The Maggie Read Online Free PDF Page B

executives came out, self-consciously, like schoolboys who had felt the cane. Pusey’swild stare followed them across the office, then back again as the intercommunication set on Miss Peters’ desk clicked to authority. ‘Send Pusey in.’
    The sound of his master’s voice seemed to fill Pusey with almost animal terror. His lips trembled. His eyes bulged. Blindly putting the receiver down on Miss Peters’ desk he stumbled across the room towards Marshall’s office, and Campbell’s laughter followed him like a banshee call from another world.
    On first sight Calvin B. Marshall was the man that Pusey had always imagined him to be – fierce, cruel, utterly ruthless, yet on watching him dispassionately you could see from the eyes and the sudden unexpected quirk to the mouth that he was a man of humour, possibly even kindliness. He waited at his desk impatiently – for he had just given a justifiable rebuke to three senior executives – and to Pusey he seemed like a Grand Inquisitor ready to begin the torture. On the mahogany top of his desk lay the evidence of his authority – a welter of papers, graphs and charts, some silver-plated trophies, including a model of a four-engined World International Airways aircraft. There was also a large leather frame holding a photograph of his wife.
    In a querulous voice Pusey began his tale of woe. He was so near to tears that Marshall had difficulty in understanding exactly what had happened.
    â€˜. . . and he gave me his signature!’ Pusey cried.
    â€˜Well?’
    â€˜He signed the inventory.’
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜So naturally I – I chartered the boat.’
    â€˜And?’
    Pusey burst out, with rising hysteria, ‘They weren’t who they said they were. And Campbell says the cargo’s not on the boat, it’s in Glasgow, and the man I spoke to – he hasn’t a boat at all, but something called a Puffer! And instead of being well on its way to Kiltarra it was stuck on the subway, and not even the right boat . . .’
    â€˜Just a moment!’ Calvin B. Marshall was quite calm, but he was looking as though he feared for Pusey’s sanity. ‘Just let me get one thing straight. You say . . . a boat is stuck on the subway?’
    (2)
    It was. The Maggie was perched about fifty yards from the north bank of the Clyde with her bows down and her stern ludicrously propped up, well out of the water. Her propeller was showing, and the dinghy, which was attached by a painter, was hanging vertically from the stern. A police boat was lying alongside, and another boat, with three figures in it, was going out from the bank. On the bridge and along the embankment a growing crowd of Glaswegians enjoyed the spectacle and encouraged the crew of the Maggie with ribald witticisms.
    Sitting despondently in the engine-room hatchway McGregor ignored their taunts. Beside him the mate lay stretched out on the deck, asleep. Only the boy gave moral support to the Skipper, who was leaning from his wheelhouse to continue his argument with a policeman.
    â€˜You’d no right to put out at that state of the tide!’ the policeman was saying as he climbed, discomfited, into his patrol boat. ‘You may have damaged the . . .’
    â€˜And what about the damage to my ship!’ the Skipper demanded indignantly.
    As the patrol boat moved gently in the swell, a rowboat pulled steadily across the oily water towards the Maggie . There were three men aboard, the owner, pulling laconically at the oars as though, having passed his life with seafaring men, he had lost the capacity for surprise, and two pressmen who were looking towards a story with incredulous delight. As the owner shipped his oars, the photographer took his camera from its case and squinted up at the Maggie . The reporter stood up and hailed the Skipper.
    â€˜Captain MacTaggart, I’m from the Star . Would you care to make a