The Sword and the Net полностью

Otto had seen the panoramics first just after dawn, when the Admiral Farragut had come to rest in the harbour. He was fascinated, like a child at a circus, and he stayed by the rail, rapt, even when the launches came. They seemed so much part of the theatrical set piece that he paid them scant attention—until their passengers surged aboard and he found himself surrounded by mummers who engulfed him, trying, he felt, to drag him into the play itself.

He was bewildered—until it slowly dawned upon him that these were reporters and that Nils Jorgensen, through some strange caprice of destiny, was the current American hero. This in itself was again puzzling—and remained so until, much later, he discovered that the wireless operator of the Farragut was a youth of journalistic leanings, whose impassioned descriptions of the rescue had struck New York as the only available human story (and what a story!) about the tragedy of the Vulcania.

The newspapermen surrounded Otto and stared at him and pumped his hand up and down and pointed cameras at him and asked questions, all talking at once. And then they did all the same things over again with the Captain and the Second Officer and the men who had manned the lifeboat—but Otto could not get away, because they included him in everything—and all the time they took pictures and more pictures; pictures of Otto alone, of Otto shaking hands with the Captain, of Otto surrounded by the lifeboat’s crew, of Otto and the Second Officer. . . .

Then, imperceptibly at first but quickly swelling to a torrent, came more launches and the other visitors—and Otto was caught in their toils before he knew that the ordeal by Third Estate was past. Now there were women; twenty or thirty, he thought dimly, though there were only seven in fact. And there was a tall, white-haired man, who spoke to him in Swedish for a moment and was then thrust aside to make way for yet another group, consisting of a young man, an elderly cleric, and a girl.

Otto allowed his aching hand to be pumped again and muttered uncomfortably and could not understand very much of what they all said. He shot glances this way and that, hopelessly seeking the escape which he knew was impossible.

And then, with a sudden magic, the group about him melted and was no more, and he was faced by a single person; a woman very different from the rest.

She was tall and heroically built and remarkable. Smoothly dressed hair of beautiful grey-white, almost bluish in tint, framed an arresting, ageless face beneath a hat both becoming and unridiculous. She might have been thirty or ten years more. She did not seize Otto’s hand. She did not gasp and bubble at him, nor did she remain silent and gaze round-eyed. She smiled; a handsome, friendly, only faintly unnatural smile which showed beautiful teeth between full lips not over-red. And she spoke neither loudly and too fast as if he were accustomed only to English, nor slowly and with that over-carefulness which placed him upon the mental level of charity-child or orang-outang; she spoke as if to an ordinary fellow human. She said:

“Poor man! You must be sick and tired of all this!”

Otto, though with not such hopelessness as he had to the others, made ubble-bubbling noises of politeness.

“Yes, yes!” she said. “Never mind. . . . I’ll help you to escape—if you promise me something.”

“Promise?” said Otto slowly.

“You poor boy! . . .” She came a little nearer to him. “My name is Van Teller—Mrs. Theodore Van Teller. I am interested in organizing Benefits for the Allied Causes.”

Otto was puzzled. “Benefits?” he said carefully. He did not want this woman to leave him.

She laughed—a studied but exciting sound. She said:

“I mean obtaining money for the Allies—for the various needs of England, and Greece, and China; for all the countries”—her voice was suddenly hard and sharp-edged—“who are fighting the monster of Nazism. . . .”

She caught herself up and laughed again, apologetically. She said, while Otto stared at her:

“I didn’t mean to be melodramatic. . . . This is what you must promise me. This week, I am putting on an entertainment in aid of the Greek people. I want you to promise me that you will appear there—with me—and speak to the audience. . . .”

Otto sat upon the edge of his bunk. True to her word, Mrs. Van Teller had aided his escape from the crowded deck. She had drawn him aside as if in talk and he had found himself near a companionway and she had suddenly thrust him towards it and he had run down, with a fleeting impression of her shapely back blocking the narrow way behind him. . . .

He sat with his head in his hands—and his tired mind, given free play for once, became a turgid maelstrom of unrelated memories and impressions and demi-thoughts. . . .