Chapter 7

A Knowledge of the Score

At a couple of minutes before noon, we were lying in deck chairs banked around the upper pool. For an April day in the North Atlantic it was more like a bright July morning, and some of the women passengers, especially those with good figures, had donned bathing suits and were getting a little early tan.

It was lazy and somnolent, but it could not dull the memory of what had happened earlier. Lying there, I thought of what I had done and how many people knew I had done it. I decided I was fairly—fairly!—safe. Neither Merrilee nor the maid had any reason to say anything, and I was quite sure I had not been seen by anyone, including the tall Indian. My only danger was the steward who had opened Jones’s stateroom at my request, and I had worked out an answer to that, if and when the question came. I was quite sure no one had seen my second visit there.

“Going below a minute,” Tom said, raised his tall bulk out of the chair, and left.

“Now what?” asked Twit-Twit.

“If that bum is getting himself a drink this early,” said Betsy darkly, but she settled herself back in her blanket.

I returned to my thoughts. When would the question be asked? Would they find him at all? They must; there was surely inspection, as well as patrolling for stowaways. I couldn’t keep my eyes away from the boat deck above us, where, out of my immediate sight, was the lifeboat and its stiffening cargo. I began feeling nervous again. Simultaneously I wished they’d never find him, and that they would find him right away and get it over with.

All morning I had debated going to the first officer, whom Newt said had been paid to help, and telling him everything. I had decided against it. The main thing now was to keep the opposition off balance while trying to discover who he or they were. The first officer could hardly help in that.

Tom came back unhurriedly.

“What took you so long?” said Betsy, who makes a point of treating him with exasperation because she is never exasperated with him at all.

“I went down to see who won the ship’s pool,” said Tom, dropping into his chair. “They were just getting ready to post the winners, so I had to hang around a minute.”

Betsy looked at him. “And so?”

“I spent that minute at the bar,” said Tom. “With a Martini.”

“Tom Dolan! Without any breakfast? You had a Martini on an empty stomach?”

“Of course not,” said Torn., closing his eyes comfortably. “My stomach wasn’t empty. Because I had a Martini before the one I’m talking about.”

I said, “And who won the pool, pray?”

“Oh,” said Tom. “Somebody named Twickenham,” and didn’t even open his eyes.

Twit-Twit let out a shout. “Hey! On the level?”

“On the level. Number three the winnah, and you were on it alone. There’s a hundred and fifty-five bucks waiting for you.”

“Numerology and clean living always win,” I said.

“Bets, we’ll have lunch at Maxim’s,” said Twit-Twit. “By ourselves. Caviar and Montrachet.”

“What did I say about clean living?”

“If you really did it by numerology,” said Tom drowsily, “give me a reading, will you, pretty gypsy? I’m going to play the damned thing again tonight.”

“I don’t know any more about numerology than you do. I just did it by—by—”

“Woman’s intuition,” I said. “Or ESP.”

“I don’t know anything about ESP. And I don’t believe in that, either.”

“You don’t?” I asked. “Why not?”

Betsy said, “Here we go.”

“Do you?”

I envied Tom his stop at the bar. This had been quite a morning, and I didn’t feel much like a debate. But Twit-Twit now was on one of the few subjects about which I have definite convictions.

I said, “Yes. I believe in ESP. I don’t see how anyone who evaluates the evidence, even briefly, can do anything else.”

“You sound half-serious.”

“I’m more than half. The only difficulty with the concrete evidence proving ESP exists is that it is surrounded by an aura of fakery.”

“Like what?” said Tom, not opening his eyes, by which I knew he was listening carefully.

“Like the old commercial spiritualists, who held séances in darkened rooms and levitated tables, or made horns blow, or put you in touch with your dead uncle. Or, in a way, the perfectly decent, wonderfully entertaining stage magician who saws a woman in half and tells you what card you will draw before you draw it—you know he is tricking you, of course, and you enjoy being tricked. ESP has nothing to do with any of these.

“Nor, for that matter, with the people who make a reputation by claiming and proving that there is no seemingly supranormal effect which they cannot duplicate by artificial means. This leads to a dangerous fallacy, by the way—that any natural phenomenon which can be duplicated synthetically is necessarily fake or nonexistent.

