And the Deep Blue Sea (8 page)

Lind came in then, and they sat down. Egerton was on Goddard’s left, next to Lind at the end of the table. This was the side of the table next to the bulkhead, so they were facing toward the doorway. Just as Captain Steen was about to say grace, Krasicki appeared in the door. He stopped abruptly, staring at Egerton. Goddard, watching him, was aware of something faintly disturbing about it. Krasicki gave a start then, and came on in. Karen spoke to him kindly.

“I think you’ve met everyone except Mr. Egerton. This is Mr. Krasicki.”

Egerton stood up and held out his hand. “Delighted, Mr. Krasicki. And happy to see you’re feeling better.”

Krasicki mumbled something and shook hands. They sat down, Krasicki directly across from Goddard. Captain Steen said grace, and the steward began to take their orders. Egerton turned to Goddard, and said, “I understand you’re in the cinema.”

“I used to be,” Goddard said.

“He’s gathering material for his next opus,” Lind said. “
Across the Pacific on a Hot-Water Bottle
.”

There was a laugh, and Captain Steen inquired, “Was your boat insured?”

“No,” Goddard said. “The theory was that if it went to the bottom, the odds were that I would too. Sound, I thought, but Mrs. Brooke loused it up.”

“Women,” Egerton agreed, “are incapable of understanding dedication to a scientific principle.”

“Exactly,” Lind said. “You have to feel sorry for them. They never experience the deep personal satisfaction of being dead and knowing they were right.”

“Karen,” Mrs. Lennox remarked. “I think we’re outnumbered. Should we counterattack or retreat?”

“Maybe Mr. Krasicki is on our side,” Karen replied. She turned and smiled at the Pole, trying to put him at ease in this exchange that was obviously too much for his English. But the latter was paying no attention. He was staring across the table again at Walter Egerton with almost manic intensity.

“You have—” He stopped, appearing to grope for words. “You are many years in Argentina?”

“Why, yes, about twenty,” Egerton replied.

“Twenty? Twenty?” Krasicki repeated, frowning. He looked at Lind.

“
Zwanzig
,” Lind translated. He added, for the others, “Mr. Krasicki is actually quite a linguist. He speaks Polish, Russian, German, and Portuguese, but German is the only one I know.”

“
Zwanzig. Aha
,” Krasicki muttered, still never taking his eyes from the Englishman’s face. “You have—how do you say—become unactive—” He gave up then and spoke to Lind in rapid German. Lind nodded and turned to Egerton.

“He says you must have retired quite young.”

Even Egerton’s natural poise was a little shaken by that unwavering scrutiny, but he managed a smile. “Thank you, Mr. Krasicki; that’s quite flattering. But I was invalided out. Spot of bad luck in Normandy.”

Lind translated this for the Pole. The dining room steward was putting their orders in front of them, but no one began eating. There was another exchange in German between Krasicki and Lind. Lind shook his head as he spoke, and Goddard’s impression was that the Pole had said something he was reluctant to translate. Krasicki turned to Egerton again and tried English.

“The—aye? The—eye?”

The two women turned their attention to their plates, embarrassed by this bad taste, but Goddard continued to watch, aware of some undercurrent here that was more serious than poor manners.

“Ah—yes,” Egerton said stiffly. “That, among other things.”

It was Karen who smoothed it over. She smiled at Goddard, and asked, “You do play bridge, I hope?”

“A little mama-papa bridge,” Goddard replied. “Nothing spectacular. And only after a careful search for weapons.”

The awkwardness passed for the moment, and conversation became general. Goddard continued to study Krasicki between replies to Mrs. Lennox’ chatter on his right. The Pole appeared to withdraw inside himself, eating silently as he bent over his plate, oblivious to the others except to look up now and then at Egerton. Then in a lull he began a rapid exchange in German with Lind. They both smiled. Krasicki turned then and included Egerton in the conversation, still in German. To Goddard’s surprise, Egerton replied in the same language. The Pole stiffened, and his eyes glittered accusingly.

“Ah! You speak German. I thought you were English.”

“Yes, of course I speak it,” Egerton said easily. “I attended Heidelberg for two years. Before Sandhurst, that is.”

The others had fallen silent. Krasicki’s eyes continued to burn into Egerton. “But you did not say this.”

Egerton shrugged, obviously annoyed but still urbane. “Well, really, old boy, one doesn’t normally go about boasting of one’s accomplishments. Bit of a bore to one and all, what?”

