Titanic 2012 (inspector alastair ransom) Page 37

The gray-beared old man tried to calm his dog now, hushing it and calling its name. “Varmint! Varmint, stop that now! Get over here.”

  The dog, well trained, did as his master said.

  The white-coated officers who’d raced to the scene now had a fix on the three escaped prisoners. They were soon joined by Murdoch and four other crewmen. Murdoch vowed, “We’ll find these rascals again for sure, and if need be it’s over the side with them in one of the collapsible! Set them adrift.”

  An hour later Ransom, Declan, and Thomas sat, stomachs growling for want of food, in a dark back section of a closet-sized hole that had been locked, but Ransom had been able to pick the door lock using a stickpin he’d secretly removed from a lady’s hat above decks. The dubious name on the door had been Specie Room, specie meaning coins. Here lay Titanic’s operating expense account—thousands of dollars, marked bills, and gold and silver dollars. Working petty cash for the huge liner, and among the many safes here—each of three: first class money, second class money, and third class monies being held here by the purser in each section of the ship. No longer in great use, Ransom figured as all the hands that needed to be greased up ’til this point had been greased from self-important dock masters, health inspectors, and local constabulary. They just might be safe here for a time, as this rather sparse room also had its own small lavatory.

  “No food… all the money’s under lock and key,” grumbled Ransom, “but it’s a place they’re not likely to be searching.”

  “How bloody ironic is this, Declan,” muttered the disgruntled Thomas, upset at the chain of events that had led them to this ignoble end. “We had dreams of becoming rich doctors, and here we sit among the riches—outlaws.”

  “The pursers may be in and out of here from time to time,” warned Ransom, “as passengers may ask for a portion of their funds from the bank. Depends on whether someone falls prey to spending or playing cards.”

  “There’s no bloody end of shops aboard to spend money in! Did ya see ’em all?” agreed Declan who stood and paced the cramped area half the size of a Pullman train car.

  “What do you propose we do now, Alastair?” asked Thomas.

  “Well… to cut the odors here, I’m lighting up.” Ransom dug out a pipe and tobacco from his coat pocket.

  They felt the ship shuddering, moving. In fact it moved with a new urgency. It was now on its way to America.

  TWENTY EIGHT

  Ransom checked his pocket watch. He shook the young interns awake. “Few people will be about now. I say we find a safer and more pleasant hole to hide in, perhaps a stokehold or cargo hold where we can find something to eat, even if it is raw vegetables or canned goods.”

  The young men took some convincing as both were groggy with fatigue. Still, Alastair got them to their feet and moving for the door of the Specie Room. Once they’d slipped from the room, Ransom cautiously led them to the closest stairwell, leading them down and into the ship’s bottom-most reaches to find a huge, long corridor as large as any boulevard in any city on the globe, a shaft that ran nearly the entire length of the ship without interruption.

  “How the devil’re we going to convince the captain and officers of this ship of anything from down here in this cave?” asked Thomas, his cynicism of earlier having returned full-blown.

  “We need to locate the brig,” said Ransom.

  “The brig? What the hell for?” Thomas shot back, their voices bouncing off the iron walls here. Only dimly lit, the corridor might as well be an underground cavern save for the sound of rushing seawater against Titanic’s outer hull.

  “If you recall, Thomas, it was while we were in that cage that we heard the barking of dogs; I suspect that Retriever is back in his holding cell, and I mean to get control of that animal. To start our search of the ship for Burnsey and Davenport—or rather their remains.”

  Declan nodded. “Excellent plan, and once we have an actual person killed by this thing and dissected before O’Laughlin and Captain Smith’s eyes, they can’t possibly laugh us off, Thomas.”

  “How far do you suppose we are from Queenstown?” asked Thomas.

  “Wishing now you’d gotten off when I told you to?”asked Ransom.

  “Hell no! I just want some idea of how far, so that when they decide to turn the ship around… I know how far before we reach port.”

  “I suspect we’ve been running at between 18 and 21knots, Thomas, so even if Smith miraculously turned Titanic for Queenstown, it would take perhaps seventeen, maybe eighteen hours.”

