The Hamelin Plague Read online

  "There aren't any now," he said, investigating.

  "Of course there aren't, you clot," she snapped. "What do you think I was swearing about?" She went to the cupboard, opened the door and got a fresh box from the packet on the shelf. "Here you are. Now you can smoke until you're blue in the face. I'm going to bed."

  "What about that flat tire?" he asked.

  "You are not going to mess about with the car at this time of night," she told him firmly. "Furthermore, you are not going to get up at some ungodly hour of the morning to do it. I want my sleep, even if you don't. You'll just have to get down to the ship by public transport, and I'll ring Mr. Wilkins at the service station to come over and fix it."

  "All right," he said.

  He decided to do without his smoke.

  He undressed in the spare room, hanging his clothes up carefully. From a drawer in the wardrobe he took the black silk pajamas that Jane liked. (Or had liked?) It was a warm night still and he didn't bother with a dressing gown. Barefooted, he walked through to the bedroom. Jane was already between the sheets, her dark auburn hair lustrous against the pillow, the dark tan of her arms and shoulders contrasting with the white bed linen and the pale pink of her nightdress. Her eyes, so dark a blue as to be almost violet, surveyed him critically.

  She said coldly, "You're putting on weight."

  Hurt, he said, "I wish you'd try to be less unromantic."

  She laughed, but not too unkindly. "Don't take on so, Tim. We aren't a pair of grubby teen-agers in the throes of our very first love affair. We've got each other, for better or for worse—and I suppose we could have done worse."

  "This isn't the way it used to be," he said stubbornly.

  "Of course it isn't. We aren't the same people," she said, a little rueful half-smile playing over her full lips. "There was I, a rather silly little girl blowing a small inheritance to pay my fare out to Australia, the land of golden opportunity, and there were you, the handsome and dashing chief officer of a fine big ship."

  "And now I'm mate of a scruffy little coaster," he said. He sat down on the edge of the bed. "Oh, well, the money's better and the responsibilities are less."

  Serious now, she asked, "But you have no regrets, Tim?"

  "I'd be a bloody liar," he told her, "if I said that I didn't miss big ships—the style of them and the comforts and the social life—and the duty-free grog and smokes. But this has its compensations. Home for a couple or three days every fortnight or so. At least three months annual leave, with another month in the middle of the year." His face clouded. "It should be a good life. It used to be a good life, but—"

  "But what?" she asked.

  "You know. Damn it all, Jane, don't you think I envy the other officers, every man in the crew who happens to be married? I see them leaving the ship to go home—to homes not as good as this one, likely as not, and to wives not one half as beautiful. But there's more to a wife than somebody who's good to look at and who has the same tastes as her husband in books and films and food and drink. Tomorrow morning I shall see the others, and they'll all look smug and satisfied, with all the tensions discharged. More smug and satisfied than I shall be feeling. What's wrong with us, Jane?"

  She said, "You're you, Timothy, and I wouldn't want you changed. But you know how it is with me—how it still is with me."

  He shrugged. "Yes, I know. We wanted the child but—it was just one of those things. I don't know what I'd have done if I'd lost you." He managed a grin of sorts. "Then I should have had cause for complaint. But I want you, Jane, rather badly. You know that."

  "Yes," she told him, "I know. I know, my dear. But it will all come right. I promise."

  She pulled him down to her as he slid into the bed, kissing him warmly. (But there was still that holding back, that cold reserve.) She evaded his lips when he tried to return her embrace, whispering, "No, not now..."

  "Please," he insisted. He could feel the warmth of her body through the thin silk of her gown, of his pajamas. She pulled away from him with shocking abruptness. He realized then that somebody was hammering on the front door; that a woman's voice was calling: "Mrs. Barrett! Mrs. Barrett!"

  Barrett swore and grumbled, "What the hell sort of neighborhood is this?" He declaimed sardonically, "Run for the hills, the Martians are coming!"

  "It's Mrs. Purdom, from next door," said Jane coldly. "When you've quite finished carrying on, you might find out what she wants."

  "To borrow a cup of sugar, no doubt."

  "Don't be a fool, Tim. It must be something serious."

