Dead Calm by Charles Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

Rae! Jump!” The limp and dangling arm was his only answer. She was either badly hurt or unconscious.
    The dinghy was behind him. Both oars had slipped overboard. He found them, threw them back in, and lifted himself in over the transom. He was more scared than he had ever been in his life, and the whole scene came to him through the winy haze of a desire to get his hands on Warriner and kill him, but there was no time to give way to futile emotion. He whirled the dinghy about and sent it racing across the two hundred yards of open water toward Orpheus, trying not even to think except of what he had to do, as if it were an exercise. Saracen was going straight away, and he could still see Rae’s figure on the stern.
    He turned his head. The man and woman had come on deck and were standing just aft of the doghouse, watching him. He shot the dinghy across the few remaining yards, slammed into Orpheus’s port side, and pulled in the oars. Neither of them had made a move to take the painter. He grabbed it himself, leaped on deck, and made it fast. “Have you got any glasses?” he asked.
    The man grinned bleakly. “You didn’t seem to do any better than we did. Maybe you have to be crazy yourself to outguess him.”
    Ingram caught himself just short of smashing him in the face—not because the man was already hurt or because he was probably in no way to blame, but merely because it would waste time. “Binoculars?” he asked again. “Where are they?”
    The man jerked a thumb toward the doghouse. “Rack, just inside the door.” But the woman had already taken a step down the ladder and reached for them. Ingram lifted them from her hand without thanks, without even seeing her, and whirled, bringing them to bear on Saracen . She was still going straight away on the same course. As he adjusted the knob, she leaped sharply into focus, every detail distinct. Rae still lay huddled on the afterdeck, as far as he could tell in the same position. Warriner was at the wheel, looking forward, apparently into the binnacle. Maybe he had forgotten she was there. Then Ingram realized the futility of any conjecture as to what went on in Warriner’s mind. “Have you got a spare compass?” he asked without lowering the binoculars. “Boat compass, or a telltale in one of the cabins—”
    “There’s a little one in a box in the chartroom,” the man said.
    “Get it,” Ingram ordered, “and set it in the dinghy. Then put your azimuth ring on the steering compass and keep calling out the bearing of that boat.”
    “And what’s all that jazz for?” the man asked. He hadn’t moved.
    Ingram lowered the glasses then and looked at him for the first time. “You do what I tell you to, you son of a bitch,” he said, “and do it now. My wife’s still on there. If he throws her overboard, I want to know where. And if I don’t get to her in time because I didn’t have a course, and a compass in that dinghy, you’ll go next.”
    “Just a minute, friend—” the man began, but Ingram had already turned away and locked the glasses on Saracen again. She was at least a half-mile away; he could still see Rae lying on deck, but less clearly now. He heard the woman say, “Oh, stop it; just do as he says. You find the compass, and I’ll get the azimuth ring.” He paid no attention. He was trying to make a cold appraisal of the several possibilities while at the same time struggling in the back of his mind with the dark animal of fear. This might be the last time he would ever see her, this dwindling spot of color fading away toward the outer limit of binoculars, but that was something he couldn’t think about. If he lost his head, there was no chance at all.
    She must be still unconscious, because as far as he could tell she hadn’t moved. If Warriner threw her over now, while she was still out, she’d drown. The longer he waited, the more chance there was she’d be conscious and able to swim, but on the other hand, the farther out