The Poseidon Adventure (16 page)

She was on the verge of floundering off when Scott reached out and caught her. 'No, Jane, no!' he said. 'Not yet. We mustn't separate. Wait.'

'Let me go!' Jane shrieked, her voice rising to hysteria level. 'Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!'

'Jane, you can't!' her husband cried and too, clung to her wildly thrashing figure. 'Pull yourself together! We must do as Frank says. It will be hopeless in the dark.'

Scott said, 'We can't do anything in the dark. There's a Fire Station up the line. Këmal pointed it out to me just as the lights went out. There ought to be some lamps there. There's got to be. Let me have a couple of your lighters and I'll take Kemal with me. Give me a few minutes, Jane, and we'll have a chance of finding him. I beg of you not to do anything foolish.'

'Frank is right,' Shelby said.

With a sudden low, stinging bitterness in her voice, Jane said, 'Frank is always right,' and then giving way to pure hysterics shouted at the top of her lungs, 'I want my boy! Can't you understand? I want my boy!'

Susan took her in her arms crying, 'Mummy, Mummy! We'll find him. He'll be all right. He can't be very far away.' But within her she was badly frightened.

Shelby, his voice shaking, said, 'We'd better save the lights,' and snapped off his. Matches were blown out and they were in the darkness again, except for the two sparks of Scott and Kemal the Turk, moving off aft, lighting their way down the corridor.

Eventually the thin, gas flame glinted from a polished steel handrail and a brass plate knee-high, attached to the upsidedown threshold on a door which, right-side up, read, FIRE STATION'. Scott paused to orient himself for a moment. The room was below the level of the ceiling on which he was walking, the Fire Station originally having been located up a short staircase leading upwards from the alley.

He made Kemal understand that he wanted him to remain there at the top. He took both the lighters, putting one in his pocket and shone the other for a moment on the railing until he had memorized its position, shape and layout. Then, extinguishing the light, he leaped and half slid, half worked his way down hand over hand.

He snapped on both his lighters and held them aloft to identify upside-down fire extinguishing gear, oxygen equipment, asbestos suits, fire axes, helmets, foam dispensers and the electronic panels which would illuminate the instant the temperature from a fire rose in any part of the ship, to reveal its location. Then, close by the door he had a momentary glimpse of a cylinder of black rubber. He snatched at it, but it would not come away until he remembered to lift it in the opposite direction from which it was hanging. He pressed the button at the side of the object and a yellow shaft of light from the waterproofed torch cut through the gloom.

At the top, the Turk peered down and shouted, 'Hoi! Good! More! More! Much more.'

Aided by the single torch, Scott located what he was looking and hoping for, a cache of treasure trove: half a dozen powerful, emergency fire-fighting lanterns for use in areas where normal lighting had been short circuited, and a further stock of waterproof hand torches, encased in rubber. The lanterns threw a beam as powerful as a small searchlight. They were heavy with their large, dry-cell batteries, but came equipped with straps in addition to the carrying handle which enabled them to be fastened to the back of a fire-fighter, leaving his hands free.

He shouted up, 'Okay, Kemal! We're home!'

There was rope in the Fire Station as well, to enable Scott to attach six of the large lanterns, one at a time and then bundles of hand torches for the Turk to draw up. The Minister had a last look round for anything which might prove useful, but beyond more of the nylon lifeline which he looped and hung around his neck, he saw nothing. He leaped for the rail, pulled himself aloft and rejoined his companion. They divided up the burden between them, extinguished all but two hand torches and started back.

Some thirty yards away, the waiting party caught sight of the glow of their torches. Shelby said, 'Thank God, they've found light!'

Miss Kinsale breathed, 'Amen!'

CHAPTER XIII

Susan

The Minister was excited, exhilarated, triumphant. He said, 'We're a cinch to make it now. If we use these sparingly, they ought to last.'

The Beamer murmured, 'Bit of luck.'

