Bear Island by Alistair MacLean Read Free Book Online Page B

had his own little supply of tinned delicacies-but I'll check anyway. Do you want me to see Captain Imrie for you?”
        “Captain Imrie?"
        I was patient. "The master must be notified. The death must be logged. A death certificate must be issued-normally, he'd do it himself but not with a doctor aboard-but I'll have to be authorised. And he'll have to make preparations for the funeral. Burial at sea. Tomorrow morning, I should imagine."
        He shuddered. "Yes, please. Please do that. Of course, of course, burial at sea. I must go and see John at once and tell him about this awful thing." By "John" I assumed he meant John Cummings Goin, production accountant, company accountant, senior partner in Olympus Productions and widely recognised as being the financial controller-and so in many ways the virtual controller-of the company. "And then I'm going to bed. Yes, yes, to bed. Sounds terrible, I know, poor Antonio lying down there, but I'm dreadfully upset, really dreadfully upset." I couldn't fault him on that one, I'd rarely seen a man look so unhappy.
        “I can bring a sedative to your cabin!'
        "No, no, I'll he all right." Unthinkingly, almost, he picked up the bottle of Hine, thrust it into one of the capacious pockets of his tentlike jacket and staggered from the saloon. As far as insomnia was concerned Otto clearly preferred homemade remedies to even the most modern pharmaceutical products.
        I went to the starboard door, opened it and looked out. When Smithy had said that the weather wasn't going to improve, he'd clearly been hedging his bets: conditions were deteriorating and, if I were any judge, deteriorating quite rapidly. The air temperature was now well below freezing and the first thin flakes of snow were driving by overhead, almost parallel to the surface of the sea. The waves were now no longer waves, just moving masses of water, capriciously tending, it seemed, in any and all directions, but in the mass still bearing mainly easterly. The Morning Rose was no longer just corkscrewing, she was beginning to stagger, falling into a bridge-high trough with an explosive impact more than vaguely reminiscent of flat, whiplike crack of a not-so-distant naval gun, then struggling and straining to right herself only to be struck by a following wall of water that smashed her over on her beam ends again. I leaned farther outwards, looked upwards and was vaguely puzzled by the dimly seen outline of the madly flapping flag on the foremast: puzzled, because it wasn't streaming out over the starboard side, as it should have been, but towards the starboard quarter. This meant that the wind was moving round to the northeast and what this could portend I could not even guess: I vaguely suspected that it wasn't anything good. I went inside, yanked the door closed with some effort, made a silent prayer for the infinitely reassuring and competent presence of Smithy on the bridge, made my way to the stewards" pantry again and helped myself to a bottle of Black Label, Otto having made off with the last of the brandy-the drinkable brandy, that is. I took it across to the captain's table, sat in the captain's chair, poured myself a small measure and stuck the bottle in Captain Imrie's convenient wrought-iron stand.
        I wondered why I hadn't told Otto the truth. I was a convincing liar, I thought, but not a compulsive one: probably because Otto struck me as being far from a stable character and with several more pegs of brandy inside him, in addition to what he had already consumed, he seemed less than the ideal confidant.
        Antonio hadn't died because he'd taken or been given strychnine. Of that I was quite certain. I was equally certain that he hadn't died from Clostridium botulinum either. The exotoxin from this particular anaerobe was quite as deadly as I had said but, fortunately, Otto had been unaware that the incubation period was seldom less than four hours and, in extreme cases, had