RENDEZVOUS IN BLACK (28 page)

"No," she said almost inaudibly. "You're my country, now."

He lowered his voice still further. "It sails tomorrow, at noon. But I've made arrangements for us to go aboard tonight, around nine or ten. We can keep the suite locked during the night. That way we won't be seen coming aboard in the daytime. We'll stay here where we are, in the hotel, until after dark. I had to have our visas sent on air-mail, there was no time to wait for them; but they got here, I picked them up just now. There's a doctor coming here later, to give you shots for cholera. I'll take mine with you. You won't be frightened, will you?"

"You'll hold my hand," she promised him, "and I won't be afraid." As though she were the one reassuring him, and not he her.

Presently she asked him, "Was I alone in here last night? The last I knew you were sitting over there in a chair. I fell asleep."

She heard the tender smile in his voice; yes, heard, that was the word. "Do you think I'd leave you alone in a room in a strange city, after bringing you here? No, I slept right in here with you. The sofa opens as a daybed. But I had a hard time doing it quietly; the springs creak so. Then I made it up myself when I first got up, and put the extra pillow back on your bed without waking you. We're registered as man and wife, you know."

She thought for awhile, smiled a little. "How strangely unimportant propriety becomes when you're down to elementals such as life and death."

"Propriety's what's in the mind," he said. "Two people can be a thousand miles away from each other, and still be guilty of all sorts of derelictions. Two people can share the same hotel bedroom, as we did last night, and still be completely decorous."

He took her hand. "Martine," he said, "I want to marry you some day when this is over and we're safe again. This time will you let me, will you have me? All those years we threw away. Louise will be only too glad to let me go, she doesn't care enough one way or the other."

"Yes," she said softly. "This time I want you to. "I'm ready now." And then she added, "If I live."

"You'll live," he said huskily. "Oh, I swear you will. If I have to take you to the ends of the earth. If I have to keep running with you until there's no breath left in us."

At three or thereabouts, the phone rang. For a moment it struck fear into her, and she knew it did into him too, by the way he held back, refrained from answering it at once.

Then when he had, she knew he was still afraid by the low, cautious sound his voice had.

"Hello?" he said. Then he listened. Then he released his breath in relief. "Yes, of course," he said then, and hung up.

"The doctor's on his way up," he told her.

"I'd forgotten him!" she exclaimed.

"I had too," he admitted.

There was a three or four minute wait. They were both extremely nervous.

"It seems to take him a long time to get up here," he remarked.

"The elevator may have kept him waiting."

She heard him go to the door, open it, knew he must be looking out expectantly.

He closed it, came in again.

Coins jingled, as if he were holding one hand in pocket, shaking it impatiently.

"I'm going to find out what's hap--" he started to say impetuously and strode over to the phone. She heard him pick it up.

At that moment the belated knock sounded at the door.

She took two or three quick steps, found a chair, sank down upon it; she clutched the seat of it in a sort of desperate intensity, holding it underneath at the sides.

"Does he know? Did you tell him?" she whispered.

"I had to. Otherwise he would have made you go to him, instead of coming to you"

The door opened.

"I got off at the wrong floor--" a sonorous voice began.

She heard a catch to Ward's breath.

"Oh--you're somebody else."

"I came in Dr. Conroy's place. He found he couldn't get away after all. You know how it is, he's got plenty of work on his hands."

There was no answer from Ward.

The would-be entrant must have caught something from the look on his face, hoewever. There was a trace of stiffness in his voice as it next sounded. "I'm just as experienced at giving these shots as he is. There's nothing to them really. Here are my credentials." And then in implicit reproof, "You know, we don't do this sort of thing as a rule. You have to come and get your shots where everyone else does. 'We made an exception in your case, because of the circumstances."

"I appreciate that," Ward said a trifle sheepishly (she thought). "Come in, doctor."

The door closed. The weight of leather went down on a chair seat, with a sort of creaky squash.

"This the young lady?"

She tightened her grip on the underpart of her chair.

"Yes, doctor, this is my wife."

"How do you do?" she said, and aimed her eyes directly at where the voice had last come from. She must have misled him. He must have come closer, passed his hand before her eyes, testing her. Something like that.

She heard Ward say quietly, "Don't you believe me, doctor?"

"I beg your pardon," the doctor answered him contritely. As if he did now. A latch clicked open. He resumed his professional briskness of manner. "Is there some hot water here? I want to wash first."

He left the room. Ward came closer, put an arm to her shoulders, drew her head to him momentarily, as if to instil courage.

"It's all right," she whispered. "I'm not frightened. Not a bit."

The doctor's tread sounded again. Ward stepped away from her. "I'm going to take mine first, doctor." He must have bared his arm.

"I understand," the doctor said. "But don't you think it's kinder not to make her wait?" Whether he made some sign to him, implying he would do it suddenly and spare her the suspense of anticipation, she could not tell. Whether Ward nodded his head in agreement, she could not tell.

"Give me your hand, dear," Ward said quietly. It was given relaxed, but then he held her arm slightly bent, so that it was taut. The sleeves of her dress were almost non-existent. Cool moist cotton dabbed at her skin. She only had time to promise herself, "I will not show anything." Then there was a sudden shooting pain. The pain was not too much, it seemed to be the violence of the thrust itself that was harder to bear. As if he'd been unnecessarily rough, though probably he hadn't, it had to be done that way.

Then pain a second time, going in the opposite direction. Another dab of grateful cotton, this time left on. "Just hold that there for a few seconds."

