each of you may have fooled a lot of people, but you haven't fooled me. I'm not that sort of material."
It was important to answer this just right. "But now you want to be fooled?"
She saw him nodding, his grey head clear against the darkness on the other side of the rail. "I guess that's about it."
"Why?"
"I have to have it," he answered immediately. "I felt that, when I touched you,before I touched you. You must have felt it in me. I know it's wrong, I know it's silly, I know it's expensive, and maybe dangerous. But there it is. I've had a—what's the common term?—an itch for you, ever since I first saw you. I have to have you. If it's free, wonderful. If it's not free, it's wonderful just the same."
"But why?" she asked again. She was astonished. "You're not like that at all."
"You know nothing."
She shrugged. "O.K."
"Nothing about this. ... I am fifty-eight," he went on, in the same tone of detached narrative, "and you are young and very beautiful. Do you know what it's like to be fifty-eight? No—how could you? Let me tell you that it can be hell, in lots of ways. But it can be the worst hell as regards women. When at last it catches up with you. I've been happily married for years, for thirty years. I have three grandchildren. I haven't thought about other women, except casually, for five years at least. Then I saw you."
He paused. Kathy could not speak; she did not want to. In a way, this was how she had thought it might go, and in another way it was fantastic. He had been a long time coming to the point, but only because there were huge obstacles, of habit, will, and propriety, barring his path. She had guessed some of them, but the essence of the man she had not guessed.
"When I saw you," he went on, in his unchanging, level voice, "I knew straight away I wasn't dead, after all. Sexually dead. Then I got to wondering about how many more women I'd sleep with, before I died, and the answer was none.None—if I didn't do something about it. None—and I just couldn't stand the idea. I used to do a lot of it; why should it be over, for ever? Suddenly, I wanted to go to bed with many more women, before it's too late. But you first."
Before she could really consider what she was saying, she produced a standard reaction. "That's not very flattering."
"Don't be childish," he said, curtly. "You are not childish. . . . You've triggered something—how and why, it doesn't matter. You've started a train of thought that tells me that I cannot be fifty-nine, and then sixty and sixty-five and seventy, and never make love to another girl." His voice changed, taking on a more urgent note; he was speaking from his deep need, but he knew about it—he did not mind, he was not ashamed. With a flash of insight, she understood why he had the capacity to command men, why he had gained his pinnacle of success. It was because he knew himself, completely, from the pinnacle down to the most odious of his desires. "I have to have you," he said again, "because I can't bear the thought that I'll never sleep with someone like you again. Does that make sense?"