Chapter 33
BILL THORNLEY stood at the top of the Megantic’s gangway, looking at his watch. Above him towered the liner’s mighty smokestacks, gently steaming into the bright blue sky of the June afternoon: at his feet the dock was a mass of upturned faces. Within the great ship a gong boomed fitfully and, to the chant of ‘Visitors off, please!’ in ones and twos people were beginning to file down the gangway.
Suddenly on the quay below, a tawny thatch bobbed up among the crowd. Preceded by a policeman adroitly shouldering a passage, Trevor Dene, bareheaded, his face glowing pinkly, fought his way through the press to the roped-off space about the gangway. With him was Inspector Bryce. Arrived at the foot of the gangway, Trevor caught Thornley’s frantic signals and waved in response.
‘Four