  Barrett slid out of the bed then, with a certain alacrity. He picked up Jane's dressing gown, draped it inadequately about his gangling frame. He padded on bare feet out of the bedroom into the living room, opened the door.

  "Oh, Mr. Barrett, I didn't know you were home."

  Barrett looked down at the little woman, saw that her pinched face was white and tear-stained. "I hate to disturb you, so late and all, but it's serious. Really serious. May I use your phone?"

  "But of course," he said gruffly. "Come in."

  "It's little Jimmy, the baby." She started to sob again. "Oh, it's dreadful, dreadful. And my hubby's on night shift."

  Barrett let her through to the bedroom. Jane was up, belting a heavy housecoat about her slim figure. She asked, her voice concerned, "Is it a doctor you're wanting, Mrs. Purdom?"

  "Yes, yes, Mrs. Barrett. Dr. Hume. He's always looked after us."

  "I'll find the number," said Jane.

  "Oh, Mrs. Barrett, don't bother. I know it." She scuttled to the telephone on its bedside table, dialed with a shaking hand, had to start again from the beginning. "Oh, Doctor, Doctor... Oh, Mrs. Hume, can I speak to the Doctor? It's Mrs. Purdom here ... Yes, it's urgent, urgent ... little Jimmy, his face all bitten, bitten ... No, no—not a spider."

  Jane quietly.

  "Yes," said Barrett.

  He hurried through to the spare room, pulled trousers over his pajamas, thrust his feet into a pair of leather slippers. The front door was still open and he went through it with long strides. Next door, he saw the light streaming through the Purdoms' open front door.

  He went into their house. Its layout was almost identical with that of his own. There was a second bedroom, and it was being used as a nursery. In it there was a child's cot, and there was blood on the floor under it. There was something in the cot, something that cried not as a baby normally cries, but with a thin, mewling scream.

  Barrett looked—and had to fight hard to choke down his nausea. The child's face hadn't been bitten so much as ... eaten. But he had to do something about it, even though he had not the resources of a well-stocked ship's medicine chest at his disposal. To stop the bleeding, that was the important thing, the essential thing. To stop the bleeding and to prevent infection—if it was not already too late for that.

  The window, overlooking the back garden, was open. Barrett saw, by the light from the room and by the moon light, a row of fluttering white squares hanging from the Purdoms' clothesline. They would do. They should be fairly sterile. He ran outside, snatched a handful of napkins from the line. Carefully, gently, he placed the first square of absorbent plastic over the baby's mutilated face, keeping it clear of the mouth and what was left of the nose. It darkened, reddened immediately. He followed it with a second one. And a third.

  "Mr. Barrett, Mr. Barrett." It was Mrs. Purdom at his elbow. "He'll be all right, won't he? He'll be all right?"

  "Of course," he lied.

  Plastic surgeons, he thought, might be able to do something about the face, but they'll never restore the sight of that left eye.

  Then, to Barrett's heartfelt relief, the doctor came. He was brusque but not unkind with Mrs. Purdom. He asked Barrett what he knew of the case, what he had done. He made his own examination, rapid but not unthorough. He said bitterly, "There's been far too much of this sort of thing lately. Far too much. God knows what the Council's ratcatchers—rodent control officers, they call themselves,
God help us—are doing. It's high time somebody made an issue of it."

  Barrett carried the injured child out to the doctor's car, and placed him gently in the back seat. Mrs. Purdom got in hastily, fussing. "Don't maul the brat, woman, don't maul him!" ordered the doctor testily. Then, to the Barretts, he said, "Good night to you. And thank you for what you've done."

  Barrett and Jane watched in silence until the red tail-lights had vanished around the corner, then went back to their own house.

  Barrett thoroughly scrubbed his hands in the bathroom. It wasn't the blood so much that sickened him, it was the thought of the animal, or animals, that were responsible for the injuries. A seaman hates rats more than does the average landsman. When he was finished, Jane was already back in bed. He got in beside her.

  "That poor woman," she said. "That poor child."

  "Was it true what the doctor was saying?" he asked. "About other, similar cases in this locality?"

