The back wheel, p.12
The Back Wheel, page 12
Pen was at the rail morosely watching Captain Johnson and Mackenzie, who, in the gig, were furthering yesterday’s explorations along the portside beach, scouting for a suitable cove wherein to install the Susan Ann for repairs.
I said: “Miss Benson, I’ve forgotten neither the look you gave me earlier today, nor what you said. I’m hoping both arose from unreasoning pique and did not constitute your true opinion of me.”
“You mean what I said about your being hand over fist with the others?” She turned. “I’d been worrying. I hadn’t slept I was terribly tired, angry and I am afraid irresponsible. Doctor, you know I trust you.” Her eyes added that if she didn’t, she would not have come to my cabin last night. And without doubt they were the most beautiful eyes ever I could hope to see.
I said earnestly: “I don’t wish to pry into your affairs. But something’s troubling you deeply, something more than mere dread of the black wheel. It’s not from curiosity that I want you to confide in me.”
She said pensively: “I suppose I do look out of sorts. I don’t like wearing my heart on my sleeve, though it can’t be so very noticeable among all the others.” She said, lifting her head and smiling: “I’ve been brooding about Father and that d-damned wheel! He hasn’t slept at all. He’s sitting in his cabin, stroking the wheel and muttering to it as if he’d found some long-lost crony. He ought to have memorized every atom of it by now—but that doesn’t deter him.”
And desolately: “I’d give anything if we’d never come on this trip. But now that I look back on it—it all seems fated.”
“In what way?” But she would not tell me.
“Nor is that the whole of it,” she hurried on. “When I said Father’s treating the wheel like a reconciled friend, I meant it—as if it has a personality. No,” she corrected herself, “there’s no doubt to it—the wheel does have a personality! Either it’s alive or something alive is within it. I’m certain!”
Then, laughing shallowly, not at all sure of herself: “But that’s crazy-talk, isn’t it? Nevertheless it’s my belief—or rather, my hope. It’s just got to be that!”
She was resentfully silent as though she had told me too much for my comfort. We looked to the island. A shadow marched across it. It came from one of a number of little clouds leisurely promenading across the sun, wreathing over its face like beauty contestants before the judges’ stand.
Pen’s silence was disconcerting. I said doggedly: “Beautiful!”
She followed my gaze. “Yes, damned beautiful. So are tigers and pythons. Beautiful but dangerous. I’ve an idea that this island is more dangerous than either. And what’s more I’ve the idea you share my sentiment.”
‘Then you’ve still not told me everything, Miss Benson.”
“No?”
“No. From what I know of you, you’re too level-headed ever to hold forth with what you call ‘crazy-talk’ without valid reason. And if you habitually repress your deeper feelings, your coming to me last night means that you’re uncommonly perturbed about something—more so, perhaps, than you care to reveal. But, Miss Benson—I want to help you!”
“You’re right. But I don’t want to say anything further. I must solve my problems for myself if I want to be strong. And I do, if only for Jim’s sake!”
Her eyes flicked beyond me; she whispered: “Chad’s coming—I can’t bear seeing him!” She hurried away.
So I had been accurate in assuming that the possibility of her father’s insanity had been troubling her for longer than she had mentioned. I wondered what connection it might have with her impression that the wheel was alive.
Chadwick came to me, lounged against the rail, looking after Pen’s hasty retreat.
“Once we’re married,” he drawled, “it will amuse me to watch poor fools fall in love with her, when all the time I’ll be knowing no force on earth can budge her from me.”
As a simple statement of recognized devotion it was one thing; as a subtle warning, quite another. I asked: “Oh, you’re engaged?”
He looked politely chagrined. “You hadn’t heard? But of course!”
I reflected that it could hardly be considered a felicitous arrangement among the others if they had refrained from reference to it. I had always thought Pen as much attracted to McTeague as he was obviously to her. Chadwick must have shared my feelings, betrothal or not, which was why he seized every opportunity to belittle McTeague.
It is a psychological axiom that a person is jealous only of what is not his own. I recalled Pen’s clinging to McTeague just after the wheel had been brought aboard. It had been done unconsciously, but it had revealed where her affections were centered. Why, if Pen loved McTeague, did she not break off the engagement to Chadwick? What hold could he have over her?
