The Titanic Secret (Isaac Bell 11)

He rushed to the aft section of the superstructure, where there was another hallway of cabins. More were located one deck down, inside the hull, but they were empty, since the Hvalur Batur was running with a skeleton crew. He entered his own cabin, noting for the first time that his door also squealed on its hinges as it came open. His .45 was under his pillow. He cleared the chamber and checked the magazine before quietly reracking a round into the firing position. He vowed to remain armed at all times until this affair was settled.

He tucked the pistol behind his waist so the icy metal was against his lower spine, kept in place by his belt. Back in the dim corridor, he reached for the handle of the cabin door closest to his. It was locked, so he wrapped on it with his knuckles until he heard a mechanical snick and the door creaked open.

Upon hearing the grating squeal, Bell went for the pistol at his back but stopped himself before drawing the weapon clear. Barely able to keep himself from swaying, the miner named Alvin Coulter regarded Bell with wide owl eyes under a furrowed brow and a completely bald pate. His complexion was a sallow yellow, made more sulfurous by the hallway’s muted lighting.

“What?” he asked, knuckling sleep from his eyes.

From inside the cabin came a weak voice from the middle berth of a three-bed bunk. “You okay, Al? Ya ain’t gonna be sick again?”

“Rest easy, Johnny. It’s the man that came to fetch us off the island.”

“Have either of you left your cabin in the last twenty minutes?” Bell asked.

“Aye, Al did just a minute ago,” John Caldwell wheezed from his bunk. “Poor sod’s been heaving up his dinner.”

Al Coulter stepped from his cabin and closed the door partway so his bunkmate couldn’t hear. “I was sick just after we left the mess. Hours ago. Mr. Bell, Johnny’s in a bad way. Delirious with fever, and he can’t keep down more than a few sips of water. That’s why I agreed to sleep two to a cabin, so’s I can keep an eye on ’im. We’re all in a bad way, but Johnny’s the worst of us.”

“What was his specific job back in the mine?”

“Assistant blaster to Jake Hobart. When Jake died, Johnny took over as head driller and chief blaster even though he’s so young. Jake had taken the boy under his wing a while back, you see.”

“And you?”

“I usually run ore trains in the mines, but here I do tool repair and sharpening and general labor.”

Bell nodded. “Sorry to have woken you.”

“Is there something wrong?”

“I heard someone moaning as if in pain,” Bell lied. “Thought it was coming from here. I’m going to check on the others.”

“Could be any of us.”

Coulter slid back to his cabin and locked the door.

Bell checked the next cabin’s door. It was unlocked, and like his and the previous it came open with a noise not unlike nails clawed down a chalkboard. The amber light cast by the hallway lamps shone across the bearded face of Walter Schmidt as he slept on his bunk. He was a large man, and his feet in their threadbare socks showed at the foot of his bed. The white sheet near his head and pillowcase were speckled with a dark fluid. Bell didn’t need to see any clearer to know was blood.

He closed the door without rousing the sleeping miner and checked a third cabin. He opened the door only a crack before closing it again. Like his door and the other two, it creaked as if the hinge points hadn’t seen oil since the Hvalur Batur took to the seas.

While not destined for the stage, Bell considered he had a pretty good ear and could hold his own in any front parlor singalong around a friend’s piano, but he was damned if he could discern the difference between various door creaks. He was sure that someone out there possessed such perfect hearing and pitch that they could tell one squeal from another and pinpoint the door used by the clandestine radio caller, but he was not that person.

For a moment, he bemoaned his particular lack of ability but then chided himself for being utterly foolish. Dupin and Holmes were conjured up in the minds of fiction writers and thus could be infallible, while he had to contend with a real human’s foibles and failures and could not be.

He allowed himself a small chuckle. It was one thing to accuse someone of a crime because of a squeaky door hinge, but such evidence would be laughed out of court. He needed something far more solid, and for the time being he’d have to make do without help. Bell knew better than to rely on Brewster. The man was so far gone mentally and physically that adding one more burden to the weight already pressing down on him might be the proverbial final straw.

In truth, Bell didn’t know how much more any of the men could stand. The coughing, the bleeding, the vomiting, the lethargy—these were all symptoms of a great many illnesses, and food poisoning couldn’t be ruled ou

t. But Bell felt a darker presence, something more insidious than merely contaminated meals. He surely was no doctor, but, looking at the eight remaining Coloradans, he couldn’t help thinking back to Brewster’s description when they met on the beach. His exact words were “We’re all walking dead men.”

Bell hurried to Captain Fyrie’s cabin, located just under the pilothouse and next to the stair that led to the bridge. His fingers had no sooner made contact with the cold steel door than the whaler’s voice called out, muffled but clear, “Come.”

Given the readiness of the summons, Bell expected the man to be seated at his desk, going over a report or making notations in the ship’s log, but the cabin was dark, and Ragnar Fyrie was just swinging his legs free from under a thick polar bear pelt he used as a blanket. A lifetime at sea had taught him to come fully awake at the slightest disturbance.

“Sorry to bother—”

With a strong belief that if it’s important enough to wake him for, it’s urgent enough to skip the pleasantries, Fyrie snapped, “What is it?”

Bell wasn’t put out by the gruff tone. “One of the miners used the radio and tried to cover his tracks. I suspect he contacted whatever French ship they left lying in wait in these waters.”