  "Not only here," she told him, "but all over Sydney. Somebody was telling me that they get these plagues now and again. It'll be rats one year, and fleas another year, and then it'll be sharks in the harbor and off the ocean beaches."

  "The rats," he said slowly, "are worse than the sharks somehow. At least you only have yourself to blame if you go swimming in an unprotected area. But these filthy brutes attacking children in their cots—"

  "Not only children," she told him. "Don't you read the papers?"

  "No," he admitted. "I never bother much with the local rags in Tasmania."

  "Last week," she said, "there were two old-age pensioners attacked the same way as poor little Jimmy Purdom, one not far from here and the other in Manly. And there was a drunk found dead, with his throat torn out. The police think that it was done by rats."

  "And there was that dog," he almost whispered. "The dead dog I found in the road, just outside here."

  She said, "And I saw a cat a few days ago. Dead. Something had gone for its throat."

  Barrett laughed mirthlessly. "It puts me in mind of that thing of Browning's. How does it go?

  'Rats, rats.

  They fought the dogs and killed the cats.'"

  "Some dogs," she said, "and some cats ask for trouble."

  He said, "But this is serious, Jane. I doubt if they'd attack a healthy and sober adult, but there's always the risk of disease. I'll get a couple of traps and some poison on my way home tomorrow. And I want you to be even fussier than you usually are about garbage disposal."

  She said, "But I'm always fussy."

  There was a sharp click as she put out the light.

  Barrett said doubtfully. "I suppose it was rats. The Purdom kid, I mean, and that dog."

  "What are you driving at, Tim?"

  "I ... I'm not sure. I thought I saw something as we came back from next door—an animal. It was quick, and it hopped rather than ran into the shadows. More like a kangaroo it was. A little one."

  She said, "Don't be silly. Whoever heard of kangaroos running around in the inner suburbs?"

  He said, "Yes, but—"

  She said, "We'd better try to get some sleep."

  He put his arms about her and kissed her, but she was cold, unresponsive. She disengaged herself, turned over, her back to him. And Barrett lay there, listening to her even breathing, wondering if she was asleep or merely feigning. He thought, I'm getting to the stage when I'm beginning to think the whole damn universe is against me. If it hadn't been for Mrs. Purdom—

  He told himself, That's a stinkingly selfish attitude, Barrett, and you should be bloody well ashamed of yourself. He thought, Even so...

  And he remembered how things had been with him and Jane before her pregnancy, before things had gone so very badly wrong that they had lost the child and he had almost lost her. He remembered how things had been—his homecomings, the shared glass of wine and then the frank and unashamed enjoyment of each other's bodies, with the consequent release of all tensions, the dissipation of the strangeness inevitable even after only a short separation.

  He remembered how things had been, and thought, Sooner or later it has to happen. Sooner or later some woman will come along, somebody not unattractive, not unintelligent—and available. And I can't trust myself to be loyal. Oh, I love Jane, and she's given me a good home, but—

  Who was it who said that marriage is more than four bare legs in bed? Johnson? He was right, of course, but...

  He twisted and stirred uneasily, conscious of the woman beside him, knowing that until she was ready—if she ever would be ready—any attempt to take her would do far more harm than good. With relief he felt himself drifting into an uneasy sleep—and then the ululation of sirens, not far distant, jerked him back to full wakefulness. Was it the police? he wondered. Or the ambulance? Or the fire brigade?

  He slipped quietly out of bed, went through to the back garden. The moon was down, and the false dawn was a faint pallor in the eastern sky. And there was a glare to the west, over the heavily built-up suburb of Paddington, a glare that flickered and faded, then flared up to sudden, terrifying brightness. The night was alive with the screaming of sirens.

  Egocentrically, Barrett thought, First rats, and now the firebug.

  He watched and listened for a while, then went inside to the kitchen and brewed himself a pot of tea.

  He knew that if he returned to bed he would not sleep.

  CHAPTER 3

  It was six days later and Barrett's ship, Katana, having made a good passage south from Newcastle, had cleared Cape Howe, the southeastern point of Australia, and was now steadied on the course that would take her from Gabo to Deal Island. It was a fine evening, clear, with a gentle northerly breeze and a slight following sea. There was the usual Bass Strait swell, rolling in from the southwest, but it was not heavy enough to seriously affect the vessel's speed or to impart to her more than an easy, not disagreeable pitching motion.