Scott's voice became suddenly truculent, 'We'd have made it without these, just the same. Do you think I'd have given up?' And then he asked almost as an afterthought, 'Has the boy come back?'

Martin said, 'No.'

Jane, shivering, cried, 'Oh, hurry, hurry! Give me one of those. Give me one now.'

Scott snapped on one of the hand torches. The glow caught him under the chin and brought the handsome face into relief and Muller thought for a moment that he looked faintly irritated.

'Yes, yes,' he answered her, 'we'll find him. We'll split up; a search-party and the others to remain here as a base, in case the boy should reappear while we're looking. He might have been only momentarily knocked out.'

Linda Rogo protested, 'Count me out. I'm tired and my leg hurts.'

'Gimme a flashlight,' Rogo said, 'I'll go.'

His wife snapped, 'Boy Scout!'

Scott nodded, 'Take one of the lanterns. I trust your eyes to see things others might miss.

'That's big of you,' Rogo said.

'Okay, then, Jane, Dick and Susan, Rogo, Martin, the Turk and myself. Hubie, Nonnie and Miss Kinsale might stay here, and Mr and Mrs Rosen -- both of you need a rest.'

He distributed lanterns to Rogo, Shelby and Kemal, keeping one for himself, and to Jane, Susan and Martin and Kemal he gave hand torches. The Turk, suddenly bewildered, was unable to understand what was happening and Scott had to make him understand with pantomime.

Again Muller caught the look of annoyance on Scott's face. The Minister was not pleased. Muller saw him steal a quick glance at his wrist-watch before he said, 'Come on, then, let's go. Jane, can you show us exactly where it was you left him?'

Jane said, a little uncertainly, 'It was, I think, that way -- down there,' and she pointed towards the bow. 'I'm sure I could find it again. But when I left him I didn't notice how far I'd come before I met Miss Kinsale. She and I were together when the lights went out and . . .' Her breath came with a sudden catch, as she said, 'Oh dear, there was a woman -- over there.'

Scott pointed his heavy lantern. He went over and knelt by the figure of a woman, a stewardess in white overalls, who was lying face down, her head wedged in between two pipes. He examined her briefly and then re- turned shaking his head.

Rogo beamed his lantern down the corridor and said, 'Jesus! Look at 'em!'

They found the body of a messman whose throat had been trampled and the remains of the drunken fat man who had fallen with his bottle of Johnnie Walker. His spine was broken. There was a man with a shattered leg and a mangled hand who lay moaning, and another with his arm twisted around almost to his back, palm up. He was unconscious. There was no other living being to be seen in the long alley.

Jane said, 'I'm sorry, I can't wait,' and never remembered how she had hated the Minister for his seemingly callous abandoning of the injured.

Scott agreed, 'Yes. Time's running out. Besides, there isn't anything we can do for them.'

It took them longer than Jane ever would have expected. It was her first encounter with places one has seen that suddenly disappear until one loses all trust in one's own judgement. The trouble was her confused recollection of the distance and the fact that she forgot to play her light downwards and not upwards in search of the brass, 'W.C.' Once little Martin was heard to say, 'Oh, oh!' and the mother's heart leaped half with dread and half with hope as she cried, 'What have you found?'

His light had picked up the liquor storeroom where, amidst the jumbled cases of name brand spirits, sequestered in a kind of alcove made by the boxes, Pamela Reid sat crosslegged with the head of The Beamer in her lap. She was staring straight before her. The Beamer was unconscious. The place stank like a distillery. The girl did not even look up or speak when the lights flashed upon her. The fingers of one hand were moving, gently touching some of The Beamer's sparse hair.

'Paralysed,' Rogo said.

'It was here,' they heard Jane call, and they all went down to the alleyway where she pointed out the W.C. 'I'm certain of it.'

There was no one there. The alley where the W.C. was located was a dead end with no stairs and only storerooms for cased goods on either side: soaps, detergents, washing powders, cleaning materials.

Jane struggled to control herself, 'What could have happened to him? Where is he?'