Krasicki made no reply, but Goddard noted the nervous twitching at the corner of his mouth. Karen came to the rescue again. “I think what we should do is find out why Mr. Goddard doesn’t speak Hollywood.”

The others laughed, and Madeleine Lennox exclaimed, “Yes. What about this Mrs. Lennox bit? I thought you were supposed to say Madeleine baby.”

Krasicki bent over his plate again, but his lips were moving silently as though he were talking to himself. Then abruptly he stood up, threw down his napkin, and stalked out.

There was a moment of embarrassed silence, and then Karen said, “The poor thing; he’s been very ill.”

Lind nodded. “And I think he had a pretty rough time of it during the war. He has horrible nightmares.”

“Pity,” Egerton agreed. “A frightful shame—all that wreckage.”

The others began to question Goddard about filmmaking, and the incident was forgotten. The dining room steward went out to get coffee. Goddard was relating a comic foul-up of some kind on a sound stage and everybody was laughing when in the edge of his peripheral vision he saw Krasicki reappear in the doorway. He thought the Pole had come back to excuse himself or perhaps to finish his dinner, and by the time he’d got a good look at the man’s face and the foaming madness in his eyes it was too late to do anything but witness it.

Krasicki screamed something that sounded like
mire! You go mire!,
the tendons standing out on his throat, and the mindless, primordial sound of it lifted the hair on Goddard’s neck. He came on, raving in some language Goddard had never heard, while spittle ran out of the corner of his mouth, and raised the automatic in his right hand and shot Egerton through the chest at a distance of six feet.

Both women screamed with the crash of the gun, and Egerton shook under the impact of the slug. Goddard hit Madeleine Lennox with a shoulder, driving her to the deck on the other side of her chair, while Captain Steen snatched at Karen and threw her down. Lind was out of his chair then, lunging around the corner of the table for the Pole, who went on spraying spittle across it with the demonic force of his outcry which rode up over the continuous screaming of the women and then was punctuated by the crash of the gun as he shot again. Egerton jerked spasmodically against the back of his chair and started to slump.

Lind had Krasicki’s arm then, swinging it up and grabbing for the gun, while Captain Steen and Goddard were trying to get around the other end of the table to reach them. Krasicki was still pulling the trigger. The third shot smashed the overhead light fixture, showering glass, and the fourth, as Lind spun him around, shattered the long mirror on the bulkhead across the room.

Lind tore the gun from his grasp, bumped him under the jaw with a forearm, and shoved. Krasicki slammed backward and collapsed on deck like a bundle of rags. The screams cut off then, and there was an instant of unearthly silence, broken only by the tinkle of glass as another shard of the mirror fell to the deck and broke. The dining room steward came running in, followed by Barset, who braked to a stop, and whispered, “Sweet, suffering mother of Christ!”

Goddard turned and looked at Egerton. A trickle of blood ran out of the corner of his mouth, and under the hand clutching at his chest the white shirt was stained with a growing circle of red. His left hand clawed at the tablecloth as he tried to hold himself erect, and when he toppled and fell over sideways he dragged it with him to the accompaniment of breaking china and a marimba tinkling of silverware.

L
IND FLIPPED THE SAFETY ON
the gun and tossed it to Captain Steen. Already lunging around the end of the table toward Egerton, he snapped at Barset and the dining room steward, “Tie him up and sit on him. Better get help; he’s crazy.”

“I’ll send for the bos’n,” Steen said.

Goddard jumped to help Lind. They got Egerton out from behind the table and picked him up by shoulders and legs. Madeleine Lennox and Karen ran out of the door, sobbing as they averted their faces from the limp and bloodstained figure of the Englishman. Lind and Goddard hurried down the passageway with him and put him on the bunk in his cabin.

“The first-aid kit on the settee in my cabin,” Lind said. “And bring the sterilizer, the whole thing.”

“Right.” Goddard ran up to the next deck. Men were coming out of the officers’ messroom. “What is it?” they asked. “What happened?”

“Krasicki went berserk,” Goddard said. “Shot Egerton.”

The sterilizer was secured to the desk with catches. He released them, unplugged it, and grabbed up the first-aid kit. When he hurried back into Egerton’s cabin, Lind was bent over the bunk. He straightened, holding a bloodstained towel, and gestured wearily.

