The Man who Missed the War (11 page)

Almost as though some invisible presence were standing beside him and had whispered a warning in his ear, Philip suddenly felt convinced that, worked up as Eiderman now was, when he reached the end of his peroration he would exclaim:
‘Heil Hitler!’
and simultaneously press the trigger of his gun. Philip knew that the sands of his life were running out.

The German’s words, fast increasing in tempo as his voice became louder and more guttural, were now lost on him. He still remained near the door, tense and rigid, his eyes riveted on Eiderman’s, no longer with fear but with a strained vigilance, as he waited for something—he hardly knew what—to happen.

Suddenly the sign he watched for came. Eiderman’s eyes flickered, his voice rose almost to a scream and he threw up his head. At that second Philip cast himself forward, lunging out with every ounce of strength he could muster behind the heavy turnscrew. The distance between them was too great for the blow to fall on Eiderman’s head or body, but the attack was so unexpected that he had time neither to pull back his gun nor squeeze the trigger. The rounded brass head of the turnscrew caught him on the thumb, and he dropped the pistol with a screech of pain.

If Philip had had more experience of such desperate fighting, he would have followed up his advantage by beating down the
German’s guard and stunning him. Instead, he rashly dropped his weapon and made a dive for the automatic. At the same moment Eiderman plunged forward in an attempt to retrieve it. Neither succeeded in his object; instead, they crashed into each other and rolled over together on the floor.

For the next few moments they fought with silent ferocity, each struggling to get a stranglehold on the other’s throat. Physically, they were fairly evenly matched. In height and weight there was little to choose between them. Philip had the advantage of age as he was nearly thirty years younger than his antagonist, but he had never gone in much for games and was soft in comparison to Eiderman, who had spent the best part of those thirty years as an officer in the German Navy.

Backwards and forwards they rolled, only to be brought up with a bump, owing to the confined floor space in the cabin. First one was on top, then the other. At last, Eiderman managed to straddle Philip and, his white teeth exposed in a snarling grin, began to bash sideways at his face. Philip took two smashing welts on the left ear, which momentarily stunned him; then, exerting all his strength, he threw the German off. Eiderman promptly kicked him in the face, but, fortunately for Philip, he was wearing soft bedroom slippers.

They were panting now as they strove to get a new grip on each other. The sweat ran down their faces and both were marked from blows. With a great effort Eiderman pushed Philip off and staggered to his feet. As he stepped back he kicked the iron turnkey, which gave a metallic clang as it slithered against a stanchion. Stooping he grabbed it up and raised it high above his head. Philip was still half-crouching on the floor, now absolutely at his enemy’s mercy.

In the split second that he huddled there staring up he knew that one blow from the great key would be enough to bash out his brains. In a desperate effort to save himself he flung his body back, sprawling headlong across the floor. The blow fell but, overshooting its mark and with its force largely spent, caught him on the thigh. In his violent twist to avoid the blow his head struck the leg of a chair and his right arm shot under it. As he thrust out his hand to raise himself his fingers came in contact with the butt of Eiderman’s automatic. Snatching at it he rolled
right over. The German was towering over him and had lifted the heavy iron to strike again. Philip thrust up the pistol and pulled the trigger.

For a moment Eiderman remained quite still, his arms above his head, a demoniacal look of hate and fury on his lean features. The shattering report of the pistol seemed to echo round and round the cabin, a wisp of blue smoke trickled from its barrel. Then, as the reverberation died away, the light went out of the German’s eyes, his knees buckled beneath him and he slumped sideways across Philip’s legs. As Philip strove to free himself, there was a loud rattling from Eiderman’s throat, one of his hands clawed spasmodically at the air, then dropped, and the sound ceased.

Still gasping for breath, Philip stumbled to his knees and stared down at his would-be murderer. The Nazi was not a pretty sight. His mouth lolled open, the flashing upper denture had fallen forward and from below it oozed a trickle of dark blood. There could be no doubt that he was dead.