I shot a random arrow. “You seemed about to speak to me a while back—and it looked as if it were mighty important. But Lady Fitz interrupted you.”
Someone must have told Chadwick of the mesmeric effect of his eyes, and he had never forgotten it. I flinched as they roved me knowingly.
He said easily: “I was about to inquire if Pen were ill. I saw her coming from your cabin last night. As her intended, I should be informed if anything’s—bothering her.” I did not know to what he was leading, but I was determined to give him no help in arriving at it. I said: “Rest assured, it’s nothing serious.”
His gaze tugged on me like little hooks cast to catch truth. “If you’re thinking what I’m thinking—perhaps it is.”
That could have been taken any number of ways, none of which appealed to me. And though to my knowledge Chadwick had never gone by the name of Pedro, I agreed with McTeague that he had a snake’s tongue.
He moved so that he could scan the island. I doubt if that was what he was seeing. He said: “You’re in an enviable sport in your berth here. A bit like God. People tell you things, as a doctor, they’d never tell anyone else. You can know precisely what’s going on around you, where everyone else has to guess. Maybe it’s the Hippocratic oath keeping you silent—maybe just good business sense. Either way, I like it—and liking it, like you. You’d make a good friend—and I always deal my friends in on anything good, in a financial way. Think of that.”
I saw his general meaning if not the specific one. I did not answer sharply, primarily because it would have made him defensive. My interest was mainly in helping Pen, and from Chadwick’s hinting I could discern that she was indeed more involved than she had cared to admit.
I said: “It never hurts anyone to think.”
He laughed shortly, cunningly, and sauntered away.
And suddenly I was glad that I had not antagonized him. He had offered me a baited hook and had swallowed his own bait—by which I mean that, in seeking to learn how much of Pen’s affairs I knew, he had betrayed the fact that something existed for me to know. What was that something?
His hold on Pen! That which shackled her to him despite her loving McTeague. 5
Yet he wanted my assistance, so his hold must be a precarious one. And how did it tie in with Pen’s fear of the wheel and her suspicion of Jim’s sanity?
Suppose Chadwick had claimed to Pen that he had proof that Benson was demented; she loved her father and would marry Chadwick to protect him. And though Boriloff was a fortune-hunter, at least his methods were not so despicable as Chadwick’s. I had rather liked the Russian, but I could understand in the light of my suppositions why Pen resented him—he was stamped with Chadwick’s brand.
Came the query—if Chadwick had such proof, and it must be conclusive to influence a girl of Pen’s caliber— what was it, and where had he obtained it?
His eternal disparaging of McTeague was not only from jealousy over Pen, but an attempt to lever McTeague entirely from the scope of the Bensons—possibly because he sensed a formidable foe in the red-head were Pen to turn to him; possibly because McTeague could produce information contrary to Chadwick’s.
Ordinarily I preferred keeping clear of others’ affairs, but this case must be an exception. The happiness of Pen was becoming very dear to me, even though I might never have an active part in it. Clearly I must present my guesswork to McTeague, but in such a manner that it would not goad him into rash reckoning with Chadwick.
How I was to effect this I could not decide, but trusted that I could find a way.
There were still some important pieces absent from the puzzle. For one thing, the ground for Pen’s assertion that this voyage had been fated. For another, her desire that something animate be within the wheel. Still another, the reason for the oddly discriminative effects of pipe, bell and wheel on the various members of the Susan Ann’s entourage.
One of the roving clouds dropped its shadow on the Susan Ann and passed away.
I wished that the shadow in my heart would pass as quickly.
CHAPTER XI
Red Rafferty
That afternoon, while pottering about my office, I heard Benson bawling wrathfully for Captain Johnson. The quality of his voice, rather than its tone, startled me. It was querulous, whinnying, as if he were suffering an asthmatic attack. I went to the door and looked down the companion.
Benson was stamping belligerently toward Johnson’9 cabin, McTeague trailing him and expostulating. Benson thumped his fist on Johnson’s door and without waiting for leave, stormed within. In a moment he was out again.
