The Golden Rendezvous. Alistair MacLean

Highland murder in his heart. You know MacDonald. Heaven help anyone who goes within a Sunday walk of the wireless office.”

      Bullen poured himself another small whisky, smiled tiredly and glanced at his single broad commodore’s stripe.

      “Mr. Carter, I think you and I should change jackets.” It was as far in apology as he could ever go and about twelve hours ahead of par. “Think you’d like this side of my desk?”

      “Suit me fine, sir,” I agreed. “Especially if you took over entertaining the passengers.”

      “In that case we’ll stay as we are.” Another brief smile, no sooner there than vanished. “Who’s on the bridge? Jamieson, isn’t it? Better take over, First.”

      “Later, sir, with your permission. There’s still the most important thing of all to investigate. But I don’t even know how to start.”

      “Don’t tell me there’s something else,” Bullen said heavily.

      “I’ve had some time to think about this, that’s all,” I said. “A message came through to our wireless office, a message so important that it had to be intercepted at all costs. But how could anybody possibly know that message was coming through? The only way that message could have come into the Campari was through a pair of earphones clamped to Brownell’s head, yet someone else was taking down that message at the same instant as Brownell was. Must have been. Brownell had no sooner finished transcribing that message on to his pad than he reached for the phone to get the bridge, and he no sooner reached for the phone than he died. There’s some other radio receiver aboard the Campari tuned into the same wave-length and wherever it is it’s not a hop, skip and jump from the wireless office, for wherever the eavesdropper was he got from there to the wireless office in seconds. Problem, find the receiver.”

      Bullen looked at me. McIlroy looked at me. They both looked at each other. Then McIlroy objected: “But the wireless officer keeps shifting wave-lengths. How could anybody know what particular wave-length he was on at any one moment?”

      “How can anyone know anything?” I asked. I nodded at the message pad on the table. “Until we get that deciphered.”

      “The message.” Bullen gazed at the pad, abruptly made up his mind. “Nassau it is. Maximum speed, Chief, but slowly, over half an hour, so that no one will notice the step up in revs. First, the bridge. Get our position.” He fetched chart, rules, dividers while I was getting the figures, nodded at me as I hung up. “Lay off the shortest possible course.”

      It didn’t take long. “047 from here to here, sir, approximately 220 miles, then 350.”

      “Arrival?”

      “Maximum speed?”

      “Of course.”

      “Just before midnight tomorrow night.”

      He reached for a pad, scribbled for a minute, then read out: “‘Port authorities, Nassau, s.s. Campari, position such-and-such, arriving 2330 tomorrow Wednesday. Request police alongside immediate investigation one murdered man, one missing man. Urgent. Bullen, Master.’ That should do.” He reached for the phone. I touched his arm.

      “Whoever has this receiver can monitor outgoing calls just as easily as incoming ones. Then they’ll know we’re on to them. God only knows what might happen then.”

      Bullen looked slowly first at me, then at McIlroy, then at the purser, who hadn’t spoken a word since I’d arrived in the cabin, then back at me again. Then he tore the message into tiny shreds and dropped it into his waste-paper basket.