  At 2000 hours—8.00 p.m.—Barrett handed over the watch to the third officer—course, True and Compass, position on the chart by both radar and visual bearings, other vessels within sight, both of them northbound and well abaft the beam. Formalities completed, he went straight down to the saloon pantry.

  The usual supper party was just getting under way. Off-duty officers were making toasted sandwiches, preparing tea and instant coffee and cocoa according to taste. Captain Hall was investigating the contents of the refrigerator and complaining bitterly, "Is it quite impossible to get a piece of decent cheese in this ship? A self-respecting rat wouldn't touch this muck. It's like ersatz rubber."

  "According to my taxi driver last Sunday night," said Barrett, "the rats are eating rubber now. He reckoned they'd been at his tires."

  "No worse than this rubbish," spluttered Hall over a mouthful of cheese.

  And then, drinks having been made and sandwiches constructed to everybody's tastes, the officers seated themselves around a table in the saloon. There was a lull in the conversation until appetites had been dulled. It was Captain Hall, sipping his second cup of strong tea, who started the ball rolling again. He said, "That was a shocking plane crash at Essendon."

  "I missed the news today," said the chief. "My set's on the blink."

  "An Electra," said the Old Man. "It had just taken off, and then it crashed into a street of houses. All hands in the aircraft wiped out—and twenty people in the street where it crashed."

  "Flying used to be safer in Australia than anywhere else in the world," stated the second engineer.

  "It used to be," concurred Captain Hall. "But it's not now. There's been one helluva run of really nasty smash-ups this last couple of months."

  "Sabotage," said the chief engineer. "It all ties in. Plane crashes. Fires. If this government had any guts they'd round up the Commies and stick 'em against the nearest wall. It's worldwide, too. The States. The Old Country. Come to that, the bastards are probably behind the plague in Indonesia."

  "I rather thought," objected Barrett, "that Russia was on friendly terms wi
th the Indonesians. As a matter of fact, in last week's Time, there was a piece about the Kremlin getting all hot and bothered about the wave of assorted disasters inside the Soviet Union."

  "You can't believe everything you read in Time," said the chief engineer.

  "Maybe not, Ken," replied Barrett, "but their standard of reporting is pretty high." He took a hasty sip of coffee, then warmed to his favorite theme. "The trouble, these days, is that every disaster caused by slovenly workmanship or criminal carelessness is attributed to sabotage."

  "And the Russians are having their troubles," contributed Bill Maloney. "There was that S.O.S. last night. From that Russian ship out in mid-Pacific. She was on fire."

  "She said she was on fire, Bill," sneered the chief engineer.

  "If she said she was on fire, she was on fire," insisted the radio officer. "People don't go sending out distress calls just for the hell of it. And that Russian ship was on fire, all right. I picked up the signals from the other vessels that went to her assistance."

  "Perhaps the Reds wanted her burned," said the chief engineer with a superior smile. "After all, those bastards'd be quite capable of sacrificing a white elephant just so they could pull the wool over the eyes of the West."

  Barrett, with the others, was trying to sort out the mixed metaphor when he heard somebody tapping at the saloon door. He looked up. It was the spare A.B. of the eight-to-twelve watch.

  "Yes?" he demanded.

  "The third mate sent me down, sir. There's something ahead that looks like a ship on fire."

  They hurried topside and found that the burning vessel was a ketch, one of the small, fore-and-aft rigged sailing craft, with auxiliary diesel power, that ply to and from the minor ports around the Australian coast. She was ablaze from stem to stern. No, not quite, amended Barrett, studying her through his night glasses.

  She was lying head to wind, and the extremity of her fo'c's'le was as yet untouched by the flames. There were dark figures there, two of them balanced precariously on the bowsprit itself. There was somebody flashing a hand torch in ragged, almost unreadable Morse. Barrett made out the letters S.O.S. He thought, with grim humor, A blinding glimpse of the obvious.