He said: “I don’t feel well. Will you excuse me, please?”
He saw apprehension flicker over the Frenchman’s face and thought: “He thinks I’m going to be sick.” But he did not wait for Mathis to say anything. He turned and, without looking again at the man by the saloon door, walked to the door at the other end of the deck and went below to his cabin.
He locked the door when he got inside. He was shaking from head to foot. He sat down on the bunk and tried to pull himself together. He told himself: “There’s no need to get worried. There’s a way out of this. You’ve got to think.”
Somehow Banat had discovered that he was on the Sestri Levante. It could not have been very difficult. An inquiry made at the Wagon-Lit and shipping company offices would have been enough. The man had then taken a ticket for Sofia, left the train when it crossed the Greek frontier, and taken another train via Salonika to Athens.
He pulled Kopeikin’s telegram out of his pocket and stared at it. “All well!” The fools! The bloody fools! He’d distrusted this ship business from the start. He ought to have relied on his instinct and insisted on seeing the British Consul. If it had not been for that conceited imbecile Haki … But now he was caught like a rat in a trap. Banat wouldn’t miss twice. My God, no! The man was a professional murderer. He would have his reputation to consider-to say nothing of his fee.
A curious but vaguely familiar feeling began to steal over him: a feeling that was dimly associated with the smell of antiseptics and the singing of a kettle. With a sudden rush of horror, he remembered. It had happened years ago. They had been trying out an experimental fourteen-inch gun on the proving ground. The second time they fired it, it had burst. There had been something wrong with the breech mechanism. It had killed two men outright and badly injured a third. This third man had looked like a great clot of blood lying there on the concrete. But the clot of blood had screamed: screamed steadily until the ambulance had come and a doctor had used a hypodermic. It had been a thin, high, inhuman sound; just like the singing of a kettle. The doctor had said that the man was unconscious even though he was screaming. Before they had examined the remains of the gun, the concrete had been swabbed down with a solution of lysol. He hadn’t eaten any lunch. In the afternoon it had begun to rain. He …
He realised suddenly that he was swearing. The words were dropping from his lips in a steady stream: a meaningless succession of obscenities. He stood up quickly. He was losing his head. Something had got to be done; and done quickly. If he could get off the ship …
He wrenched the cabin door open and went out into the alleyway. The Purser was the man to see first. The Purser’s office was on the same deck. He went straight to it.
The door of the office was ajar and the Purser, a tall, middle-aged Italian with the stump of a cigar in his mouth, was sitting in his shirt-sleeves before a typewriter and a stack of copies of Bills of Lading. He was copying details of the Bills on to the ruled sheet in the typewriter. He looked up with a frown as Graham knocked. He was busy.
“Signore?”