Philip’s first reaction on seeing Eiderman fall had been one of triumph: Never before had he had to fight for his life, and all the exhilaration of primitive man at his first victory surged through him as he savoured his own escape and witnessed the death throes of his adversary. But he was hardly on his feet when the full implications of what had happened struck him.

Eiderman could have killed him and, no doubt, got away with it; but his having killed the German was a very different matter. He could not go to Captain Sorensen and say that Eiderman had died of a sudden haemorrhage with the least hope of such a statement being credited. Neither could he call on the walleyed Hans Auffen to sew up the corpse in canvas for burial at sea.

For one wild moment he thought of attempting to arrange matters so that Eiderman’s death looked like suicide. But that was impossible. Even if a motive could be suggested, the position of the wound showed at a glance that it could not have been self-inflicted. The bullet had gone in under the ribs, travelled up through the body and come out at the neck. And when it came to a motive for murder Philip saw at once that Sorensen would think they had quarrelled. The Captain knew that one of them
had wanted to turn back at the last moment. He might quite reasonably assume that the other had large financial interests in the venture and so had refused to do so. High words could easily have followed, and although the pistol was Eiderman’s only the person with him could have fired the shot.

All these thoughts rushed through Philip’s brain in a few seconds. Hardly a minute had elapsed since the shot had been fired. The rain was still pelting down overhead, but Philip cast an anxious glance at the door. When the pistol had exploded it had sounded like the bursting of a bomb. It seemed impossible that no one should have heard it.

Some strange instinct caused Philip to tiptoe as he stole to the door, opened it, and peered out. There was no one in the passage. Shutting it again he bolted it and stood for a moment gazing down at Eiderman’s body in bitter despair. It seemed to him now that this unscrupulous servant of a maniac master had trapped him as surely by his death as if he had carried through undiscovered his original assassination plans. It now looked as if, instead of being knocked on the head and thrown overboard, his victim was headed for a murder trial.

Such a trial, Philip knew, would take many weeks. Even if he could succeed in proving that Eiderman was a German agent and that he had killed him in self-defence, by the time he was once more a free man the summer would be gone, and there would be no hope of testing his Raft Convoy till next spring. By that time Europe might be in flames, and once war actually broke out it would probably be impossible even to get permission to try out the idea. But would he be able to prove anything against the dead man? And if he failed to do so what would the outcome be? He would be dead long before the spring. They would send him to the electric chair.

The more he thought about it the more convinced Philip became that he would find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to prove anything about the conspiracy against his life. Eiderman’s determination not to allow any accusation to be made against him argued his conviction that he believed himself entirely unsuspected up to date. If the American Political Police did not even suspect that he was working for the Nazis, what weight would Philip’s bare word carry? As for the five thugs, he
could prove nothing against them either, and it was not they who would be grilled now, but himself.

With sudden determination Philip opened the door of the cabin’s tall, narrow hanging-cupboard. Bending down, he stripped off Eiderman’s silk dressing-gown and threw it, as though casually abandoned, on the bunk. Exerting all his strength, he lifted the dead man and propped him upright in the cupboard, hung up his jacket in front of his face and spread a spare blanket he found there over his feet to sop up any blood that might drip from his wound. Having locked the door and pocketed the key, he carefully mopped up the little pool of blood on the cabin floor with a rubber sponge from the washstand. Slipping the catch of the pistol to safety he put it also in his pocket, picked up the turnscrew, switched out the light and stepped into the passage, closing the door softly behind him. There was every chance now that anyone looking into the cabin would think that Eiderman had got up and left it. Sooner or later the body would be discovered, but not until Eiderman had been missed and a serious search made for him—and that might not be for several hours to come.

As Philip replaced the brass turnscrew in the corridor his face was flushed but his jaw was set in a grim line. He was damned if he would stand trial for the murder of one of Hitler’s filthy Nazis and most probably be executed for it! What an ignominious end to all his plans! No, he wouldn’t submit to that without a struggle. Anyhow, he would give them a run for their money and, with a little luck, he would yet contribute something of real value to the defeat of Hitler.

