Two minutes later we were outside the wireless office. No one had challenged us; no one had seen us; the decks were entirely deserted. It was a night for deserted decks.

The wireless office was in darkness. I pressed one ear to the metal of the door, closed a had over the other ear to shut out the clamour of the storm, and listened as hard as I could. Nothing. I placed a gentle hand on the knob, turned, and pushed. The door didn’t budge a fraction of an inch. I eased my hand off that doorknob with all the wary caution and thistledown delicacy of a man withdrawing the Kohinoor from a basket of sleeping cobras. “What’s the matter?” Susan asked. “Is that was as far as she got before my hand closed over her mouth, not gently. We were fifteen feet away from that door before I took my hand away.

“What is it? What is it?” her low whisper had a shake in it; she didn’t know whether to be scared or angry or both. “The door was locked.”

“Why shouldn’t it be? Why should they keep watch…”

“The door is locked by a padlock. From the outside. We put a new one there yesterday morning. It’s no longer there. Somebody has shut the catch on the inside.” I didn’t know how much of this she was getting: the roar of the sea, the drum fire of the rain, the wind rushing in from the darkness of the north and playing its high-pitched threnody in the rigging seemed to drown and snatch away the words even as I spoke them. I pulled her into what pitiful shelter was offered by a ventilator, and her next words showed that she had indeed heard and understood most of what I had said.

“They have left a sentry? Just in case anyone tried to break in? How could anyone break in? We’re all under guard and lock and key.”

“It’s as Carreras junior says — his old man never takes a chance.” I hesitated then, because I didn’t know what else to say. I went on: “I’ve no right to do this. But I must. I’m desperate. I want you to be a stalking -hors help get that character out of there.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Good girl.” I squeezed her arm. “Knock at the door. Pull that hood off and show yourself at the window. He’ll almost certainly switch on a light or flash a torch, and when he sees it’s a girl — well, he’ll be astonished but not scared. He’ll want to investigate.”

“And then you — you “that’s it.”

“With only a clasp knife.”

The tremor in her voice was unmistakable. “You’re very sure of yourself.”

“I’m not sure at all. But if we don’t make a move until we’re certain of success we might as well jump over the side now. Ready?”

“What are you going to do? Once you get inside?” She was scared and stalling. Not that I was happy myself.

“Send an SOS on the distress frequency. Warn every vessel within listening range that the Campari has been seized by force and is intending to intercept a bullion-carrying vessel at such and such a spot. Within a few hours everyone in North America will know the situation. That’ll get action all right.”

“Yes.” A long pause. “That’ll get action. The first action it will get is that Carreras will discover that his guard is missing -and where had you thought of hiding him?” “In the Atlantic.”

She shivered briefly, then said obliquely, “I think perhaps Carreras knows you better than I do… The guard’s missing. They’ll know it must be one of the crew responsible. They’ll soon find out that the only guard keeping an eye on the crew who wasn’t awake all the time is the boy outside the sick bay.” She was silent for a moment, then went on so softly that I could hardly hear her above the storm: “I can just see Carreras ripping those bandages off your leg and finding out that your thigh is not broken. You know what will happen then?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.” She said the words calmly, matter-of-factly, as if they were of no particular significance. “Another thing. You said everybody would know the setup within a few hours. The two radio operators Carreras has planted on the Ticonderoga will know immediately. They will immediately radio the news back to the Campari to Carreras.”

“After I’m finished in the wireless office no one will ever be able to send or receive on that set again.”

“All right. So you’ll smash it up. That itself would be enough to let Carreras know what you’ve done. And you can’t smash up every radio receiver on the Campari. You can’t, for instance, get near the ones in the drawing room. Everybody will know, you say. That means the Generalissimo and his government will know also, and then all the stations on the island will do nothing but keep up a non-stop broadcast of the news. Carreras is bound to hear it.”

I said nothing. I thought vaguely that I must have lost a great deal of blood. Her mind was working about ten times as quickly and clearly as mine. Not that that made her very smart. She went on: “you and the bo’sun seem very sure that Carreras won’t let us — the passengers and crew — live. Perhaps you think it’s because he can’t have any witnesses, that whatever advantage the Generalissimo gained from getting this money would be offset over and over again by the world-wide reaction against him if the world knew what he had done. Perhaps…”

“Reaction!” I said. “Reaction! He’d find the American and British navies and air forces on his doorstep the following morning, and that would be the end of the Generalissimo. Not even Russia would raise a hand to help him; they wouldn’t as much as rattle a rocket. Of course he can’t afford to let anyone know. He’d be finished.”

“In fact, he couldn’t even afford to let anyone know he’d made the attempt? So, as soon as Carreras picks up the news of your SOS, he gets rid of all the witnesses — permanently — and sheers off, tranships to this other vessel that’s waiting and that’s that.”

I stood there, saying nothing. My mind felt dull and heavy and tired, my body even more so. I tried to tell myself it was just the drug Marston had pumped into me, but it wasn’t that; I knew it wasn’t that. The sense of defeat is the most powerful opiate of all. I said, hardly knowing what I was saying, “Well, at least we would have saved the gold.” “The gold!” You had to be a millionaire’s daughter before you could put all that scorn into your voice when you mentioned the word “gold.”

“Who cares a fig for all the gold in the world? What’s gold compared to your life and my life, my mother’s and father’s and the lives of everyone on the Campari? How much money did Carreras say the Fort Ticonderoga was carrying?”

“You heard him. A hundred and fifty million dollars.”

“A hundred and fifty million! Daddy could raise that in a week and still have as much again left.”

“Lucky daddy,” I muttered. Light-headed, that’s what I was getting.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. Nothing. It all seemed such a good idea when Macdonald and I worked it out, Susan.”

“I’m sorry.” She caught my right hand in both of hers and held it tight. “I’m truly sorry, Johnny.”

“Where did you get this ‘Johnny’ business from?” I mumbled.

“I like it. What’s good enough for Captain Bullen — your hands are like ice!” She exclaimed softly. “And you’re shivering.” Gentle fingers pushed up under my hood. “And your forehead is burning. Running a temperature and fever. You’re not well, oh, you’re not well. Come on back down to the sick bay, Johnny. Please.”

“No.”

“Please!”

“Don’t nag at me, woman.” I pushed myself wearily off the ventilator. “Come on.”

“Where are you going?” She was quickly beside me, her arm in mine, and I was glad to hang on.

“Cerdan. Our mysterious friend Mr. Cerdan. Do you realise that we know practically nothing about Mr. Cerdan except that he seems to be the one who lies back and lets the others do all the work? Carreras and Cerdan they seem to be the kingpins, and maybe Carreras isn’t the boss after all. But I do know this: if I could get a knife sticking into the throat or a gun jabbing into the back of either of those men I would have a big card to play in this game.”