  “And every hour we go further into the North Atlantic, the more isolated we are with this thing aboard,” added Ransom. “I wish to God you lads had disembarked at Queenstown and left this to me.”

  “What would you do without us?” joked Thomas and their laughter echoed down the chamber they traversed.

  “Are you quite sure we are pointed in the right direction, Alastair?” asked Declan.

  “No… not entirely, no.”

  They shared more laughter as it was the only tonic they had at the moment. But Alastair suddenly shushed the boys. “Some men ahead! Step in here!”

  A group of four or five raucous, back-slapping stokers, looking as if they were going off shift, passed within inches of Ransom and the lads, who’d taken refuge, backs to a wall in an alcove. Their niche hideaway was painted in black shadow.

  The stokers moved on, swearing as they went. Ransom’s party then moved on as well, but in the opposite direction. Here they passed successive giant coal bins the size of buildings; these bins alternated with huge boiler after boiler. There were more and fresher stokers feeding each boiler, their muscles, backs, and shovels in rhythm, keeping them far too busy to notice the trio walking among them.

  Soon they found a stairwell that took them up to a catwalk, and below them squatted the mightiest and largest turbine engine any of them had ever seen. It was breathtakingly large, giving them all pause. “What a marvel of invention; how far we have come, eh lads?” Ransom swallowed hard.

  Moving past the giant turbine, they saw the towering four reciprocating engines—gigantic monsters that dwarfed the turbine engine.

  “I have no idea how we got to this side of the ship,” said Declan, “but it feels to me like we’re going in circles.”

  Engineers passed them on the catwalk, one stopping them to tell them that no passengers were allowed in this section of the ship.

  “We’ve come down to find our pets in the holding area but seem to’ve gotten ourselves hopelessly lost,” lied Ransom. “Can you point us in the right direction?”

  The man smiled and then quick-sketched a map that would take them back to where they needed to be. “There’ll be a stairwell right here,” he marked it with an X, “that puts you back on the deck you want to be. Now please, out of this area, gents.”

  The trio soon found familiar territory, the area of the cargo holds where they had been detained. “No one will be looking for us here,” Ransom remarked.

  “Damned if I don’t hear barking—the dogs,” added Declan.

  “Thank goodness!” Thomas wiped his brow. “I thought we’d be lost down here forever.”

  Ransom checked his watch. “They’ll be having breakfast served in the third class dining saloon just above us here, boys. What say you? Are you game for a meal before we go to work?”

  “First things first,” balked Declan. “We need to know if the Retriever is down here with us.”

  They found the holding pen for the animals. Water bowls freshly filled, tell-tale signs that the animals were being tended to on a regular basis. Someone was coming down from time to time to feed and care for them all.

  The place was a cacophony of noise, enough to get on the nerves of anyone with hearing, but for the time being, the trio proved the only creatures moving on two legs here.

  “Do you see him?”

  “Where’s that damn dog?”

  “There he is!” said Ransom. “The same as we saw on deck, Varmint, I heard him call
ed.”

  “Look here, Constable,” came a voice from behind them. He’s a good dog and neither he nor I want any trouble.” It was the dog’s peg-legged old master. He’d been in deep shadow and only materialized now. “Varmint’s been agitated enough for one day. Now you leave ’im alone.” The old man held a broad serrated knife on them.

  “How’d you get him aboard?” asked Declan, petting the animal though the bars. Varmint reacted calmly to Declan’s touch.

  “I come down to keep my dog company and to feed him. They won’t allow Varmint back on deck, but he gets agitated. Other day when I freed ‘im, well… I saw how upset he was, downright fear in his old eyes there was! Someone had to’ve been mistreatin’ me dog, I decided. Got mad, I did. Well then I thought to give him some air, so… He’s an old fella, you see—like… well, like me.”

  “Agitated eh?” asked Ransom. He turned to the lads and near whispered, “Wonder if he’s gotten a whiff of that thing we’re chasing.”

  “Thing you’re chasing?”

  “Rats!” said Thomas in a knee-jerk reaction to the old man.

