Free Redcap by Philip McCutchan Page B

purposeful look back in his flat, he said with thin-lipped bitterness: “You’d planned this from
    the start, hadn’t you! You’ve no right—”
    “No right? Of course I’ve a right!” Judith Donovan’s dark eyes flashed up at him angrily. She pushed her hair away from her forehead, gave her head a determined little toss. “I can go just where I please, and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it. There.” She opened her handbag, produced a folder similar to the one Latymer had given Shaw. “Here’s the carbon of my ticket. Naples to Sydney. It’s fully paid for, and my passport’s in order.” The girl’s eyes glistened a little as she went on, “There was money in my name at the bank and there was no reason why I shouldn’t come.”
    Shaw sighed in exasperated fury, clenched his fists, relaxed them. This was a difficult young woman to get angry with, especially in the circumstances of that night in France so short a while ago. He swallowed his anger, told her to sit down. He stood over her, asked:
    “Don’t you realize this game’s dangerous?”
    “Yes, of course I do.”
    “You’ll be mucking up my chances of finding anything out.”
    She said defensively, “No, I won’t. I needn’t even know you at first. If we happen to get friendly on board . . . well, that’s quite natural, isn’t it, aboard a liner?” Suddenly, Shaw thought with a pang, she sounded forlorn again, alone and friendless. She went on, “I . . . want to be in on this all the way now, Commander Shaw. My father was going to do what he could to help, and—well, I suppose I just want to carry on, that’s all.” She looked up at him appealingly, her small, serious face framed by that darkly curling hair. “You’re not really angry, are you?”
    He answered heatedly. “Of course I am! You’re being damned inconvenient and thoughtless, if you want to know what I think—and that’s putting it mildly. You deserve to be spanked within an inch of your life!” He walked up and down, stopped and swung round on her. “How did you get away? I thought my chief had put a man on you and Debonnair.”
    “Yes, he had,” she agreed in a dead tone. “But I’m used to that sort of thing and I slipped him without any trouble. They’ll only just about be ticking over that I’ve gone— Debonnair had to go away for a night and she won’t know till she gets back from her office. The man thinks I’m in the flat at Albany Street.” She turned to him impulsively. “Don’t you see? I’m not just any girl! I know this business a little. Maybe I can help. I want to.”
    “Help!” he repeated bitterly. “All you’re going to do is to draw attention to me, if there’s anybody aboard who knows you’re John Donovan’s daughter.”
    She said quietly, “They won’t know that. I’m Judith Dan-gan. The only people Daddy ever let me meet were his own friends, and they knew me as Donovan. I always went back to that name when I was with Daddy.”
    Shaw grunted. “Tell me something else, then. How did you know I was coming here?”
    She said simply, “I guessed. You see, I knew—what was aboard the liner.”
    Shaw went rigid. “You . . . what? ”
    “Karstad told Daddy that.”
    “For God’s sake—how many other people know?”
    “I can’t tell you that. I expect only Karstad, and whoever he got it from. That was what Daddy told me.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”
    She gave him a quick look. “Because I meant to come, and I thought if you knew I knew, you’d find a way of stopping me.”
    Shaw’s face was white and grim now. He said through his teeth, “You’re an irresponsible little fool.” He took her arm, asked roughly: “D’you know anything else, while we’re about it?”
    She shook her head. “That’s all I ever found out. Daddy let that slip. Normally he never told me anything. But he was ... he wasn’t himself after Karstad came.”
    “Did you ever meet Karstad?”
    “No.