Chapter 4

Procedural Meeting

That evening there was a little subdued dancing in the main salon after dinner, but only a little. As usual on the first night out, everyone was feeling quiet and receptive to an early bed and long sleep.

So we went into the smoking room, and the first thing I noticed was Pennypacker immersed in a bridge game with his wife and another couple. It gave me a dangerous idea.

Tom noticed something which gave him a dangerous idea, too. It was the ship’s pool that had been just set up, a double one as a matter of fact, and most of the numbers had not been taken.

“That’s for me,” he said. “How about it, Deac?”

“I’m with you. What number do you like, Twit-Twit?”

She counted on her fingers. “Three. I do it by numerology.”

The hovering steward came over, smiling, and I gave him a five-dollar bill.

“I like nine,” said Tom. “What do you say, Bets?”

“I say you’re wasting your money, you unlucky bum,” said Betsy. “But if you want to lose it on nine, that’s as good a number as any.”

“The witch’s curse,” said Tom. “That’ll win for me if anything will.” He handed the steward another five and wrote Dolan after the “nine.”

“You should have picked eight,” Twit-Twit told him seriously.

“Why?” I asked. “Numerology?” Twit-Twit has a doctorate in chemistry and is about as superstitious as a theoretical physicist.

“There are eight letters in ‘Tom Dolan.’”

I counted up. “And thirteen in ‘William Deacon.’” I had never realized it before. “God, I’m cooked.”

“I think you can get out of it,” said Tom, “if you regard the thirteen as one-three and add them together. That gives you four. Then you’re safe.”

“And it doesn’t hurt to take a little eye of newt and toe of frog just before bedtime, either,” said Betsy. “You sleep all the better for it.”

“Speaking of which,” said Twit-Twit. “I was up at seven this morning. Shall we?”

As we walked out, I noticed Pennypacker chuckling over his hand and folding up a trick he had just taken. I wondered. I was being too intensive an amateur private eye, I thought, but still, I was supposed to be alert. And if Kane was planning anything, who was a likelier agent than Pennypacker?

We took the elevator up to our opulent suite. Walking in, Betsy said, “What a shambles this Deac got us into. But I suppose we can make do.”

I grinned. I was a little proud of what we had. The living room, where I would sleep, had a French sort of mural along one wall, plenty of lamps, all sensible, and the furniture and carpeting were comfortable and deep. After some years of traveling on stories, my idea of comfort away from home is just good plumbing, a good bed, and prompt room service. We had a little better than that.

The Dolans waved good night, even though it was only nine-thirty, and went into their bedroom. Twit-Twit stood at the door of hers. My bed had been made up and turned down, and my pajamas lay across the foot of it. The light was on in the lavatory, and the window in the deck door at the end of the little hall that separated the bedrooms was half open. There was the comfortable feeling of vibrant forward movement which is one of the nicest things about being aboard ship.

“I’m surprised you didn’t want a nightcap.”

“A man doesn’t always need a nightcap. I’m as tired as anybody.”

She made a kiss with puckered lips.

“Good night.”

“Good night, Twit.”

I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to do, or supposed not to do. But, considering what lay in store, I had an idea that for the moment the best thing was to do nothing.

Her door closed.

I looked around the cabin. Fresh ice had been added to the bucket containing our last bottle of champagne. The wastebaskets had been emptied and my toilet articles arranged in the lavatory. My shirts had been hung in the closet with care, like children’s’ Christmas stockings.

Nothing beats traveling first-class super deluxe, I thought. Especially when a bank is footing the bill.

I thought of Pennypacker. It was still early.

I opened the door to the passageway softly and closed it softly. I walked downstairs one flight and glanced cautiously into the smoking room. Pennypacker was still there. I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes to ten.

I didn’t dare be late. Still—

I went on down to the main deck. There was a freshly mimeoed list posted next to the door of the maître d’s office. I scanned it quickly and saw “Pennypacker, M-432.”

I got out of sight and looked at my watch.

