"Baker, Kage - The Wreck of the Gladstone" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baker Kage)

"For shame, sir!" cried Victor. "There are ladies present."
The general sense of the mortal's response was that Victor might take himself and his female companions to any other place in the seven seas save this one. Victor's mouth tightened and the points of his moustache stabbed the air.
"I will not, sir. I will conduct salvage operations here, having every legal right to do so," he stated. He might have continued, but Kalugin gave a sudden groan and clutched the rail.
"O God, it's Mackie Hayes!" he said. He didn't say it loudly, but all heads turned to stare at him. The gimlet eye of the vulgar sailor widened. He uttered a word I will not stain paper with and followed it with the cry of "Captain Pomeroy!"
Then, in an act of physical bravado I would not have thought a mortal man capable of performing, he vaulted the span of sea between his craft and ours and landed on the deck beside Kalugin. The girl at the tiller gave a weak scream. Kalugin found his lapels seized in an iron grip and the sailor's stubbled face a bare inch from his own.
"Where were ya?" shouted the sailor. "When the _Gladstone _was foundering and there was good men going to the bottom, I ask ya? Where were ya when the spars was snapping and the mast broke off clean? Hiding in yer bunk, ya no-good son of a w----!"
Kalugin had gone very white. He moistened his lips with his tongue and said, "You mistake me, sir. Captain Pomeroy was my father."
The sailor drew his head back to stare at him. He saw no grey in Kalugin's hair, he saw no lines about his eyes, he saw no scar upon his chin. Nor should he, for these things had been cosmetically applied to make Kalugin look like a mortal man and had been removed when no longer needed. The ferocity of his regard diminished somewhat and he released Kalugin's lapels.
"Well, d -- n me if ya ain't the spit and image of Captain Pomeroy. But he was still a lily-livered coward, ya hear me? He was hiding below when the storm done its worst. Even Mister Vandycook the owner, _he_ come up on deck to see what he could do, but not yer old man. So I d -- n ya for the son of a lubber and no true seaman." He swung about to glare at Victor. "And the rest of ya for a pack of thieves. I lay claim to this salvage operation by rights of having survived the wreck of the _Gladstone_!"
There was a poignant silence on deck. We had encountered what we operatives of the Company most dread: an error in the historical record. Such loopholes can have fatal consequences for a mission. Victor considered the sailor.
"The _Gladstone_ was reported lost with all hands, sir."
"Lost she were, but _I _didn't go down with her. Two days I hung on a barrel, kicking off the sharks, afore I washed up on that island yonder. Most of a year I been marooned there amongst landsmen. Took me better than three months to get that scow there seaworthy, and _I'm_ salvaging the _Gladstone,_ and be d -- ned to you!"
"You are mistaken, sir." Victor smiled. "My firm purchased salvage rights on the wreck from its insurers."
There was a little cry of disappointment from the girl at this announcement. The sailor glanced once in her direction; then he turned back to squint at Victor. "Is that so? Well, they're there and I'm here. I can't make ya clear off, but ya can't make me leave neither, and we'll see who gets down to the _Gladstone_ first!"
With that he hoisted himself up on our rail and sprang nimbly back to his own boat, which received his weight with a hollow crash that did not bode well for the integrity of her timbers. Victor stared after him, twisting one end of his moustache until it threatened to part company with his lip. Then he turned on his heel and stalked within, motioning us to follow.
"Lost with all hands!" he snapped as soon as we were gathered in the saloon.
"It's not my fault." Kalugin sagged into a chair. "I was below when the _Gladstone_ went down. You know that. My orders were to rescue the priceless painting a New York millionaire stupidly kept in the cabin of his yacht. It was not my responsibility to see to it that the crew drowned. When the rescue transport picked me up after the storm they made a clean sweep of the area. They found no survivors. The historical record _says_ there were no survivors."
"Well, now we know otherwise, don't we?" Victor went to the galley door and flung it open. "Coffee!" he shouted, and slammed it again and turned to pace up and down before us. "Who is this miserable little tattooed goat, may I ask?"
"Only one of the hands before the mast."
"Biographical data?"
Kalugin accessed. "Mackie Hayes, able-bodied seaman, age thirty-two, no residence given," he replied. "He was an excellent hand, unless he got liquor. He was a fighting drunk. I recall he nearly killed a man in Honolulu. Trouble with the ladies, too. I should guess his nationality to have been Yankee, despite his oddities of speech, which I believe were due to an old injury resulting in partial paralysis of the facial muscles on the right side."
"You may as well update your entry to present tense," said Victor bitterly. "We know very well he's alive and kicking."
"And salvaging," I added.
There was a knock on the door. Victor opened it to receive the coffee tray, borne not by a mortal servant but by one of our Technicians.
"Sir, it appears the mortals are preparing to dive," he warned Victor. I leaned back to look out a porthole and saw the sailor running about on deck, setting up the air pump. His young lady came struggling up on deck bearing an unwieldy mass that proved to be an old diving suit. He snatched it from her and said some angry thing. She hurried back below and re-emerged a moment later with a great brass diving helmet in her arms. He was already shrugging into the suit.
"Even as we speak," I confirmed, accepting a cup and saucer from Victor.
"And, sir, we're reading a storm moving in from the southwest," said the Technician. "We expect heavy seas by twenty-three-hundred hours. Shall we put in to the island? The charts show a good harbor with anchorage on the windward side."
"There's a thought." Victor dropped a lump of sugar into his coffee and stirred it. "And perhaps the storm will sink that filthy rust-bucket and save us the trouble."
There followed another poignant silence. The Technician cleared his throat. "Is that one of our options, sir?"
Kalugin rose to his feet.
"Possibly," said Victor at length. "You'll get your orders when we've made a decision. For now, go tell the cook we want breakfast. And I particularly want some cinnamon toast!" he called after the departing Technician.
Now it was Kalugin who paced back and forth, while Victor stood sipping his coffee. We heard a splash and the whirring as a drum of cable unwound.
"What do you think he's after, Kalugin?" inquired Victor.
"Not the painting, he couldn't be," said Kalugin. "Even if he'd known what it was worth, he wouldn't have any reason to expect there to be anything left of it by now."
"What, then?"
"VanderCook's strongbox, I'm sure. Possibly some of the other _objets d'art_. There were some ormolu things, I remember, and a statuette. He might think they'd fetch a pretty price."
"And if he sees a shiny silver canister down there?" Victor drained his cup.
Kalugin bit his lip. "He'll probably bring it up."
The door opened. Victor turned, perhaps in expectation of his cinnamon toast, but our Underwater Recovery Specialist entered the room.
"Mme. Masaki." Kalugin bowed.
"Good morning. Victor, are you aware that a monkey in a diving suit just went over the side in the general direction of the _Gladstone_?"
"Quite aware. Did you manage to sleep through our little pre-dawn confrontation somehow?" Victor poured a cup of coffee and presented it to her.
"I wear earplugs. Are we aborting our mission, then?"
"Certainly not. Cream? Sugar?"
She shook her head. "We can't conduct a dive while that creature's down there."
"We might try," Kalugin said. She widened her eyes at him.
"Are you mad? That would be contrary to specific Company policy. Can we persuade him to leave, Victor?"
"Not easily." Victor steepled his fingers. "He's determined and rather combative. We may be obliged to hope for an accident."
Mme. Masaki put down her cup and simply looked at him. There was yet a third poignant silence.
"Good God, the woman is with child!" cried Kalugin.