Free The Golden Rendezvous by Alistair MacLean

danger."
    "Ha!" I said. "You don't believe me?" still the same small voice, still the hand on my arm. "Of course I believe you," I said unconvincingly. And then I looked into her eyes, which was a big mistake and a very dangerous thing to do, for those green eyes, I noticed for the first time, had a curious trick of melting and dissolving that could interfere very seriously with a man's breathing.
    It was certainly interfering with my breathing. "Of course I believe you," I repeated, and this time the ring of conviction staggered even myself. "You will please forgive my rudeness. But I must hurry, miss beresford."
    "Can I come with you, please?"
    "Oh, damn it all, yes," I said irritably. I'd managed to look away from her eyes and start breathing again. "Come if you want." at the forward end of the passageway, just beyond the entrance to cerdan's suite, I ran into carreras senior. He was smoking a cigar and had that look of contentment and satisfaction that passengers invariably had when
    antoine was finished with them. "Ah, there you are, mr. carter," he said. "Wondered why you hadn't returned to our table. What is wrong, if I may ask? there must be at least a dozen of the crew gathered outside the accommodation entrance. I thought regulations forbade
    "they're waiting for me, sir. Benson you probably haven't had the chance to meet him since you came aboard; he's our chief steward's missing. That's a search party outside."
    "Missing?" the grey eyebrows went up. "What on earth -well, of course you haven't any idea what has happened to him or you wouldn't be organising this search. Can I help?" I hesitated, thought of miss beresford who had already elbowed her way in, realised i'd now no way of stopping any or all of the passengers from getting into the act if they wanted to, and said, "thank you, mr. carreras. You don't look like a man who would miss very much."
    "We come from the same mould, mr. carter." I let this cryptic remark go and hurried outside. A cloudless night, with the sky crowded with the usual impossible number of stars, a soft, warm wind blowing out of the south, a moderate cross swell running, but no match for our dennybrown stabilisers that could knock twenty-five degrees off a thirty-degree roll without half trying. A black shape detached itself from a nearby shadowed bulkhead and archie macdonald, the bo'sun, came
    towards me. For all his solid fifteen-stone bulk he was as light on his feet as a dancer. "Any luck, bo'sun?" I asked. "No one saw anything; no one heard anything. And there were at least a dozen folk on deck tonight, between eight and nine."
    "Mr. wilson there? ah, there. Mr. wilson, take the engine room staff and three a.b.s. Main deck and below. You should know where to look by this time," I added bitterly. "Macdonald, you and I will do the upper decks. Port side you, starboard side me. Two seamen and a cadet.
    Half an hour. Then back here." I sent one man to examine the boat positions-why benson should have wished to get into a boat I couldn't even imagine, except that lifeboats have always had a queer attraction for those who wished to hide, although why he should wish to hide I couldn't guess either-and another to scour the superstructure abaft the bridge. I started going through the cabins on the boat deck, chart house, flag and radar cabins and had mr. carreras to help me. Rusty, our youngest apprentice, went aft to work his way forward, accompanied by miss beresford who had probably guessed, and rightly, that I was in no mood for her company. But rusty was. He always was. Nothing that susan beresford said to or about him made the slightest difference to him. He was her slave and didn't care who knew it. If she'd asked him to jump down the funnel, just for her sake, he'd have considered it an honour. I could just imagine him searching about the upper decks with susan beresford by his side, his face the same colour as his flaming shock of hair. As I stepped out of the radar office I