“It is like arguing that, since man has learned how to make real diamonds in an electric furnace, all the ‘natural’ diamonds found over the centuries are fakes. Or that, since high-fidelity sound reproduction can copy a violin’s tone and timbre so faithfully that it fools even concertmasters, there is no such thing as genuine, live violin music.

“The fact is that the gift of ESP in some people, not regularly and not throughout their lives, but nonetheless definitely and demonstrably there, has been proven so often and so solidly down at Duke in Dr. Rhine’s parapsychology laboratory that it makes ordinary scientific ‘proofs’ look like kindergarten exercises.”

“Like for instance?” said Betsy.

“In many scientific procedures,” I said, “it is accepted that if you run off a hundred tests of a thesis and they come out okay, you can consider your case proven.”

“Well, okay. So what?”

“Take an applicant for an M.A degree, especially in the physical sciences. Say it’s chemistry. He repeats his experiments, based on his thesis, a hundred times. It works ninety-eight times out of the hundred. That’s good enough. Now he writes it all out, and that is his M.A paper that earns his degree. He has proved that when you do so-and-so, as in his experiment, it works.”

“What about the two times it didn’t work?” asked Tom.

“That could well be due to an impure chemical, faulty procedure, a dirty test tube, or whatnot. Ninety-eight times out of one hundred is enough for ordinary scientific proof. Even when you are doing the same simple thing over and over again. But Rhine has had people under the most rigidly controlled conditions call cards correctly to the point where the odds are millions or billions to one against such a possibility. And do it more than once. There was one case of a subject who was tested regularly at Duke and averaged close to ten correct calls out of twenty-five in a card-calling test which extended over two years. On one occasion, he called twenty-five cards in a row. To attribute something like that to mere coincidence is mathematically unthinkable. (As recounted in Dr. J. B. Rhine’s New Frontiers of the Mind, the subject was a young divinity student named Hubert Pearce, and the odds against calling 25 cards correctly in a Zener deck are 298,023,223,876,953,125 to 1. Rhine studied a number of subjects at Duke who could consistently score 8 to 11 “hits” with the Zener deck, which has 25 cards equally divided among 5 different symbols. On the basis of mere chance, a subject might be expected to call 5 cards correctly out of the 25.)

“Personally I think the occasional ability of some people to demonstrate clairvoyance, telepathy and even precognition beyond a reasonable doubt has been proven. It happens, and maybe oftener than we think.”

“What about people who have dreams that seem to come true?” said Betsy. “Aren’t they coincidence?”

“I haven’t been talking about dreams. I’ve been talking about laboratory tests. The dreams are usually set down to coincidence, yes. And I suspect that’s what they often are.”

“And other times?”

The hideous pattern of that green face would not leave my imagination. “I don’t know. Sometimes in dreams or visions people see things they could not possibly know about. I don’t know. Let’s get off this.”

Tom got up. “Okay, swami. Tell me, who’s going to win the opener?”

“Opener?”

“The Mets and Dodgers are opening the baseball season this afternoon in Shea Stadium. What’ll be the score?”

I pulled my blanket over me. “I’m going to sleep and dream it. Ask me at lunch.”

“Come on, Bets. We’re going to get in on that pool money before the good-money numbers are gone. Let’s leave them here to sleep together. Doesn’t that sound lecherous?”

“You’re not leaving me,” said Twit-Twit and got up. “I’m going with you,” and “See you,” to me. She was mad about something.

I pulled the blanket up around my face, closed my eyes and tried to forget everything for a moment.

I was snapped out of it by, of all things, a perfume.

At least I think that is what I sensed first. Then I heard a hoarse voice that roused me more because I had heard it recently. It said,

“...so we can get off Southampton. You know? In three days. I inquire. That is the first—what I mean—port of call.”

“And then?”

“Then plane straight back to Hamerica.”

“What good would that do?”

The first voice I had not been sure of. The second I recognized from its whispery breathlessness. Not to mention the perfume. I shifted my head farther down under the blanket. “It would get you off the ship. This ocean.”

“My mother warned me against crossing the water generally. Not against ships. In a plane I’d still cross water.”

“But it would be over fast, kedves” the maid said. “You wouldn’t be dreading it again forever.”

There was a silence. A new wave of scent engulfed me momentarily; Merrilee had shifted in her chair. So they had settled in the two deck chairs next to me. I wondered if they had reserved them for the trip as we had ours. It might turn out to be awkward.

