No one paid me any attention, and after a quick look to right and left I slid from the shadow of the ventilator across the pile of the carpet to a lifeboat; paused, listened, looked to right and left again, and then made a silent dart to the shadows immediately beneath the bridge-deck.
“They keep coming,” a voice drawled above me. “Going to be another good night.”
“Yeah,” said another voice. “Look at that dame in the red dress. Look at the shape she’s wearing. I bet she…”
But I didn’t wait to hear what he bet. I was scared they might look down and see me. Right by me was a door. I slid it back a couple of inches and looked down a ladder to the lower deck. Not far off a girl laughed: a loud, harsh sound that made me glance over my shoulder.
“Tight as a tick,” one of the men on the bridge-deck said. “That’s how I like my women.”
Three girls and three men had just come aboard. One of the girls was so drunk she could scarcely walk. As they crossed to the restaurant I slid down the ladder to the lower deck.
It was dark and silent down there. I moved away from the ladder. The moonlight, coming from behind a thin haze of cloud, was just bright enough for me to see the deck was deserted.
One solitary light came from a distant porthole as conspicuous as a soup stain on a bridal gown.
I made my way towards it, moving cautiously and making no sound. Halfway along the deck, I paused. Ahead of me appeared a white figure, coming towards me. There was nowhere to hide. The deck was as bare of cover as the back of my hand. My fingers closed over the butt of my gun as I moved over to the deck-rail and leaned against it.
A tall, broad-shouldered man in a singlet and white ducks came into the light from the porthole, moved out of it towards me. He went past, humming under his breath, without even looking at me, and climbed the ladder to the upper deck.