Her husband comforted her. 'Don't worry. He can't have gone far.' He turned to Kemal and queried, 'Where are the stairs -- the others? Where does this lead to? What's become of all the others? Where can the boy have got to?'

But the Turk did not understand.

'The mob was going both ways,' Rogo said. 'It's a wonder more weren't killed or hurt.'

'Didn't anybody hear anything?' Martin queried, 'Didn't the kid call out?'

Shelby said, 'In all that racket and pounding? God knows, he might have cried out, but none of us heard him.'

Martin thought:
Everybody thinks or says, or uses the word 'God' except this minister.

Scott said to Rogo, 'This is your kind of job. You handle it.'

Jane addressed herself to Rogo, 'What ought we to do? Where ought we to look? Which way should we go?' The fact that he was a policeman, in some way would make his advice more trenchant.

Rogo replied, 'Spread out. Break up. Not everybody together.' He was remembering searching parties in the parks or outskirts of New York for kidnapped or missing children, the line of men strung out a hundred yards across a field, moving slowly, their eyes cast down, half willing, half unwilling to be the first to stumble across a mutilated little body.

But this was not that kind of hunt or a place where that kind of tactic could profitably be employed. If the boy had been trampled to death, they should have found his remains near by; if he was still alive and had been swept away, caught up in the panic of that throng, well then, it called for a thorough search of every exit and entrance.

Scott said, 'We must hurry. There may not be too much time left for any of us, unless we get on.'

Jane Shelby turned on him and said, 'Are you serious? Not too much time left to find my boy?'

Scott did not reply and Shelby interposed, 'Frank didn't mean it that way, Mother. We mustn't lose our heads.'

'Will you keep yours, if we don't find our son?' She was beginning to shake again. Her face had turned into such a mask of fury that her husband was taken aback and could only say, 'Why, Jane!'

Rogo said, 'Ma'am, don't excite yourself. Maybe he got scared when all that running around happened, ducked behind something and went to sleep. You never know with kids. We'll start here at the middle and work both ways. We'll look down every alley, see? If a door is shut, I wouldn't bother. He wouldn't have been able to reach up to open it. Anywhere a door is open, he could have crawled inside. Look for staircases. Holler! The kid's got a head on his shoulders. He wouldn't be going down, would he? He knows we're trying to get up.'

Susan Shelby answered, 'Supposing he was knocked or dragged down? Where did all the others disappear in the dark?'

'Yeah, yeah,' Rogo said, 'but we needn't talk about that yet, do we?' From habit he was resorting to the policeman's heavy tact employed when there was almost a certainty that a tragedy was involved.

Susan said, 'I'm going to look down there.'

Her father asked anxiously, 'Where? By yourself? Oughtn't someone to be with you?'

The girl said, 'I don't need anyone to come with me. I know the way. Let me go, Daddy.' She wanted to be the one to find Robin.

Rogo gave her a quick glance. She was sturdy and self-possessed. He said, 'Okay, it won't hurt to take a look. She'll be all right. Work the alleys on your way back and we'll join up with you. Martin, why don't you and Shelby start checking both sides down from here? Scott, maybe you'd better go back to the other end with this monkey,' indicating Kemal, 'in case they ran the kid up in that direction.' Then he said to Jane, 'Ma'am, you and I will just have a good look around here, in case maybe we come across . . .' He hesitated, 'Well, say something you could identify, or anything and if one of the others should pick him up or need help, we'll be handy. Okay?'

Scott nodded and glanced at his watch again. Jane Shelby asked with chilling emphasis, 'What time is it, Dr Scott?'

He replied, 'It's a quarter to twelve.'

'And bow much time have you allotted to the finding of my child?'

Scott ignored the direct question and said, 'We'll do as Rogo says.' He had accepted the detective's dispositions without argument. 'He knows his stuff. If the boy is anywhere about, we'll locate him.' He tapped Kemal on the shoulder and the two set off to explore the area aft.