“Put ’em down anywhere,” he said. “A couple of aspirin would have done just as well.”

Goddard looked past him, and nodded. Egerton was already unconscious and obviously dying of massive hemorrhage. Lind had spread the jacket open and cut the shirt away, exposing his chest. Blood was everywhere, in the thick mat of gray hair, running down his ribs, and staining the jacket and bedspread beside him. The pillow under the side of his mouth was soaked with it. The eye was closed, and his breathing ragged and labored. There was no froth in the blood on his chest, Goddard noted; he would have thought there would be, since one or both the shots must have gone through the lungs. He was about to mention this to Lind when Captain Steen appeared in the doorway. Sparks, he said, was trying to locate a ship in the area with a doctor. Lind shook his head.

“It’s no use,” he said. He felt Egerton’s pulse, gave a despairing shrug, and gently lowered the wrist. “Just a matter of minutes.”

“Seems dark for arterial blood,” Goddard remarked, wondering at the same time what difference it made. When you lost enough of it, you died, no matter what shade it was.

“Probably the pulmonary,” Lind replied. “It carries venous blood.”

Egerton’s breathing changed to a gasping rattle that went on for over a minute and then stopped abruptly. Lind reached for the wrist again, probing for the pulse that had apparently ceased. He put it down and gently raised the eyelid with a thumb to look at the pupil. He sighed and closed the eye.

“That’s all,” he said.

Captain Steen lowered his head. He appeared to be praying. Then he straightened and said, “I’ll tell the steward to bring a sheet.”

Lind turned on the basin tap to wash the blood from his hands. Goddard turned to go out. He felt something under his shoe and looked down. It appeared to be a tiny awl. He pushed it over against the bulkhead with his foot and went out into the passageway, and as he neared the entrance to the dining room he heard the sudden, mad sound of Krasicki’s voice again. He looked in, and at the same moment Lind ran past him, still drying his hands on a towel.

Captain Steen was in the room, along with Barset and two other men, one of whom Goddard recognized as the AB who’d given him the shirt. The other was a squat, ugly man in his thirties with almost grotesquely massive shoulders and arms. He had an old knife scar in the corner of his mouth and the coldest blue eyes Goddard had ever seen. Krasicki’s hands were bound in front of him and his feet were tied together, but he was sitting up and trying to slide backward away from the men in front of him, still shouting in that unknown language. The squat man and the AB reached down and caught his arms to pick him up. He shrank away from them, and screamed.

“Easy, Boats,” Lind said. “Let me try to talk to him.” The two men let go and stepped back. Lind knelt and spoke quietly to Krasicki. “We’re not going to hurt you. Everything’s all right”

This had no effect at all; the mad eyes were completely without comprehension. Lind spoke in German. Insulated within his madness, Krasicki paid no attention, merely continuing to rave in the language none of them understood.

Lind spoke to Barset “Take a couple of your men and canvass the whole crew; see if anybody speaks Polish. It might help some if we knew what he’s saying.”

“We already have,” Barset replied. “No dice.”

“Well, we’ve got to quiet him down,” Lind said. He went out and came back with the first-aid kit. He filled a hypodermic syringe and motioned for the bos’n and AB to hold Krasicki. When the latter saw the syringe, as old and frail as he was it took three men to pin him down sufficiently for Lind to inject the sedative. Goddard felt sick.

In a few minutes Krasicki began to subside. He slumped. “Get a stretcher,” Lind said to the bos’n.

Goddard went forward to the lounge. It was empty. He wondered if Karen and Mrs. Lennox had gone to their cabins. Then he saw them pass in front of one of the portholes. He went on deck and around to the forward side of the midships house. They were leaning on the rail, still looking badly shaken as they watched the reddening western sky. He told them Egerton was dead.

Madeleine Lennox said faintly, “I’ll have nightmares the rest of my life. That poor man.”

All three exchanged a glance then with the identical thought:
Which one?

“What will happen to Mr. Krasicki?” Karen asked.

“They’ll turn him over to the Philippine authorities,” Goddard said, “but after that it’ll be like Kafka with LSD. An Englishman is murdered on the high seas by a Pole with Brazilian citizenship who’s obviously insane and couldn’t be legally guilty of murder in the first place, and it all happens on a Panamanian ship that’s probably never been to Panama. He’ll be committed, but at his age I doubt he’ll live till they figure out where.”