The Comedians Read Online Free Page A

of my cynicism. I could believe for a moment, as I looked at those pale blue eyes, unflinching and undoubting, that perhaps he had a point. A steward stood at my elbow. I said, ‘I don’t want soup.’
    â€˜It’s not time for soup yet, sah. The captain asks you kindly to have a word with him, sah.’
    The captain was in his cabin – an apartment as bare and as scrubbed as himself, with nothing personal anywhere except for one cabinet-sized photograph of a middle-aged woman who looked as if she had emerged that instant from her hair-dresser’s where even her character had been capped under the drying helmet. ‘Sit down, Mr Brown. Will you take a cigar?’
    â€˜No, no thank you.’
    The captain said, ‘I wish to come quickly to the point. I have to ask your cooperation. It is very embarrassing.’
    â€˜Yes?’
    He said in a tone heavy with gloom, ‘If there is one thing I do not like on a voyage it is the unexpected.’
    â€˜I thought at sea . . . always . . . storms . . .’
    â€˜Naturally I am not talking of the sea. The sea presents no problem.’ He altered the position of an ash-tray, of a cigar-box, and then he moved a centimetre closer to him the photograph of the blank-faced woman whose hair seemed set in grey cement. Perhaps she gave him confidence: she would have given me a paralysis of the will. He said, ‘You have met this passenger Major Jones. He calls himself Major Jones.’
    â€˜I’ve spoken to him.’
    â€˜What are your impressions?’
    â€˜I hardly know . . . I hadn’t thought . . .’
    â€˜I have just received a cable from my office in Philadelphia. They wish me to report by cable when and where he lands.’
    â€˜Surely you know from his ticket . . .’
    â€˜They wish to be sure that he does not alter his plans. We go on to Santo Domingo . . . You have yourself explained to me that you have booked to Santo Domingo, in case at Port-au-Prince . . . he may have the same intention.’
    â€˜Is it a police question?’
    â€˜It may be – it is my conjecture only – that the police are interested. I want you to understand that I have nothing against Major Jones. This is very possibly a routine inquiry set on foot because some filing-clerk . . . But I thought . . . you are a fellow Englishman, you live in Port-au-Prince, on my side a word of warning, and on yours . . .’
    I was irritated by his absolute discretion, absolute correctness, absolute rectitude. Had the captain never slipped up once, in his youth or in his cups, in the absence of that well coiffured wife of his? I said, ‘You make him sound like a card-sharper. I assure you that he hasn’t once suggested a game.’
    â€˜I never said . . .’
    â€˜You want me to keep my eyes open, my ears open?’
    â€˜Exactly. No more. If it were anything serious they would surely have asked me to detain him. Perhaps he has run away from his debtors. Who knows? Or some woman business,’ he added with distaste, meeting the gaze of the hard woman with the stony hair.
    â€˜Captain, with all respects, I’m not trained to be an informer.’
    â€˜I am not asking anything like that, Mr Brown. I cannot very well demand of an old man like Mr Smith . . . in the case of Major Jones . . .’ Again I was aware of the three names, interchangeable like comic masks in a farce. I said, ‘If I see anything that merits a report – I’m not going to look for it, mind.’ The captain gave a little sigh of self-commiseration. ‘As if there were not enough responsibilities for one man on this run . . .’
    He began to tell me a long anecdote about something which had occurred two years before in the port we were coming to. At one in the morning there had been the sounds of