Voyage into Violence Read Online Free

relieved of duty; the new OD was balder.) After a time four of the Old Respectables began to sing, but the loud-speaker spoke through the first verse, offering dinner to second sitters.
    The only really jarring note came as they left. At a small table near the door, Mrs. Macklin was sitting, her red hair, which had been before neat if improbable, dangling low in disorder. Mrs. Macklin was alone. She appeared to be quite drunk. She was a spectacle to dampen gaiety, and she did.

2
    The morning sparkled and, although they had overnight steamed only a part of the way down the Atlantic coast, it was already very warm. But sunny October days are seldom cold, particularly if one slips southward, carefree, in a small bright ship. The thought that there is, for some days, nothing one can conceivably do about anything is in itself warming. And the swimming pool had been filled. The water in it sparkled under the sun.
    Bill Weigand could not, Pam thought, approaching, be said to sparkle. He seemed, indeed, to be asleep in one of the four deck chairs, labeled “North” and “Weigand,” two by two. The apprehension of Killer McShane had, evidently, been a tiring business. Pam, wearing a bathing suit under a terry-cloth robe, carrying a bottle of sun-tan oil, approached more or less on tiptoe. But Bill twitched, indicating he might stand up if anything so absurd were insisted upon, and he said, “Hello.” He even turned his head to look at Pam, who perched on the next deck chair and considered the exertion of applying oil to moderately browned legs—and so forth. The bathing suit left a good deal of and so forth, and Jerry liked it very much. Pam decided to rest for a time, before applying oil. After all, she had walked from their cabin, amidships. There was no need to rush things.
    â€œDorian’s changing,” Bill said, in a sleepy voice. “Yours?”
    â€œWalking,” Pam said. “Around and around. So many laps to so much, you know. He’ll probably be by any minute.” She paused. She looked at the sparkling pool, and put on sunglasses. Bill already wore them—sunglasses and polo shirt and Bermuda shorts. He looked entirely unlike a captain of detectives, assigned to Homicide, Manhattan West. But then, he never did, particularly. “Do you suppose he’s going to go athletic on me? After all this time?”
    â€œâ€˜You will find yourself invigorated by sea air,’” Bill said, in the tone of one who quotes. “Probably it will wear off.”
    Gerald North, not looking particularly like a book publisher, rounded into sight, doing a steady three and a half knots. He wore a sports shirt about which Pam was a little doubtful, and slacks—the kind of slacks one could wash out and hang up, and wear unpressed when dry. Jerry was slightly flushed, but almost ostentatiously bright of eye. He lifted a hand to sluggards and rounded out of sight.
    â€œIt doesn’t seem to be,” Pam said, beginning to rub in oil. “Is he really retired?”
    Bill boarded her train of thought with the ease of one who has had long practice. He said that he didn’t know; that he had not heard of it. But that there was no reason he should have heard. If J. Orville Marsh said he was retired, probably he was retired.
    â€œNot coming the innocent on us?” Pam asked, remembering that the Carib Queen was, after all, of British registry. “Lurking? Planning to pounce on malefactors?”
    J. Orville was not, Bill told her, of the pouncing type. He was—or had been—what he said: a specialist in the seeking out of missing persons. Now and then, he made discreet investigations on the instructions of, for example, corporations which had grown doubtful of highly placed employees, but preferred not to go out on limbs about it. If it became a matter for the authorities, J. Orville made the correct contacts.
    â€œA completely clean slate?” Pam said, in