Susan picked her way carefully, throwing the beam of her torch ahead and from side to side, to make certain that no little form lay wedged between these rows of pipes to which she had now almost become accustomed as normal flooring. From time to time as she passed one of the alleyways leading off from both the left and right of Broadway, since she had now progressed beyond both the centre shaft and the forward funnel, she would illuminate it momentarily but did not yet investigate it.

She was deeply troubled. An image had formed itself in her mind: that of her brother lying dead at the foot of the wall they had climbed from the deck below. She envisioned him spilled over with the panic-stricken rabble, trampled and lifeless. This image drew her on and it was there she felt compulsion to look first, to dispel it and see for herself that it was not true.

There were other things only half suspected that added to her distress and it had nothing to do with fear of death, because she was yet too close to birth -- seventeen scant, joyous, growing up years -- even to think upon death or not being there, not breathing, seeing, smelling, tasting, being a part of something very wonderful which was living. It was a curious premonition, a hint of disintegration in her family.

Her brother had disappeared, which was loss sufficient. What if he were never found again, and in the end they were rescued? What did you do when someone like Robin was wiped out of your life? What would her mother do? And her father?

She said to herself and to others that she loved her brother; she loved her parents. But she did not know of what that love was compounded. Sometimes Robin was a little beast and they fought and tried to hurt each other and once he had almost broken her finger. Love of her mother was in a way an emulation of the kind of person she was and the kind of person Susan wanted to be -- calm, smooth, chic, soft-spoken, desirable. She admired her father and his rugged features.

The boy with whom she had kissed and necked once or twice on the sofa in the dark and whose hand for the first time had touched her breast, stirring her simultaneously to longing and abysmal fright, had been hawk-faced and lean, a track man, a sprinter. He was nervous, temperamental and explosive and she remembered at meets when the gun cracked, how he burst off the mark with such violent expenditure of energy that he had the race won within the first five yards. It was there too, in the touch of his hand upon her breasts, a breathless danger moment of impetuosity which she had dampened, controlled and escaped, for that was not the way she had wanted it. Shortly after they had quarrelled and she had broken up with him, for although he was attractive, he was unbearably egotistical. But the message had been delivered; the summons to awaken, and often afterwards she had wondered what it would be like, when it happened and with whom.

Brother, mother, father, love, liking, habit -- what was an emotion? What was anything? What was more sure than the security and cohesion of her family and the pleasant life they all led together? Susan could not even remember so much as a quarrel or even an exchange of words between her father and mother.

Yet the disappearance of Robin had set something to grating in her mother other than worry and distraction, something Susan had felt rather than seen and did not understand, nor had she ever encountered it before, something curiously abrasive.

The girl left the others behind. When she turned around she could see the movement of their lights and once one of the big, emergency lanterns carried by either Rogo or one of the other men, blazed down the length of the alleyway to pick her up and throw her shadow outlined upon the bulkhead at the end of the passage, a young thing in a short frock, her hair curving away from her face on either side of her head. Then the big light was turned from her and she was again enshrouded by darkness except for the pathway she cut with her own torch. She saw that she had reached the edge of the companionway out of which they had climbed and wondered whether she would have the courage to look down.

She flashed the beam to the deck below and saw no one; no human being living or dead; nothing but an oily film of water. The implication of this did not strike her, so relieved was she at the banishment of the certainty of that image she had conceived. Wherever her brother might be he had not died there.

The next step, then, was to follow directions and carefully search each alleyway. She did not know exactly what she thought of Rogo, for he and his wife were so completely alien to her. She despised Linda for her cheapness and beastliness and Rogo for his curious mixture of meekness and brutality towards her. But the very fact that they were both so far removed from her sphere made it less puzzling. Perhaps that was what those people inhabiting a world with which she never came in contact were like. On the other hand, when it came to arranging a search for someone missing, the common little man with the turned-down eyelids and strange manner of speech seemed to know what he was doing and somehow even had defined her need to go on her mission to find her brother by herself.