Free The Dark Crusader by Alistair MacLean Page A

worrying about. She went away and I pressed close to the deckhead.
    All I could hear at first was a violently loud tinny rattling against the ventilator, a rattling that grew more violent and persistent with every second that passed. Rain, and very heavy rain at that: it sounded like rain that meant to keep going on for a long time. Both Fleck and I would be happy about that.
    And then I heard Fleck's voice. First the patter of hurrying footsteps, then his voice. I guessed that he was standing just inside the doorway of the wireless cabin.
    "Time you got your earphones on, Henry." The voice had a reverberating and queerly metallic timbre from its passage down the funnel-shaped ventilator, but was perfectly plain. "Just on schedule."
    "Six minutes yet, boss." Henry, seated at the radio table, must have been five feet away from Fleck, yet his voice was hardly less distinct: the ventilator's amplifying effects were as good as that.
    "Doesn't matter. Tune in."
    I strained my ear against that ventilator until it seemed to me that I was about halfway up it, but I heard nothing further. After a couple of minutes I felt a tug at my sleeve.
    "All done," she said in a low voice. "Here's the torch."
    "Right." I jumped down, helped her up and murmured: "For heaven's sake don't move from there. Our friend Henry's listening in for the final word right now."
    I had little enough left to do and three or four minutes saw me all through. I stuffed a blanket inside the cellophane bag and tied the neck securely: that made me the complete optimist. There were an awful lot of 'its' attached to that blanket. If we managed to break open the hatch, if we managed to get off the schooner without too many bullet holes in us, if we didn't subsequently drown, if we weren't eaten alive by sharks or barracuda or whatever else took a fancy to us during the hours of darkness, if that island were far away from our jumping-off point or, worse, didn't exist at all, then it seemed like a good idea to have a water-soaked blanket to ward off sunstroke. But I didn't want to have to cope with its waterlogged dead weight during the night: hence the cellophane bag. I tied the bag on to one of the drums and had just finished stowing some clothes and cigarettes inside the same drum when Marie came aft and stood beside me.
    She said without preamble and in a quiet still voice, not scared: "They don't need us any more."
    "Well, at least all my preparations haven't been wasted. They discussed it?"
    "Yes. They might have been discussing the weather: I think you're wrong about Fleck, he's not worried about doing away with anyone. From the way he talked it was just an interesting problem. Henry asked him how they were going to get rid of us and Fleck said: 'Let's do it nice and quiet and civilized. We'll tell them that the boss has changed his mind. We'll tell them they're to be delivered to him as soon as possible. We'll forget and forgive, we'll take them up to the cabin for a drink, slip them the knockout drops then ease them soft and gently over the side.'"
    "A charming fellow. We drown peacefully and even if we do wash up somewhere there'll be no bullet holes to start people asking questions."
    "But a post-mortem can always show the presence of poison or narcotics-"
    "Any post-mortem carried out on us," I interrupted heavily, "could be made without the doctor taking his hands from his pockets. If there are no broken bones you can't determine anything about the cause of death from a couple of nice clean shiny skeletons which would be all that was left after the denizens of the deep had finished with us. Or maybe the sharks eat bones, too: I wouldn't know."
    "Do you have to talk like that?" she asked coldly.
    "I'm only trying to cheer myself up." I handed her a couple of lifebelts. "Adjust the shoulder straps so that you can wear them both round your waist, one above the other. Be careful that you don't strike the CO2 release accidentally. Wait till you are in the water