Nine-forty-five. I didn’t have much time. What did I expect to do, anyway? At least, I’d see where he lived. And maybe a little more.

I walked along the narrow corridor on the port side of the main deck. I passed the little station where the stewards and maids stay. It was empty. Next to it was the little glass-doored case where you can, if you like, deposit your key when you leave your cabin, since it is always under the supervision of a maid or steward.

Technically, that is.

The key to M-432 was there. And no one was in sight, maid, passenger, or steward. I took the key.

I went to the door of M-432. I looked up and down the hall. No one.

I slipped the big key into the lock. It made a little noise. I tried to turn it. It made a lot of noise. A voice from within, rather hoarse, spoke out.

“Who’s there?”

“Pardon, m’sieu,” I muttered and hoped it sounded French. I pulled the key out, went down the hall, and turned a corner.

I couldn’t tell whether it had been a man’s voice or a hoarse woman’s.

But I didn’t hear a door open.

After a minute I walked back down the hall. No one was in sight still. I returned the key to its place and thought what a lousy thief I would make if I ever tried to become one.

I walked up to the boat deck and found the spot near her stateroom where I figured the meeting was to occur. Except for lifeboats, it was empty. My watch said one minute to ten. Our suite was on the other side of the deck and well out of sight, for which I thanked heaven. I started walking around the deck; she might have planned on another place.

It was a nice night. The sea was a little rough and especially up here you could feel the motion and roll, but it felt good. I’d not been on a ship for two years, and I suddenly realized that I had missed it, the strong steady press of the wind against your clothes and face and hair, the wet-salt smell, and the awareness that you were crossing the ocean as it should be crossed and had been for centuries, by lots of people more courageous than you—you with your pajamas carefully laid out on your bunk, and your well-ventilated suite, and meticulously served food.

I’d gone completely around the boat deck, moving quickly past our shuttered windows.

No Merrilee.

I stopped and waited, near her cabin door, and felt the wind’s tug, and looked up at the night’s stars.

Suddenly I liked where I was and what I was doing, and I realized that I had felt that way about what I had been doing for a good part of my life.

It’s a nice thing to realize.

A shadowy figure brushed past me.

I turned. It was a bulky shadow, with a hooded head. But the ankles weren’t bulky.

The hood turned slightly, and I knew I was being looked at.

“Procedural meeting,” I said.

She came back slowly, like a dark wisp of fog on little cat feet.

I still couldn’t see her face. Or anything else but the silhouette.

“Do you have initials?” she said in the husky voice that everybody in the world knew, and came closer. The hood fell back.

In that vague starlight, reflected by the ship’s wall and lifeboat, the hair of dyed old-woman white became the pale silvery blond that has shone from ten thousand movie screens. The large blue eyes were still blue, but pale with anxiety. The profile could never change. Her little-girl’s voice came breathlessly from lips always half-parted as though to drink in everything the world could offer.

“ABC,” I said. “I’m also Procedural Meeting. I suppose you could call me PM for short. But my real name is Deacon.”

“Oh, yes. That’s what he said. The trouble was, I’d forgotten. Do you have a cigarette?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t smoke. Should I get you some?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m better off without them. I smoke too much. It makes my voice husky.”

Vive le huskiness, I thought. I’d never heard a voice quite so intimately provocative.

“So you are ABC.”

“Yes. Really a guy named Bill Deacon. Magazine writer.”

“Yes. That’s what he said.”

“Who said?”

“Mr.—that man. You know. The banker. I don’t remember his name. Could I have a cigarette?”

For the first time I realized how nervous she was.

“I’ll get some right away. What brand?”

“I’m sorry. I forgot. I don’t really want one.”

“Of course you do.”

She had turned, and the faint light from the doorway showed her face, wide-eyed with chagrin and apology. At that moment I would have dived overboard to get one puff of smoke for her. But she put a restraining hand on my arm and so, I suppose, saved my life.

“No—I’m sorry. I’m a little rattled, I guess. I’m really better off without them, as I said. You’re Mr.—Deacon, did you say?”