Walking quickly but quietly to his own cabin, he crammed all his belongings into his handbag. As he thrust in his travelling clock he saw to his amazement that it was only just after three. It seemed hours since he had gone up on to the bridge to speak to Captain Sorensen, yet that had not been much over twenty minutes ago. He looked round in vain for a strap, some cord or a piece of string, and, finding none, snatched up the face towel from the basin. Pushing one end of the thin towel through the handle of his bag, he turned round and passed the other end under the back of his braces before knotting the two firmly
together. It was an awkward way to carry the bag, dangling and bumping against his behind, but it left both his hands free which was what really mattered. After a last glance round, he left the cabin.

It was still raining, and the thunder, more distant now, rumbled from time to time. Eiderman had been right about the crew remaining under cover while the deluge lasted. When Philip reached the deck there was no one to be seen, and keeping to the deepest patches of shadow he quickly made his way aft.

Gazing astern he could see the launch, but only one of the following rafts was now visible. For a moment he feared that some of the cables must have already snapped, but a second later he caught a glimmer of light through the teeming rain and knew that it must be the beacon halfway along the string, on Raft Number Five.

It looked a long way from the stern of the
Regenskuld
to the bow of the launch—very much further than he had thought. When he had first had the idea in Eiderman’s cabin of escaping from the ship by sliding down the cable hand over hand it had seemed quite an easy thing to do; but now, as he gazed at the awful gulf beneath him and the dark, turgid waters being churned up by the screw, he feared that he was going to lose his nerve. Yet, behind him lay certain arrest and trial: not just a hold-up of a week while he got together another crew, but months of anxiety and uncertainty, the total waste of his idea if war did come to Britain and, quite probably, at the end of it all the electric chair for himself.

Steeling himself for the effort, he climbed over the taffrail and, his feet still on the ship, grasped the cable firmly, thanking all his gods that he had chanced to have with him a pair of gloves. He was stooping now, his bag dangling out behind him and proving a much greater weight than he had expected. He had half a mind to take it off and abandon it, but that would have meant climbing back across the rail; and he had an uneasy suspicion that, if he once got his feet on the firm deck again, he would not be able to screw up the courage to leave it a second time. He drew a deep breath, gripped the cable with all his might and swung himself off.

The next six minutes seemed like six hours. With his legs wrapped round the cable while it slithered between his thighs and hands, he went down monkey-fashion, slipping and checking alternately, and gasping with pain each time the cable, which felt red-hot, cut through the gloves and seared his palms. The last ten yards were the most difficult. He had reached the bottom of the curve and could slide downwards no further, but had to haul himself along hand over hand, while his bag swinging under him flopped and splashed about in the sea. Three times waves washed right over him, and he almost lost his grip, but, at last, with a sudden spurt of energy he reached the prow of the launch, grabbed it and drew himself aboard.

For some minutes he lay flat on his back up in the bows, panting from his exertions. Then, when his breathing became a little easier he relieved himself of the bag which had proved such an awkward burden, and set about disconnecting the cable by which the
Regenskuld
was towing the launch. This was not a difficult matter, as he had thought it a wise precaution to have all the cables used in the Raft Convoy fitted with patent release gear at both ends. He had reason now to be glad of his forethought, as he had only to pull out a split pin. There was a faint splash as the end of the cable hit the water, and the first Raft Convoy was now adrift on the open ocean.

Philip wondered how long it would be before Captain Sorensen realised that he had lost his tow. The
Regenskuld
had been proceeding at only three or four knots, owing to the great weight she was pulling, but now she would naturally go much faster. The lookouts would not miss the convoy as their attention was concentrated forward, and owing to the rain, it might be some time before the loss was realised, provided the increase in the speed of the ship did not immediately become apparent to those in her.