  Ransom countered this with, “We need your dog to hunt down a… a missing person… for us, Mr. Farley.”

  “A missing person aboard ship?”

  “It’s a big ship, sir,” replied Declan.

  Ransom asked, “Is your Varmint… is he any good at sniffing out bad odors?”

  “He’ll show ya how smart he is. Catch every rat aboard Titanic, he will. I warrant it’s true! How much’re ye willing to pay?”

  “Send a bill to the Belfast Royal Constabulary care of Belfast, Ireland. It’ll get there. I’ll sign it to authenticate your claim.”

  “You gotta be joshing! An IOU? Do I look like a man who takes IOU?”

  “You can name your price, Mr. ahhh…”

  “Farley, Robert Eugene Farley. You say I can name my price?”

  “You set the price, Mr. Farley.”

  “Well now you’re talkin’, Constable.”

  “Good… good then, and if you don’t mind lowering that pig sticker, I’d be obliged.”

  Farley frowned at he knife he’d forgotten was in his hand. “Took me for a good fall up on deck, Constable, when you snatched my pine leg out from under.” He reminded Ransom, pointing to his cane. “Sure a damn, pretty cane.”

  “I’ll see to it you get a decent replacement leg when we disembark in New York.”

  “Do I have your word on it?”

  “My solemn word, yes, and hey, Mr. Farley, I am sorry about earlier—tripping you up, taking advantage of your leg.”

  Farley scrunched his face. “Not even my leg. Won it in a poker game. Still, it serves me well.”

  “You remind me of a fellow in Chicago who was my snitch, Old Bosch… had a wooden leg like yours in fact, but the man could disappear in a wisp. Worked the streets for me, he did.”

  “Well, no harm done,” replied Farley.

  “Give you my word, I’ll return Varmint to you as soon as we locate the wee varmint we’re after.”

  Declan’s head spun around at this, and he stared at Ransom. “That dog is not going to follow your lead, Constable—and Thomas is no good with animals, and I’m not much better. I think we will need Mr. Farley to lead the dog.”

  Varmint had understandably taken an instant dislike to Ransom given Alastair’s treatment of his master, so he had not completely settled down, still barking and snarling at Alastair whenever the big man neared. Farley simultaneously soothed him with petting and whispering in the dog’s ear, and at the same time cooing. “He’s not goin’ to work for ya, Constable. The boy’s right; you’ll hafta comman-deer me, too.”

  “What about we all commandeer some eggs and bacon first, like we talked about, eh?” asked Thomas.

  “We’ve no tickets, Mr. Farley. Mind if we take turns using yours?”

  “By all means, you’re my guests!” The old man laughed like a washer woman on Sunday.

  “I like the cut of your jib, Mr. Farley,” Ransom said. “Thomas, you first with Mr. Farley’s compliments. As it is third class berth food, they are unlikely to pay the least notice of you in the eatery.”

  And so each of them fed and replenished themselves while Farley regaled them with stories of the old sod where he had ‘come up’ as a boy in Northern Ireland but had always dreamed of the honeycombed land called America.

  By the time Declan had finished a meal, Farley had convinced Ransom and Varmint that they should set aside their differences. A shaky truce was made, Ransom having to shake the dog’s paw, and then it was Alastair’s turn on the meal ticket. He found the third class saloon to be as pleasant and as clean as any restaurant in Chicago, and once seated, he soon had coffee, three eggs over easy, pork sausage, potatoes, gravy, and biscuits. But in the middle of his meal, he noticed a steward had begun whispering to an officer who had come into the room, a fellow Ransom did not know, but to be sure every officer was on the lookout for Constable Ransom, a man with a watch fob, a wolf’s head cane, and a three piece suit that had seen better days.

  Ransom could move fast for a big man when circumstances warranted he do so, and he did so now, the napkin still below his chin. He not only upended his table to slow the chase, but he hooked a waiter carrying items to a table by his ankle, sending him and his dishes flying at the white-suited officer on his heels,

  Leaving the saloon in chaos and shambles, Ransom rushed down the several flights of stairs, puffing madly, his breakfast still in his mouth, until he found the cargo hold filled with animals and his waiting companions, shouting, “They spotted me! They’re on my heels! We’ve got to move out, now!”

