Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

Chapter 3 - Hail to the Creep

“You people should consider yourselves lucky that I'm granting you an audience tomorrow instead of 20 years from now.” - The Wizard - The Wizard of Oz  

The four men ascended from the oily, noisy bowels of the ship. Accompanied by members of the glorious proletariat who had shamelessly attacked him Hargrove felt insecure. Was he truly worthy of their derision and manhandling? Was the agricultural collective a viable social construct or merely pastoral rumination?

Unable to resolve these quandaries he instead concentrated on glaring at the milling passengers. Someone here was the culprit he thought, as he studied each face. All of them brightly festooned in their Land’s End T-shirts and Sperry Topsiders made him grind his teeth. That made his injured head pound harder, so he settled for glaring.

“The captain is undoubtedly busy dealing with the emergency,” said the General leading the way. “We’ll go to the man with the means to assist us.”

“Do you mean …” began the steward in an expectant, awed voice.

“I do indeed. The man himself.”

MacGuinness grumbled under his breath. “… haggis … flatulent … vermin …”

They proceeded up another level and down a lengthy and now quite slanted corridor. They reached a door devoid of any number or other identification. Of course, thought Hargrove with satisfaction, the man with the real power behind the vapid figurehead, impervious to the lure of empty regalia. He smiled encouragingly and the steward and the engineer. The steward gazed rapturously at the door. The engineer shifted the heavy pipe wrench in his hands. The General’s sharp knock was answered by a languid “Entrez.” The four trooped inside. Hargrove took one look at the man behind the desk and gaped emptily at the General.

“The man with the …” he began.

“Quite,” interjected the General. He shifted his attention to the object of Hargrove’s disbelief. “Sir, I would like to introduce Mr. Hargrove, a detective of dubious means who is unfortunately our best chance of discovering the culprit who planted the bomb aboard before the ship sinks entirely. Hargrove, this is Mr. Largent, chief entertainment director,” he concluded with a tone of warning to Hargrove to be on his best behavior.

Largent tried to focus his dilated pupils on Hargrove. He waved a handkerchief in his direction. Hargrove’s keen sense of smell detected a fragrance wafting toward him that he had hoped never to smell again after that misadventure in Berlin; a noisome combination of cologne, hair gel, talcum powder and a particular brand of French cigarette. His gaze passed over the steward, who quivered slightly, with the tiniest flicker of recognition. He refocused on the General. “And who,” he inquired gesturing limply toward the engineer, “is this large, grimy fellow.”

Hargrove noticed MacGuinness’ knuckles whitening around the pipe wrench. “Sir, this man has seen the damage for himself and is here to implore your help in this the direst of emergencies,” explained the General. Largent seemed to be digesting the information, as he smoothed a well-oiled lock behind one ear and brushed a bit of ash from his silk floral bathrobe.

“Sinking you say?” he inquired with detached interest.

“Undoubtedly you grasp the seriousness of the situation. We require the ship’s passenger list to check for likely suspects,” broke in the steward. He looked imploringly at Largent, and then cast his eyes demurely toward the floor.

Largent nodded slowly as he toyed with a nostril-trimming implement on his blotter. Hargrove’s hands were clenched in ill-concealed rage. This decadent imperial lackey was besotted with the corruption of Capitalist aggrandizement. Drunk on his own perceived power he stood with one fetchingly hobnail-booted foot on the neck of the gallant workers. The detective barely held his outrage in check. He made a strangled noise in his throat. Largent slowly raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow in inquiry.

The General hastily seized control of the conversation. “Sir, we desperately need your assistance.” He shot a warning glance at Hargrove. The steward made general placating motions. “If you could generously locate the passenger manifest, we would all be exceedingly grateful.”

Somewhat mollified, Largent smoothly rose from his seat and, after a considerable amount of paper shuffling, sniffing and primping, produced a neatly typed and stapled list of names.

“Thank-you sir. I knew we could count on you,” said the General accepting the list. The steward’s eyes sparkled. Hargrove stared gaping at the General. What was it about the simpering running dog was it that inspired the military man’s obsequiousness? Largent waved a negligent hand dismissively as if to deny the effusive praise. He perched himself on the desk and crossed his shaved legs at the knee. He began exploring his robe pockets for some elusive item.

Hargrove forced himself to look at the manifest. “The only Armenian-sounding name is …” began the General, running his finger down the list.