Then she spoke, in a small determined voice.

“I’m not going to turn around and run. I’m not going back to America. I’m not going to be afraid all my life.”

“Of course. But just think it over. And take another of your pills. Steward. Steward!”

But the deck steward, who had brought us bouillon and little sandwiches earlier, was not around.

“Or would you like a treatment—a quick one?”

“No. A green pill.”

“I will get water myself for you.”

A shadow fell across my chair, and I saw the maid’s shouldery bulk move down the deck.

I pulled the blanket away. “Hi.”

“My God. Were you next to me all the time?”

“I was napping,” I lied. “Glad to see you out and about.”

“I thought—we thought—a little air would—”

“Clear the air. Right.”

I twisted around. Big steel-rimmed sunglasses, a low-pulled hat, and the blanket made her unrecognizable. It was almost funny, considering who she was and what she was, under the disguise, to glance across the pool at the eager young ladies in sun and swim suits, hoping they looked good.

“I think everything’s all right,” I said. “Just keep your mouth shut. And especially your maid’s.”

“Don’t worry about her.”

“I’m not worrying. No one saw me.”

“He’s still in the lifeboat?”

“That’s right. We may all have landed and be off the ship before he’s found.” It was unlikely, of course, and I wondered what the ultimate morality of the thing really was. But in the meantime, she might as well be comfortable. “I doubt if there’s any link at all between him and you. Did you and Jones ever meet on board?”

“No.”

“Good.”

I’d better warn Newt as soon as possible, I thought, not to make any radiotelephone calls to anyone aboard. “Don’t take any personal phone calls, except from me, until I tell you. And tell your maid.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure myself. But I’ll bet I’m right. And that I can explain later.”

“All right. But I wish you’d not treat me like a complete child. In fact, I’d like to ask you a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“Do you think I have extrasensory perception?”

I wasn’t going to answer that one truthfully.

“After this morning?” she insisted.

“I don’t know.”

“I told you about my dream before—before we saw him.”

Yes. If you’re telling the truth.

“Do you think my mother had it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t like to keep saying that. But how can I tell?”

“I think mother did. Klára wants me to go back to the United States.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to go back.”

“And?”

“I’m not going. In spite of what happened this morning. I’ve been afraid of too much too long. I want to find things out.”

“You’re right. So tell me something. Do you think you have ESP powers?”

“Yes.”

The whole thing was getting too serious. Far down the deck I saw the maid returning, carefully bearing a little white cup of water.

“Klára thinks so, too.”

“Okay,” I grinned. “Who’s going to win the opener today? Come on, princess. Use your powers.”

She smiled, and in spite of the glasses and the hat and everything else, it was a smile that, had it been around at the time, could have melted the iceberg and saved the Titanic. “You mean the baseball game?”

“Yes. The Mets and the Dodgers. They play this afternoon. What will the score be?”

She looked at me oddly, a faraway look. The maid came up.

“Drink this, kedvesem.” The maid glanced at me as if she had never seen me before.

Merrilee took the pill and gulped some water.

“Twenty-one to nineteen,” she said.

I chuckled. “Better do better than that. This is major-league baseball, not the Little League. Twenty-one to nineteen is a football score.”

“Thank you, Klára.” She handed the paper cup back to the maid. “And nuts to you.” But she smiled.

I threw the blanket back and got up. “Sorry. But don’t take too many tranquilizers. There’s a gala tonight, and it would take your mind off your troubles. Mine, too. First dance?”

“I don’t think I’ll go. After what happened to Sam—I didn’t know him really, of course—but still—and I’m supposed to stay under cover. But thanks anyway. A lot.”

As I walked toward a change of clothes and (I hoped) an unbelligerent lunch and (I knew) a rewarding drink, I thought to myself. I’d laugh if she turned out to be right about that score. Like hell I’d laugh.

A hand grabbed my shoulder and I wheeled nervously. “What do you want?”

It was Tom. He looked a little startled.

“We were wondering if you fell asleep.”

“I did.”

“Everybody’s ready for lunch.”

“So am I.”

“You getting a little jumpy?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Maybe I am. You know what? Notice that old dame who was sitting next to you, in sunglasses and so on. I could swear I know her from some place. As if she were somebody else.”

“Now who’s jumpy?”