“Johnson! Johnson! Where’s the corrupt swab stowed himself?”
He tramped muttering down the passage. McTeague shrugged and let him proceed alone.
I hissed to the Irishman. He turned, saw me, and hurried over. I whispered: “What’s eating him?”
McTeague brushed past me into my office and wearily edged on a stool. He dug into a pocket for his pipe. His face was drawn.
He said, flipping his match into the waste-tin: “Much as I love the old bastard, there are times when I’d also love to ornament his backside with a few deftly placed footprints!”
He laughed, a short dry cackle like the crunch of stale bread. “This damned see-sawing has got me down. We get to this island and I’m happy thinking that the old buzzard’s going to straighten out from the old Cap’n seizure —I’m happy as a kid when the red schoolhouse burns down. Then we have to find the wreck and that damned blasted wheel! Now he’s off again, the old Cap’n again— this time with trimmings!”
“But what—?”
“Smithson took some men ashore to cut down trees for the bitts and jack-timbers we’ll need when we beach the Susan Ann. He’s illuminated with the bright idea of moseying off with a shovel while his men are busy with saws and axes. The fallen dune looks like a choice spot for digging, so he starts there—and hey presto, at that moment Big Jim falls temporarily out of love with the wheel and gets the equally brilliant idea of taking a gander at how things are progressing aboard and ashore. He spots Smithson all by his lonesome on the dune and flies straight out of his footgear. How dare the dastard gold-brick when the Cap’n’s in a rush to put the Susan Ann back in shape? I’m collared. Nothing will do but that I row the old man over to the dune in no time flat.”
He paused to draw on his pipe. “All the way over the water, he turns the air a lovely, liquid sapphire-blue with epithets and curses of which I, an acknowledged connoisseur of the picuresquely impure, never encountered whether in dives or by an extensive perusal of the least expurgated of banned books. It’s safe to say we get to the dune so quickly because that explosion of profanity is nothing more nor less than jet propulsion.”
He gusted smoke. “The Cap’n tears over to Smithson and dishes out some more of this chromatic tirade. Smith-son lets it bounce off him like hail on a tin roof—just stands with that cast-iron face of his looking blank. When the Cap’n takes a breather, Smithson remarks innocently that as long as his men do the work expected of them there’s no reason for a stink—and in any case, he’s accountable to Captain Johnson, not the Susan Ann’s owner.
“Not that I care two hoots and a holler for Smithson, but the man’s right. There’s always a certain amount of shirking on any job, and a wise skipper—and owner—lets it pass without comment. And damn it, Smithson saw us coming aboard with all that junk this morning. Why shouldn’t he hunt himself up a few souvenirs? Why should the big-shots always get the breaks?”
“Yes, but what happened?”
“Well, Big Jim in his role of old Cap’n delivers a four-star performance of flying off the handle. He makes to grab the shovel and pile-drive Smithson neck-deep in the sand. Only Smithson gets the shovel first and looks as if maybe he’ll anticipate the Cap’n and do some pile-driving on his own. Whereat the Cap’n flares up like a mortified fuschia with neon attachments. It doesn’t faze Smithson, who is still looking mighty suggestive with the shovel. So, rather than soil his mitts on such low-life scum—and I think he really meant it—the Cap’n does a spin and marches back to the boat. And don’t think it was discretion being the better part of valor. Far from it!
“While I’m rowing him back, he erupts his determination to see Smithson in irons and the rest of the crew under the gun, with more of the sizzling profanity adding a nice overall sulphur-and-brimstone effect. By the time we get here, he should have cooled off, but instead of that he’s worked himself up into incandescence, and I’m seriously wondering if I shouldn’t conk his cranium with an oar, or get you to shoot some bug-juice into him to shut him up. And that’s that. And it’s more than plenty.”
I said: “It’s only a fit of rage. It’ll pass off. It’s hardly anything to fret over.”
“You think not? Brother, you don’t know the crew! They’re all descendants of the original Susan Ann’s men —babies who tussled with the Malay pirates the way we play scrimmage, just for the hell of it. Peters, who was washed away in the hurricane, told me some of the tales he’d heard of that original gang—how they finished off two junk-loads of pirates and set ’em adrift in a state of decoratively dismembered attitudes which makes what the squaws did to Custer’s massacred men look like nursery fun.