"Did I show anything?" she whispered vaingloriously to Ward, as he bent to touch his lips solicitously to her forehead for a moment.

Ward took his next. She heard him give a sudden, small-boyish yelp of pain. She wondered whether he'd done it purposely, for her to hear, as an oblique compliment to her on her own courage. Or whether, like many another man who can be capable of great stoicism in meeting physical torture when it's required of him, he was at the same time afraid of little hurts. Whichever it was, she loved him for it equally.

"You're worse than she was," the doctor chuckled. She smiled a little. Ward may have winked at him. Perhaps that was the effect he had wanted to achieve. "Now I'll just sign this, it's yours. You'll have to show it before they let you go aboard."

The door closed, the doctor was gone.

The fear that struck them both was strangely dilatory; it didn't manifest itself for another ten minutes after he'd left.

He was sitting perched on the arm of her chair, his own arm about her. "How is it?" he asked. "Do you feel anything now?"

She didn't answer the question. Almost as though she hadn't heard it.

He reached for her hand. At its touch, his voice rose in alarm. "What is it? Martine! Your hand's like ice." He sprang up from the arm of her chair, but without releasing her hand. Then he stood there stock-still, as the same thought struck him, whether transmitted from her or born of itself.

"But you're shaking too, as you hold my hand," she remonstrated. "I can feel it."

"Are you thinking the same thing I am?"

"I'm afraid so," she winced, trying to control the nervous shudders that ran through her. "That he-- That he may have been--"

"So am I," he admitted strickenly. "Now that it's too late."

And now they were on a ship, coursing deep water, crossing an ocean between two worlds. The eternal darkness was still all around her, but there was a sense of spaciousness with it now, of emptiness, of remoteness. The air smelt of salt and iodine. There was a very soft but continuous hissing audIble outside the windows, like water falling from a garden sprinkler. From the opposite direction, for the door, the chary times it was unlocked and briefly allowed to open, came the rather brackish odor of rubber corridor matting. And once in awhile, but not very often, there was a creak from a joint of woodwork. Above all, there was a slow, rolling motion from side to side. Very soothing, very restful, not at all abrupt. You soon grew used to it and forgot that there was any other way for things to be: perfectly rigid and unyielding and still . This was better by far. You let your body go with it, slightly over, and then come back with it, slightly back; and it was like being in a very gentle, very lulling, swing.

And there was always Allen, close beside you, scarcely leaving you at all. With every knot came greater safety until finally safety would become the absolute and not the comparative any longer.

He took no chances, however. Though death had missed the boat, though this little floating iron world was cut off from the other world, and no harm could come to them here, he took no chances. They had come too far, and been through too much, to foolishly throw away their gains now.

The door, the one door to their suite, stayed locked all night while she slept in the inner room, and he stayed in the outer one on a bed that came down out of the wall. Then at nine there would be a knock from the steward, but no steward was ever let in. He would wait for him to go away again, and then draw their breakfast tray in himself after careful reconnoitering, the way he had on the train.

At eleven or so, another knock. This time the stewardess. They admitted her; she was the only member of the ship's personnel they gave entry to. But she never saw Martine. He'd have her retire to the private bath that went with their suite before he let the woman in. She would only emerge again after the outer door had been locked behind the stewardess. And in the interim, he always lingered close beside the bath door, ready to forestall any attempt at sudden entry. The stewardess must have known there was a woman occupying the quarters with him; there were enough mute evidences of that lying about every day. But she'd never yet set eyes on her. She couldn't have described her. Above all, she had no inkling that the phantom in question was blind. No one on the entire ship did. He'd brought her aboard in the dead of night; and from that moment on no eyes but his own had fallen upon her.

She could not even persuade him to leave the suite himself; to go up on deck for a breath of air or to stretch his legs. He would not leave her side for a single instant. "Not," he said obdurately, "until after--a certain date has passed."

She knew what date he meant. She didn't have to be told.

He'd brought along a little battery radio, picked it up in San Francisco just before they left; cleverly contrived, as they were making them now, to look like a piece of luggage. That helped them pass the time away.

The weather got warmer, and then it was Honolulu. She woke up and the ship was motionless. She missed the soothing sway. There was a good deal of trampling about audible in the corridor outside, as baggage and people were readied to disembark. Then after a quarter of an hour or so, things settled down again. The ship became still with that unearthly stillness of ships in port. It was like--death. Or waiting for something to happen.

They were both more tense and keyed-up than they had been while out in the open sea. Danger was nudging the ship here. Danger was a pier thrusting itself out from shore to meet it. Danger was a bridge that could be crossed over to it.

It told on him finally. "I'm uneasy," he admitted. "I'm going up for a minute and look around. I can't stand this. I won't go far, and I'll be right back." He left his gun with her this time, instead of taking it with him. He locked the door after him and took the key with him.

It was just as well that he'd made the excursion.

Within a very short time she heard his key clash hurriedly in the lock and he'd come in again.

She could tell he was alarmed.

"What is it?"

"Hawaiian police officials," he whispered. "They've come aboard and they're making a cabin to cabin search for you. Cameron must have wired a warning from the coast."

"What'll we do? We're trapped in here. Where can I hide?"

"You can't hide. That won't do. We're both down on the passenger list and must be accounted for." He raked fingers through his hair distractedly, and glanced around at the door. "We haven't much time either. They're already at the upper end of the corridor, working down this way. The steward let the cat out of the bag; I happened to run into him out there luckily. I've been tipping him well and he's the talkative kind anyway."