‘That brother and sister pair you’ve been hobnobbing with.’
‘Frieda and Marcus?’
‘That may be the names they gave you.’
‘What are you saying?’ Fortescue was utterly exasperated.
‘The woman, her name’s Frieda. The bloke, he’s called Charles and he’s as English as you are.’
‘They’re Swiss!’
‘So they says.’
‘Billy.’ Fortescue could feel his patience draining away. ‘I’ve really had enough drama for one day.’
‘They are trying to steal something from you.’
‘Look, just stop!’ Fortescue’s temper had finally snapped.
‘But…’
‘I said stop!’ He realized he was yelling and looked along the deck left then right. A man was walking a dog about fifty feet away. Fortescue’s voice had been swept about by the wind and the man was oblivious to them.
He looked down at Billy and the boy could see the fury in Fortescue’s eyes.
‘It’s true,’ Billy persisted.
Something snapped in Fortescue. He could simply not accept that the woman he had made love to last night was deceiving him. The boy must be lying deliberately.
He raised his hand to strike the boy and at that moment a door opened behind him a few yards along the deck. He reacted quickly, glanced round, lowered his hand just in time. An elderly couple, both wrapped up in overcoats, slipped past him. The man was wearing an old-fashioned top hat which he lifted a fraction from his head as he passed.
Fortescue offered a brief ‘Good morning’ and turned back to where Billy O’Donnell had stood and caught a flash of jacket as the boy slipped out of sight.
39
Fortescue was in mental turmoil; the events of the past few days had suddenly caught up with him. He had not realized what a creature of habit he was. Out of the environment he was so used to — the laboratory he shared with Rutherford, his apartment, his small circle of friends and the remnants of his family in Surrey — he felt utterly lost.
Who was he to believe? How could Frieda and Marcus be anything other than what they appeared to be? Should he believe the word of Billy? Until now he’d had nothing but admiration for the boy and his talent, but in all honesty should he really have trusted a kid who skulked around the ship, admitted stealing as a pastime and whose uncle was a thug?
But then again, he was here on this ship for a reason, a deadly serious reason. He should never forget that. He was not John Wickins, he was not a barrister, nor was he a schoolteacher with a rich father in America. He was Dr Egbert Fortescue, a researcher at Manchester University, but he was also Egbert Fortescue the co-discoverer of a priceless secret.
The previous evening someone had snooped around his cabin. He was sure of that. There could be no doubt that if the secret was known to enemies of England then his life would be in danger and forces would have been mobilized to find and steal his work. That much had been made clear to him during the briefing session immediately before leaving Manchester. And now, of course, there was even more at stake, for he had moved onward with the endeavours he and Rutherford had started. He had reached far beyond accepted theory.
Pulling himself up from his armchair, Fortescue walked over to the bed, crouched and put the combination into the safe. Dragging out the metal boxes, he removed his briefcase containing his notes.
Placing the papers on the desk, he added to them the work he had been doing during the past three days at sea that dealt with his new revolutionary discoveries. He pulled up a chair, removed his jacket, folded back his sleeves and began to write.
It took him almost an hour to make a fair copy of what amounted to twenty-seven pages of notes, then he spent a further thirty minutes double-checking every expression, every plus and minus sign and every set of parentheses.
Fortescue stood up, collected together the copy of the entire set and placed this in the inside pocket of his jacket. Then, sifting through the original collection of papers, he carefully separated out random pages to create two neat piles on the desk. Both of these contained pages of equations and numeric descriptions, but each only told a part of the story. The substance of each interwove, but he had parted them, a mathematical expression here, a line of notation there. He then placed the right-hand pile in his briefcase, slipped that into its metal box and returned it to the safe beside the isotope box before spinning the combination lock. He gathered up the second heap of notes, found a couple of elastic bands and a large envelope in the desk drawer. Securing the papers into a small bundle, he placed them in the envelope, strode to the door and out into the passage.
It was the obvious and logical way any sensible person would protect their work, he mused… Make a copy to keep on one’s person, separate out the original into two random collections and hide these in different places.
It took no more than a couple of minutes to reach the main reception. The purser’s office stood close to the Grand Staircase. It was a small room with a hatch opening onto the reception area. The window was unmanned. Fortescue rang the bell and a few moments later a young man in a white uniform appeared. He was out of breath, his face ruddy.
‘Apologies, sir,’ he gasped. ‘Had to deliver a parcel to one of the gentlemen on A-Deck.’
Fortescue put the envelope on the sill. ‘I would like this package placed in the hold.’
‘Certainly sir.’ The young man looked at it then checked a logbook opened on the counter. ‘Okey dokey… I can put this item…’He tapped it. ‘… into Security Box… Let me see… 19A… AS, in cargo hold number 4. How does that suit?’
Fortescue shrugged. ‘I don’t mind, just so long as it is safe.’
‘Couldn’t be safer, sir. Now, if ever you need to retrieve the item, just drop by. If I’m not ’ere, tell them Security Box…’
‘Yes… 19AS, cargo hold 4. Very well, thank you.’Fortescue placed a sixpence on the counter and walked away.
Back in his cabin, Fortescue called for the steward, and while he waited he wrote a brief message on a piece of ship’s stationery: ‘Please join me for luncheon. Yours, John.’ He then slipped the note into an envelope. When the man arrived, Fortescue handed it to him.
Twenty minutes later the reply came back. I thought you would never ask!
Frieda looked enchanting. She was wearing a pale-blue dress, her hair up in braids. He saw her seated at a table before she spotted him and he remembered her face in the dim light of her cabin very early that morning.