  With the uproar of men on the stairwell coming down after them, Farley took charge of Varmint, Declan and Thomas racing ahead, Ransom at the rear, overturning crates and barrels to slow anyone’s following them, and out a back way they fled.

  “God but I wish I had a gun,” complained Ransom. “In Chicago we have guns. They wouldn’t be pursuing us so vigorously if they knew we were armed.”

  “Who are you people?” asked Farley, shaken now by their being chased by men in white coats for messing with him and his dog.

  “You just get that dog in search of a bad, really bad, stench, Mr. Farley. That’s the only reason you’re here.”

  “What then? Will you release us then? Are we your prisoners, sir?”

  “As sure as we’re all aboard Titanic, yes.”

  With the Titanic’s officers, pursers, porters, perhaps even chefs on their heels, Alastair Ransom and the others gambled on the dog being led by Mr. Farley. It was a long shot, he knew, but given their need for a quick resolution—to find and cut open Davenport’s body in order to prove their case to Captain Smith—it seemed their only course of action.

  Varmint seemed eager to go to work, going right out the gate when the lift they’d found and hopped aboard opened on the bottom corridor of Titanic. “This way!” Ransom turned them all in another direction, found a set of stairs, and said, “I think I’m beginning to get the lay of the land here.”

  “Where’re we going?” asked Thomas.

  “To the only safe place at the moment!”

  Ransom led them directly back to the Specie Room.

  “Oh, no, not that!” cried Thomas.

  “It’s only temporary! Get inside.”

  “There’s no escape hatch,” complained Declan.

  Varmint was first to rush in ahead of them. “Obviously, the only one of you with any brains,” said Ransom, waving the rest inside. “Back of the room, should they look inside, that L-shaped crook behind the cabinet.”

  Once everyone had settled back to where they had begun, Declan said, “Told ya we’re going in circles.”

  “Full circle,” agreed Thomas.

  Farley, looking confused, asked, “For how long we gotta be here?”

  “As long as it takes.” Ransom peeked out, hearing rumblings just outside the door. “God but I wish I had my gun.”

 
The noise, the racket, the commotion around them did not wholly subside, and at one point a purser with freckles, red hair, and a beautifully starched white outfit entered the room. The young man whistled a popular tune as he located items from one of the safes. Finding exactly what he’d come for, the purser quickly left and re-locked the door behind him.

  “He was within inches of us.”

  “How could he not hear our breathing?”

  “Thank God Varmint was asleep,” added Declan.

  But Declan merely observed, “Quite trusting of the authorities aboard to have a kid like that entrusted with so many peoples’ valuables.”

  “That’s a hoot, Declan,” teased Thomas. “Things go on as they are, there won’t be a thing left on this ship of value save a seat in a lifeboat.”

  “It occurs to me that the only thing separating one man’s valuable from another’s,” said Ransom, “is how desperately he wants it. Take poker for instance; whether I win or lose is not so valuable to me as keeping company with other men at a game of chance.”

  “While you fellows hash this out, I’m for relocating now,” said Farley.

  He may just as well have shouted fire for the sudden leap to their feet; in an instant, they were all at the door and peeking out, all but Varmint, still sleeping, his snores filling the little room.

  “Might wanna get your dog, Mr. Farley.” Carefully looking in all directions, Ransom assessed the situation. In a moment, he and the others eased out into the corridors and stairways. Soon they had located and returned to the area of the brig.

  “Why in hell’re we back here, Alastair?” asked Thomas.

  “Last place we saw Davenport, and here the dog may just pick up a scent. Whether it’s Davenport’s or Burnsey.”

  “Or the combined sweat the three of us expended here when Davenport did all in his power to come through the bars at us,” Thomas pointed out.

  “Just have faith and look at Varmint; look at the pride in that old face!”

  Farley laughed and slapped his knee. “He’s onto something sure.”

  “A good sign,” added Declan, seeing the dog circle and circle an odor, alert on something unseen and head off in a new direction—the same direction Davenport had taken the night of their incarceration here.