Aground by Charles Williams; Franklin W. Dixon Page B

getting sadder. We’ll never make it.”
    “There is that chance. And a very good one. But then I wouldn’t say that knife-and-run stuff in the Philippines was anything that’d make you popular with insurance companies.”
    “Maybe I was younger then. When you’re nineteen, it’s always somebody else that’s going to get it.”
    What is it? Ingram thought. “You worried about the booze?”
    “Sure. Aren’t you?”
    So that wasn’t it.
    “How about a deal?” Ingram asked.
    “No deal.” The voice was quiet, but there was finality in it.
    “Stealing a boat’s not such a terrible charge. Especially if the owner doesn’t want to press it.”
    “No,” Ruiz said. “I told you we’d been friends a long time.”
    “But you’re looking for a way out.”
    “That’s different. If you don’t like the action, you can always walk out. You don’t have to sell out.”
    “Okay, have it your way,” Ingram said. He leaned back against the boxes. “This Ives—what kind of guy was he?”
    “He wasn’t a bad sort of Joe if you didn’t believe too much of what he said. He talked a good game.”
    “So I gather,” Ingram said.
    There was a moment’s silence, and then he asked, “By the way, where’s the deviation card for the compass? Do you know?”
    “The what?” Ruiz asked.
    “It’s a correction card you make out for compass error. You did make a new one, didn’t you, when you swung ship?”
    “Swung ship? What for? I think you’ve lost me, friend.”
    “To adjust compass,” Ingram explained. “Look—you did swing it, didn’t you?”
    “Not that I know of.”
    “You mean you loaded three or four tons of steel down in that cabin and it didn’t occur to you it might have some effect on the compass?”
    “Oh, that. Sure, we knew about it. You wouldn’t have to be a sailor. Any Boy Scout would know it. Anyway, Ives took care of it.”
    “How?” Ingram asked.
    “He took a bearing on something ashore before we loaded the guns, and then another one afterward. Whatever the difference was, he wrote it down somewhere. Al probably knows where it is.”
    “I see,” Ingram said quietly. “Well, I’ll ask him about it.”
    Ruiz slid the glowing end of his cigarette into the sand and stood up. “Guess I’ll go back and see if I can get some sleep. I hope.”
    “Hasta manaña,” Ingram said. He started to get up.
    “No,” Ruiz said in his cool, ironic voice. “Don’t bother following me to the door.”
    “Okay. About Ives—did he ever actually tell you that was his name?”
    “No. I figured Hollister was phony, of course, but that’s the only way I knew him. That and Fred.”
    “What did Morrison call him?”
    “Herman. What else?”
    “Excuse a stupid question,” Ingram said. “Thanks for the bedding.”
    “De nada,” Ruiz said. He melted into the darkness.
    * * *
    Ingram leaned back against the boxes and relighted his cigar. Somebody was lying, that was for certain. But who? The thing was so mixed up and the possibilities so endless you couldn’t put your finger on where it had to be. Why did Ruiz want out? That stuff about being afraid of the trip was almost certainly a smoke screen. That is, unless he knew of some other danger Ingram himself hadn’t learned of yet—something that made death or capture an absolute certainty instead of merely another chance you took. He was a professional soldier of fortune who’d lived along the edge of violence since his teens; he didn’t scare that easily, at nineteen or thirty-nine.
    But there was another possibility. Could there be something unnatural in the Morrison-Ruiz relationship, in which case it was Rae Osborne who’d thrown the dungarees in the chowder? No, he decided; that was ridiculous. Deviation wasn’t necessarily accompanied by the limp wrist and effeminate mannerisms, but you nearly always sensed it, and there was none of it here. He was glad somehow; in spite of the circumstances, Ruiz was a man you could like. He’d