“When it comes to sheer downright deviltry, these boys are decided improvements on their forebears. A couple more of these rages, and they’ll decide the Cap’n’s ready for the looney-bin—and he’ll be the one in irons or under the gun. Not they.”
I could not believe that. I protested: “But he picked them himself! They’re devoted to him—”
He knocked out his pipe in the saucer of crystals I had been growing. He said: “It’s been a hundred years since the first Susan Ann’s crew split up, losing track not only one man of the other, but of the Benson establishment. Most of this bunch never heard of the old Cap’n and wouldn’t be here now if Big Jim hadn’t been sentimental and dug their names out of the old Susan’s logs and lists. They’re here for cash, and seem to think they’re damned high-and-mighty, since a millionaire troubled to look ’em up and bribe ’em to leave whatever jobs they were holding. What do you think Jim’s paying them?”
I had no idea. He told me, and I was amazed.
He said: “Just the exorbitant salaries he’s paying is enough to make ’em suspicious. There’s trouble brewing —Peters knew what it was, but he was too disgusted to tip me off. It happened he was one who liked Big Jim. I’d hoped to get wind of what’s on the fire; Smithson’s attitude is one indication that it’s just about ready to serve. And what the old Cap’n’s doing this very minute isn’t going to smooth things any.”
We listened; faintly we could hear Benson’s shrill tones. I laughed at the idea of mutiny. “McTeague, you’re so sleepy you’re having a nightmare while wide awake. Get to your berth and catch some rest—”
“Rest!” he chuckled, leaving the stool. He stretched and yawned. “Doc, I’ve never gone for perversions, but let me tell you I can hardly wait for the embrace of Morpheus. Right now, though, it’s my duty to keep the Cap’n from alienating Johnson’s affections forever.”
He made for the door and paused. He cocked a wistful eye: “I feel like a wet rawhide on a shaky frame—one of us is going to snap. You wouldn’t have any alcoholic medicine to cure that, would you?”
“If you’d like a sedative—”
“Sedative nothing! I’ll be needing Dutch courage if the Cap’n manages to find Johnson. There’s bound to be bloodshed, and I’m not kidding.”
I diluted some grain alcohol for him. He grinned. “Hope there weren’t any bodies preserved in this!” He gulped it down, tossed the tumbler to me and strode out.
I returned to my chores. I lacked perhaps an hour of dinner-time when one of the men, Perry, rushed in without knocking. “Grab your gear, sir, and come quick!”
I took up my medical kit. “What is it?” I had ascribed McTeague’s dire predictions to his frayed nerves, but this abrupt alarm furnished them with the semblance of reality. Before Perry could answer I heard someone singing, or rather roaring in what would have been, if controlled, a fine baritone.
“McTeague,” Perry said. “You can hear him all over the ship.” He hurried down the passage; I had to sprint to overtake him. “Drunk,” he said—or the word’s least-refined equivalent—I thought there was a tinge of envy in his tone. “Cap’n Johnson wants that you shut him up ‘fore Mr. Benson hears him.”
Had we been proceeding less swiftly, I would have inquired the reason why Mr. Benson shouldn’t hear him. But I needed my breath. The tatters of song loudened and knitted together as we approached not McTeague’s but Henderson’s quarters; abruptly they choked off to a gurgle.
We entered Henderson’s cabin. McTeague was on the first mate’s bunk, Henderson leaning heavily on him, holding him down. His hand was clamped forcibly on McTeague’s mouth. The air was sharp with rotgut Perry discreetly retired. Henderson looked to me. “Have you got something to knock him cold instantly and close his mouth? The quicker the better!”
And viciously: “I don’t care if it throws him into the middle of next week!” He had snatched his hand from the red-head’s mouth just in time to avoid having it bitten. McTeague burst into song again and tried to sit up. It was a song I had not heard before, and seemed to be in Gaelic. Henderson pushed him fiat on his back and rammed a pillow over his mouth. “Bite that, damn you!”