“Usually called Deac.”

“I didn’t think—you don’t look like I thought you would. I’m Merrilee.”

You sure are. “How did you think I would look?”

“Like Tony Quinn maybe. Or James Mason. Especially Jimmy.”

“Sorry. I guess Eve always looked like this. By now I can’t help it.”

“I didn’t mean that. You look lovely. A magazine writer?”

“Yes.”

“I—I thought you’d be a private detective.”

“I could learn to be a private detective. If it would help.” It was the voice, I suppose, and eyes, and the little-girl’s air of naivety. Anyway, I wasn’t kidding.

“I opened the telegram late. I guess we met earlier but I didn’t know what you were saying. Procedural meeting. I thought you were speaking French. Then after lunch I read the message that had come, and looked you up in the list of passengers. And now—here we are.”

“Yes. What can I do for you? Get some cigarettes, I know.”

“No. Don’t. They make my voice hus—I said that, didn’t I?”

“That’s all right.”

She studied me; she not only talked abruptly but acted that way. God knows what she saw. As for me, I saw the most beautiful face this side of heaven, trying to look old, which was impossible.

“Newt Harlow told me you were afraid of crossing the ocean. I’m here to help you. What can I do?”

“That’s sweet. But nothing, really.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing, really.”

“Look, Miss Moore. I want to help. That’s why I’m here. I know we just met. But—I want you to get to know me a little so you will trust me. That will make it possible for me to help you.”

“You’re sweet.”

“Please stop saying I’m sweet. I’m not. I’m—I can be a fairly tough—tough guy.”

“No. You’re nice and you’re not a tough bastard. That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it?”

Inwardly, I melted. I suppose I’m an easy melt. Outwardly, I tried not to.

“If you’re not afraid of anything, why the disguise?”

She looked away, through an opening beyond the tarpaulined lifeboat, and watched the darkling sea.

I said, “Newt Harlow told me something of your problems. About the competition, I mean. But you’re aboard ship now. Not much can happen here, can it? Who else is traveling with you?”

“Oh, plenty of people.”

“Who?”

“My maid.”

“Do you know her very well?”

“Klára has been with me for twelve years. Many years ago, when my mother was with a circus, Klára and mother were good friends and performed in a Viennese horse troop. Now she’s the closest thing I have to a mother. Or any relative, for that matter. My mother died when I was sixteen.”

And now you’re thirty-three, although the publicity releases say twenty-nine.

“Anyone else with you?”

“Sad Sam. Jones, that is. My press agent, at the moment.”

“I see. And why do you feel they can’t protect you from what you’re afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid! After all, I don’t—I have nothing to worry about.”

“Of course.” I took her arm. “A turn around the deck?” I’d decided to take a chance.

“I’d love it.” She stepped forward happily.

I waited for us to walk a few steps. Then, “What are you afraid of?”

I waited a couple dozen steps.

“You’re nice.”

“So you keep saying.”

“It’s something I don’t like to talk about. Even with friends.”

“Then you can tell me, because I’m a stranger.”

She giggled. I don’t admire girls who giggle. She giggled gracefully.

“It’s something my mother told me,” she said. “You see—I had an odd childhood. My father died when I was small. He and my mother were in show business. He was a magician, and she was his assistant. They were in vaudeville, or what was left of it. Movie houses, mostly neighborhoods, night clubs, even carnivals sometimes. After my father died, my mother worked up a mind-reading act with another man.”

“And you traveled with them.”

“Part of the time. The rest I lived with an aunt. But the mind-reading act was pretty successful. First they used simple word signals—you know the type. But after a while they learned to work silent.”

“What do you mean?” She was beginning to talk spontaneously, forgetting herself.

“The silent code. My mother was the mind-reader up on the stage, and she was blindfolded, or so it seemed. The man she worked with—his name was Ferdie—would go through the audience, saying practically nothing. He’d take things from the audience like billfolds, hats, watches, possessions, and say just, ‘What’s this?’ and make her describe it. Then, ‘This?’ and ‘This?’ And so on. Sometimes even his back was to her. Sometimes he said nothing at all. There seemed no way they could communicate.”

