Singing in the Shrouds Read Online Free PDF Page B

moved out of the Thames estuary with a murderer on board.
    Captain Jasper Bannerman stood on the bridge with the pilot. He would be up all night. Their job was an ancient one and though they had radar and wireless to serve them, their thoughts as they peered into the blank shiftiness of the fog were those of their remote predecessors. An emergency warning had come through with its procession of immemorial names — Dogger, Dungeness, Outer Hebrides, Scapa Flow, Portland Bill, and the Goodwin Sands. “She’s a corker,” said the pilot alluding to the fog. “Proper job she’s making of it.”
    The voices of invisible shipping, hollow and desolate, sounded at uneven distances. Time passed very slowly.
    At two-thirty the wireless officer came to the bridge with two messages.
    “I thought I’d bring these up myself, sir,” he said, referring obliquely to his cadet. “They’re in code. Urgent.”
    Captain Kannerman said, “All right. You might wait, will you?” and went into his room. He got out his code book and deciphered the messages. After a considerable interval he called out, “Sparks.”
    The wireless officer tucked his cap under his arm, entered the captain’s cabin and shut the door.
    “This is a damned perishing bloody turn-up,” Captain Bannerman said. The wireless officer waited, trying not to look expectant. Captain Bannerman walked over to the starboard porthole and silently re-read the decoded messages. The first was from the managing director of the Cape Line Company:
     
    VERY SECRET STOP DIRECTORS COMPLIMENTS STOP CONFIDENT YOU WILL SHOW EVERY COURTESY TO SUPERINTENDENT ALLEYN BOARDING YOU OFF PORTSMOUTH BY PILOT CUTTER STOP WILL TRAVEL AS PASSENGER STOP SUGGEST USES PILOTS ROOM STOP PLEASE KEEP ME PERSONALLY ADVISED ALL DEVELOPMENTS STOP YOUR COMPANY RELIES ON YOUR DISCRETION AND JUDGMENT STOP CAMERON STOP MESSAGE ENDS.
     
    Captain Bannerman made an indeterminate but angry noise and re-read the second message.
     
    URGENT IMMEDIATE AND CONFIDENTIAL STOP SUPERINTENDENT R ALLEYN WILL BOARD YOU OFF PORTSMOUTH BY PILOT CUTTER STOP HE WILL EXPLAIN NATURE OF PROBLEM STOP THIS DEPARTMENT IS IN COMMUNICATION WITH YOUR COMPANY STOP C A MAJORIE-BANKS ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DEPARTMENT SCOTLAND YARD MESSAGE ENDS
     
    “I’ll give you the replies,” Captain Bannerman said, glaring at his subordinate. “Same for both! ‘Instructions received and noted Bannerman.’ And you’ll oblige me, Sparks, by keeping the whole thing under your cap.”
    “Certainly, sir.”
    “Dead under.”
    “Certainly, sir.”
    “Very well.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    When the wireless officer had gone Captain Bannerman remained in a sort of scandalized trance for half a minute and then returned to the bridge.
    Throughout the rest of the night he gave the matter in hand, which was the pilotage of his ship through the worst fog for ten years, his sharpest attention. At the same time and on a different level, he speculated about his passengers. He had caught glimpses of them from the bridge. Like every man who so much as glanced at her, he had received a very positive impression of Mrs. Dillington-Blick. A fine woman. He had also noticed Brigid Carmichael, who came under the general heading of Sweet Young Girl and who would, as they approached the tropics, probably cause a ferment among his officers. At another level he was aware of, and disturbed by, the two radiograms. Why the suffering cats, he angrily wondered, should he have to take in at the last second a plain-clothes detective? His mind ranged through an assortment of possible reasons. Stowaway? Escaping criminal? Wanted man in the crew? Perhaps merely a last-minute assignment at Las Palmas, but if so, why didn’t the fellow fly? It would be an infernal bore to have to put him up; in the pilot’s room of all places, where one would be perpetually aware of his presence. At four o’clock, the time of low vitality, Captain Bannerman was visited by a