The Golden Rendezvous by Alistair MacLean Read Free Book Online Page B

his day cabin, in which I now was, was a pretty fair guide to the rest-wine-red carpet that sunk beneath your feet, darkly crimson drapes, gleaming sycamore panelling, narrow oak beams overhead, oak and green leather for the chairs and settee. Captain Bullen looked up at me when I came in. He didn't have any of the signs of a man enjoying the comforts of home. "Something wrong, sir?" I asked. "Sit down." he waved to a chair and sighed.
    "There's something wrong all right. Banana-legs benson is missing.
    White reported it ten minutes ago." banana-legs benson sounded like the name of a domesticated anthropoid or, at best, like a professional wrestler on the small-town circuits, but, in fact, it belonged to our very suave, polished, and highly accomplished head steward, frederick benson: benson had the well-deserved reputation of being a very firm disciplinarian, and it was one of his disgruntled subordinates who, in the process of receiving a severe and merited dressing-down, had noticed
    the negligible clearance between benson's knees and rechristened him as soon as his back was turned. The name had stuck, chiefly because of its incongrmity and utter unsuitability. White was the assistant chief steward. I said nothing. Bullen didn't appreciate anyone, especially his officers, indulging in double-takes, exclamations, or fatuous repetition. Instead I looked at the man seated across the table from the captain: howard cummings. Cummings, the purser, a small, plump, amiable, and infinitely shrewd irishman was, next to Bullen, the most important man on the ship. No one questioned that, though cummings himself gave no sign that this was so. On a passenger ship a good purser is worth his weight in gold and cummings was a pearl beyond any price. In his three years on the campari friction and trouble among-and complaints from-the passengers had been almost completely unknown.
    Howard cummings was a genius in mediation, compromise, the soothing of ruffled feelings, and the handling of people in general. Captain Bullen would as soon have thought of cutting off his right hand as of trying to send cummings off the ship. I looked at cummings for three reasons. He knew everything that went on on the campari, from the secret takeover bids being planned in the telegraph lounge to the heart troubles of the youngest stoker in the boiler room. He was the man ultimately responsible for all the stewards aboard the ship. And, finally, he was a close personal friend of banana-legs: they had sailed together for ten years, as chief purser and chief steward, on one of the great transatlantic liners, and it had been one of the master strokes in the career of that arch-lurer, lord dexter, when he had lured both those men
    away from their ship and installed them aboard the campari. Cummings caught my look and shook his dark head. "Sorry, johnny, i'm as much in the dark as you. I saw him shortly before dinner, about ten to eight, it would have been, when I was having a noggin with the paying guests."
    cummings' noggin came from a special whisky bottle filled only with ginger ale. "We'd white up here just now. He says he saw benson in cabin suite six, fixing it for the night about eight-twenty-half an hour ago, no, nearer forty minutes now. He expected to see him shortly afterwards because for every night for the past couple of years, whenever the weather was good, benson and white have had a cigarette together on deck when the passengers were at dinner."
    "Regular time?" I interrupted. "Very. Eight-thirty, near enough, never later than eight thirty-five. But not to-night. At eight-forty white went to look for him in his cabin. No sign of him there.
    Organized half a dozen stewards for a search and still nothing doing.
    He sent for me and I came to the captain." and the captain sent for me, I thought. Send for old trusty carter when there's dirty work on hand.
    I looked at Bullen. "A search, sir?"
    "That's it, mister. Damned nuisance, just one damned thing