“But they did?”

“Of course.”

“Then, how?”

Merrilee laughed, a tinkling pleased laugh, because she had mystified me.

“She could see through the mask tied over her eyes, which appeared to be a big black scarf. And he was giving her hand signals all the time. They worked out an elaborate system. But then—”

“But what?”

“A funny thing happened.” We had reached a ladder leading to the bridge, and she stopped and looked out on the hissing sea. “I don’t like to talk about it.”

I waited.

“After a time my mother discovered that she could read minds, in a way. I don’t mean she could do the act without signals. She never could do that. But she began to know things, other things, without knowing how she knew them. It was as if her concentration when she was on stage brought out something she always had, but never knew she had.”

“For instance?”

“Well...There was the night in Buffalo. I was about ten. We were in this terribly cheap hotel and playing a crummy burlesque theater with the act. We were kind of broke. The weather had been terrible all that month. Ferdie and Mother had booked into the hotel as man and wife—it was cheaper that way, but it was really all right. You know what I mean. The truth is they didn’t even like each other very much. But sometimes, when money was low, they had to take a double bed. That’s how it was this night.

“Anyway, I slept in a little alcove off the bedroom, on a sort of sofa. During the night my mother took me into bed with her. I’d never remember it now, even though Ferdie grumbled considerably about there being three in the double bed. But I remember for what happened later.

“I dropped off to sleep, and suddenly I was waked up by a tremendous crash, like an explosion. The whole ceiling had fallen in on the alcove. It had been raining heavily, and there was a leak in the roof. Anyway, all this plaster fell on where I had been sleeping earlier. It could have killed me.

“The next day I heard Mother and Ferdie talking about it.

The ceiling fell down about four in the morning. But about one o’clock my mother had had this vivid dream, more like a vision I guess, really, in which she saw the ceiling fall on my bed, crushing me. It was so clear she could not get back to sleep. So she took me into bed with her. And a couple hours later the ceiling did fall. I would have been killed.”

“Some people would call that coincidence.”

“Sure. That’s why I don’t like to talk about these things.”

“Things?”

“There were others. My mother knew things, sometimes. But if you tell people about them, they think you are crazy. Or that she was some kind of freak. I don’t know why I talk about it now.”

“Because you were going to tell me why you are afraid of crossing the ocean.”

“Yes. I forgot. It’s because of what went on between my mother and myself sometimes. Because for a while I knew things, too. Like once, when I was thirteen, and we were playing Boston at Christmas, and there was this store near the theater that had a wonderful red skirt for three-seventy-five in the window. I didn’t tell anyone, a single soul, ’cause we were broke. As usual.

“But the day before Christmas Mother and Ferdie were talking and said we’d go out for Christmas dinner at the serve-self between the second afternoon show and the seven-o’clock curtain, and suddenly I said I’d wear my red skirt, and Mother said I didn’t have one. But I said I would have, and I did. Later Ferdie asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and he bought it for me—he borrowed ten bucks from the theater manager, believe it or not. Ferdie was nice, sometimes. But the thing is, I knew I was going to have a red skirt in time for Christmas dinner. I don’t like this.”

She stopped.

“Don’t like what?”

“I got the skirt. But while we sat eating Christmas dinner I knew that Ferdie was going away. I told my mother later. She said I was crazy. But on New Year’s Day the act broke up and Ferdie went back to California.”

“You mean you are psychic, too?”

“Not really. Although I know Mother was—sometimes. But me...I don’t know. Like there’s one thing I’ve been waiting for years to happen.”

“What’s that?”

She looked across the sea as we paced. Spray had dewed her long lashes. Finally she said, “There’s a man with a green face. I find him hanging, by the neck...I can’t see him clearly. But—”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s a dream I had—oh, fifteen years ago. I walked into a small room, almost like a closet or something, and this man was hanging there by the neck, and his face was green and drawn. He was dead.”