“Forget the Armenian-sounding names,” Hargrove quickly interjected. Those are obviously fronts for insidious bourgeois propagandists. They’ll get what’s coming to them when the cleansing flame of the glorious revolution sweeps burns away the impurities in a conflagration of …”. He stopped, noticing the looks of concern and alarm on the faces of the other men. “Ahem. Ah, let’s concentrate on the least obvious names. Once you have eliminated the impossible,” he intoned “whatever is left however improbable, must be the truth.”

“Where the hell did you pick up that little tidbit?” asked the General. “Sending in twenty box tops from Marxist Crunch cereal to the Junior Detectives Club?”

Hargrove studiously ignored the jibe. It had been fifty box tops. But he pitied the man for the Capitalist miasma that clouded his thinking, and held his peace.

Hargrove began reading the names, trusting his instinctive powers of perception to ferret out the bomber. “Abercombie, Abrams, Atkinson, Batersby, Betterman, Blankenship, Blithering. Boswell, Campbell, Collins, Crachett …” With over two hundred passengers and only Hargrove’s famed yet inexplicable intuition to guide them, it promised to be a daunting and onerous task.

“Fuck me”, sighed MacGuinness. It came out like “Fook meh.”

“Dithering, Doddering, Earnest, Engels,” read Hargrove. “Frieda Engels. Of course. It’s obvious!” he exclaimed. Once again his ineffable powers of discernment had solved the crime in record time. He beamed about the room, ready to accept the inevitable adulation. The General looked at him with a combination of incredulity and distaste. The steward hovered near Largent and missed the momentous pronouncement entirely. Largent produced an emery board from his robe pocket and began to blearily study his cuticles. MacGuinness actually took a step toward the entertainment director and slightly raised the pipe wrench.

Trying desperately to recapture the attention of the others, Hargrove loudly proclaimed, “All we need do is apprehend the lady and convince her to reveal her accomplices.” This did manage to get the attention of Largent, penetrating the vague fog he apparently laboured under.

“Can’t have it my dear fellow.” All heads turned in his direction. “Ms. Engels is here as my personal guest and as a member of the Armenian diplomatic corps.

Hargrove was astonished. Not only had Largent managed to string together a coherent sentence, he had admitted complicity with a saboteur. The steward seemed weak with adoration. The General concentrated hard, listening Largent’s pearls of wisdom.

“You men will simply have to find another likely suspect”. He sniffed. “This large greasy fellow here should do. He was below when the … incident occurred. I, of course, will use the full weight of this office to endorse your decision.” He turned expectantly toward Hargrove and smiled. He seemed about to say something else, when MacGuiness lunged at him.

The engineer roared out his pent up rage and viciously swung the wrench at Largent’s perfectly coiffed head. Largent conveniently fumbled his emery board and bent to retrieve it. The wrench cut through the perfumed air where his head had been and solidly connected with Hargrove’s face. Hargrove spun in place in a tight pirouette spraying blood and gore in all directions. He felt teeth exiting his jaw through his split lips. His nose seemed to have relocated somewhere near his left ear and his eyes seemed to be giving him a blurred view of both the floor and the ceiling at once.

He stopped suddenly and the room caught up with his abrupt turn. His eyes steadied somewhat and he saw, hazily, everyone in the room momentarily frozen. Sitting seemed far preferable to standing. He dropped to the floor. His sudden movement broke the paralysis that had claimed all those in the room. Largent straightened and smiled happily at the rescued grooming device. MacGuiness glared at Hargrove as if he had intentionally blocked his strike with his face. The General stepped back and futilely tried to wipe the red spray that had sullied his once immaculate white jacket. With a strangled cry, the steward leapt at MacGuiness and attempted to wrestle the pipe wrench from his iron grip. As the two men struggled, Hargrove became dimly aware of the continuing threat. He shakily drew his trusty Webley and pointed the muzzle vaguely in the direction of the combatants. The effort cost him what little balance he retained and he flopped onto his back, his feet floating up into his line of fire.

The Webley, seemingly of its own volition fired. The heavy .45 calibre bullet passed neatly through Hargrove’s right foot and continued it’s path, tumbling slightly as it punched through the steward’s chest, abruptly ending the struggle over the pipe wrench and flinging his limp body against the cabin door.

Hargrove, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, managed the words “What was his name?” Then he passed out.

What was the steward’s name? What is the connection between Ms. Engels and Largent? Will Hargrove regain consciousness in time to unravel these questions before they all become fish food?

On to Chapter Four