"He knows too much." Carl had been marshalling his thoughts; the sum was not a pretty one, and his voice showed it. "To begin with, he's found out that Diane has been sleeping around. You know how? A lot of her chums had to go to the doctor. . . ." Meeting Kathy's shocked expression, his own face hardened cruelly. "Wonderful, isn't it? He doesn't know she's been making money out of it, but he suspects it, and he hinted as much. Hinted!" He jerked his head back with intense irritation. "What he actually said was: 'The age of the men involved indicates that love didn't have much to do with it.' That's a kind of damned English way of putting it!"
Kathy, interested in spite of herself, said: "There's still nothing illegal in that. If one or two men choose to give her presents—"
"The word 'illegal' was not used. The word used was 'unbecoming'." He mimicked Captain Harmer's pronunciation with savage precision. "The word 'unbecoming' was also used about the Professor. I knew he'd been getting conspicuously drunk during the past few weeks, but I didn't know that he'd been wandering into other people's cabins. Did you?" And as Kathy shook her head: "The damned old fool—Mrs. Youngdahl came down one night and found him in her room, drunk as an owl! The story got to the Captain, of course, and he had him on the carpet. And I'm the last one to hear about it!"
"What did he do about the Professor?"
"Gave him a blast—threatened to cut the tap off if he didn't behave himself in future." Carl frowned grimly. "I've dealt with the Professor myself. But the harm's done. Between him and Diane—"
"But it's still not so terrible, is it?" interrupted Kathy. "What can the Captain do about it?"
"He can watch us. Everybody can watch us. Don't you see—" Carl's voice suddenly cracked out, "—we've attracted attention! In future, whatever we do, however innocent, we'll probably have half a dozen people trailing us. The Captain even said something about the poker games!"
"But there's nothing wrong there."
"There's been a hell of a lot of money coming my way, and it all ties in with the rest. . . . Then we had a long bit about Louis, and his 'unusual choice of companions'—" the angry mimicry came into play once more. "In the Captain's mind, it all fitted into a pattern. And the pattern's something like the truth. He made that clear." Carl passed a weary hand over his face, and crossed to the side-table for a drink. From there he spoke, his back to the room: "I could have done with your help today, Kathy. Where were you?"
"I went for a drive. I told you."
"All day? With that little sailor boy?"
"Yes."
"How was it?"
Carl's tone carried considerable innuendo, but she passed it by. "We had a lot of fun."
"I wouldn't doubt it. But I don't suppose you picked up much loose change, did you?"
After a moment, Kathy said: "Carl, I'm terribly tired. Let's not have this. . . . You haven't told me the important part yet. About Louis leaving, or something. What was that?"
Carl turned round to face her. "You prefer to change the subject? Very well. . . . Louis called me up this afternoon. He was high— high as a kite. He was also in some place called Bloemfontein, instead of being in Johannesburg or the Game Reserve, where he's meant to be. And he wasn't there by himself, either. He's picked off a real beauty this time."
"Who?"
"Bernice Beddington."
"Oh no!" Kathy reacted in astonishment, and then, in spite of her tiredness, burst out laughing. "Bernice? He must be out of his head."
"He's out of his head, all right," answered Carl roughly, "but for a different reason. Of course she's ugly and stupid, but that's not the point. She's young, and her father and mother are here on board. If he's started something with her, he's going to land us all in a load of trouble."
"Has he started something?"
"Yes. He says so, anyway." Carl heard again, in his inner ear, the crackling hum of the long-distance wires, and Louis's voice, cocky and blurred at the same time, saying with foolish affectation: "We drove down here to get away from it all!" And a little later, after Carl had begun to sort out the picture: "Sure I've laid her! And she's not going to come unlaid, no matter how much people squark!"
"He was drunk as a goat, the God-damned little bastard!" Carl so rarely swore that it was a shock to hear the words. "Or he wouldn't have called me up in the first place. I don't know whether he will come back, or when. I told him to break it up, to go right back to Johannesburg, and then meet the ship at Durban, like we planned. Or there'd be hell to pay. But I don't know whether it took. He sounded—he sounded 'way out!"
"But what can he do, that he hasn't done before?"
"He can tie us all up in knots, maybe get involved with the police. That's what he can do! Oh, I know the girl's over-age, but there's such a thing as abduction, undue influence, all that kind of trouble. And it'll start the Captain up again, in high gear. The only good thing is, no one knows anything about this yet. Louis told them up there he was going to take a drive, instead of following the normal schedule. We've got to cover this up somehow, if I have to go up and fetch him back myself! We just can't afford—"
There was a loud knock at the door, which sprang open immediately. It was a woman—Mrs. Beddington—in such an obvious state of excitement that Carl's heart sank at the sight. She was a small woman, of most ordinary appearance, but at this moment she radiated personality on a very large scale. She had a piece of paper in her hand, and, as she advanced into the cabin, she waved it with furious energy.
"What's this mean?" she cried, explosively. "Just tell me that! What's it mean?"
The piece of paper became a telegram, and, guessing with some confidence what it meant, Carl searched for a non-committal answer. He was still searching when Steward Barkway appeared in the open doorway, and said, with unmistakable relish:
"Captain's compliments, sir, and would you please see him immediately."
5
It would never have happened, Louis realized, if they had not been sitting side by side in the plane going up to Johannesburg. The last thing that Louis wanted to tangle with was another woman, however pliable; as a fugitive from Mrs. van Dooren, he was a fugitive from the entire sex, and he was really taking in the Johannesburg tour to give himself an essential breathing-space. But chance put him beside Bernice Beddington, that forlorn young female who was safe wherever she went, for the space of three and a half hours; and the rest—as he himself phrased it, in a night-club flight of fancy, three days later—the rest was history.
Their plane took off early in the morning; at such a demanding hour, he had been quite happy to plunk himself down beside Bernice Beddington, who was making the trip alone (her father had a troublesome sinus infection), say "Hallo, there!" on the customary note of insincerity, buckle on his seat-belt, and doze off to sleep. This was one who wouldn't cause him any grief. ... He slept through the breakfast service, and for an hour afterwards; when he woke up, they were flying over flat, featureless country as dull as the girl who sat beside him, staring at a fashion magazine as if it were a Sanskrit papyrus. More out of habit than anything else, he turned slightly towards her, and said:
"Boy, I sure needed that sleep!"
She started as if he had stuck a pin into her. So few people in her entire world ever volunteered a conversational opening that she had no machinery to deal with it. Blushing vividly, she said the first thing that came into her head:
"Did you know you were snoring?"
He grinned and stretched. "Was I? I was deep down. . . . Hope it didn't worry you."
She found this even more embarrassing. "Oh, I didn't mind a bit. . . . You must be terribly tired, I know. . . ." She ventured a timid side-glance, as if to be sure that he were real. "You go to so many parties, don't you?"