“So what happened?”

“Nothing. Because it hasn’t happened yet.”

“There you are.” I took her arm. She was cold and, I think, trembling. “Look. Everybody has bad dreams. Did you ever have a nightmare? A real one?”

“This is still going to happen someday. Klára says so, too.”

“Who is Klára?”

“My maid. I told you. She knew my mother. Lately she’s said she thinks I have my mother’s ability. Klára is Hungarian.” She said that as if it proved something.

We had come back around to her cabin, and the wind was stronger and colder. It was getting late. She’d be better off in bed and getting a night’s sleep.

“It won’t happen. Believe me. And let me tell you something. I believe in extrasensory perception. Anyone with a knowledge of what constitutes really scientific truth has to. There are people who can sometimes know things by means other than the accepted senses. Most scientists believe this today and accept the many years of tests made at Duke University.”

“I wouldn’t know about that. But I think it still happens to me.”

“What does?”

“Knowing things.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, why do I know that a few nights ago you were at a dinner that had something to do with me?”

The little coldness that went down my back had nothing to do with the night wind.

“You were,” she said. “I see you. I think I saw you there when we first met tonight.”

I know how easy it is to read this. Try hearing it firsthand, on a dark, remote ship deck, well out at sea.

I made myself say, “What did you see?”

“You were at dinner. At a small table. A few other people. A blond girl, I think. And wine glasses. And you did something. Yes—you made a telephone call. It was a—I don’t know. I think of a pleasant, friendly dinner. But I was involved—I don’t know, exactly...”

I said, “Well, of course I have dinner every night.”

But I was in a little whirl. “We’ll discuss this again. You still haven’t explained why you are afraid of crossing the ocean.”

“My mother. Less than a year before she died she told me that I must never go on the sea. I am going to die on the water, she said. I—I’ve never even dared go on a yachting-trip. You can’t understand what it means.”

She shrank toward me. I put an arm around her. She seemed glad for it.

“Do you know what I’ve been doing for the past three days? I’ve been staying in a suite in the St. Regis, trying to get up my courage to make this trip. I disguised myself—tried to look different—to escape from something. I don’t know what it is, exactly. Do you think I’m crazy?”

“No.”

“Do you think my mother was crazy? I don’t. I tell you, she knew things. And she said when my time comes, it will be on water. That’s why I was scared. And I am scared. It took three tranquilizers this morning before I even dared call a cab to get me to the boat.”

Her head pressed on my shoulder. We walked in stride, saying nothing.

We got to her cabin door. “Nothing’s going to happen to you. I promise.”

“Oh, sure. But you know, I’ve never even learned to swim because of that. And I’ve posed in lots of bikinis.”

“Swimming is the first thing you should have learned,” I said. It didn’t sound funny.

She gave me the key to her cabin door, and I started fitting it into the lock. As I did, I thought I heard a scuffling sound behind us. I looked around. There was nothing.

“I’m in B-15,” I said, “just on the other side of this deck. If you need anything, call me at any time. I’m here to help. You know that.” The door swung open. “And I can swim.”

“You’re sweet—really.” She gave me her hand. I held it. I had an insane desire to kiss her. It really wasn’t that she was pretty. I wanted to comfort her, and stop her from worrying, and make her realize that she was safe.

“Good night...Deac.” I released her hand.

“Good night, Merrilee.”

I heard the sound again, and belatedly looked around. It seemed to come from near the lifeboat.

From inside the cabin a hoarse, suspicious voice, neither male nor female, demanded, “Who is it?”

“Me, Klára. Back to sleep.”

She turned and smiled into the light and said, “I hope I see you tomorrow,” and she really damned near got kissed that time.

But I was a gentleman and just said, “You will,” and turned and walked down the deck; and as I did, it seemed I saw the glimmer of a dark figure disappear around the corner at the far end.

I walked fast, but when I got to the turning no one was in sight. Then I returned to the scent of her perfume, which still lingered on the shoulder of my coat, and the warmth of her presence, which lingered even more.