Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [152]
Willie hesitated, and turned to the title page of his copy. At the bottom, in small print, was a legend he had not noticed before: For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D.C. “That’s right, Stilwell.” His tone contained a touch of his own surprise. He had assumed, for no good reason, that the book was restricted.
“Well, Jesus, I don’t know why every sailor in this goddamn outfit don’t own one!” said the gunner’s mate. “I been up all night reading it. I never knew I had all them rights. Well, anyway, sir, this Callaghan, this yeoman, he said I sure as hell ought to plead not guilty. He says I’m a cinch to get acquitted.”
“He’s not an officer, so you can probably believe him.”
“That’s how I figure it, sir,” the sailor said with perfect seriousness.
“Okay, Stilwell- Well. This brings up a lot of problems. You have to have counsel, and I have to prepare exhibits, and dig up witnesses, and in general the whole thing turns into a trial, just like in the movies-”
“You think I’m doing the right thing, don’t you, sir?”
“I’d rather not see you get convicted, naturally, if there’s a way out. I think I’d better talk to the captain right away. You wait here.”
Stilwell clutched the brown book tightly in both hands, and ran his tongue over his lips. “Ah-aye aye, sir.”
Willie hesitated outside Queeg’s door for a couple of minutes, rehearsing answers to hypothetical shrieks and snarls of the captain. He knocked. “Come in!”
It was dark in the cabin. The black-out curtain hung over the porthole. Dimly, Willie could see the bulge of the captain’s form in the bunk. “Who is it and what do you want?” said a voice muffled by a pillow.
“Sir, it’s Keith. It’s about the court-martial. Stilwell wants to plead not guilty.”
The captain reached a curved talon out from under the pillow and snapped on the bed lamp. He sat up, squinting, and scratching his naked chest. “What’s all this? Not guilty, hey? Just a born troublemaker, that man! Well, we’ll fix him. What time is it?”
“Eleven, sir.”
Queeg rolled out of the bunk, and began splashing water on his face at the basin. “How about his confession? How in hell can he plead not guilty after confessing, hey? Did you ask him that?”
“He’s going to repudiate his confession, sir.”
“Oh, he is, hey? That’s what he thinks- Pass me that tube of toothpaste, Willie.”
The young lieutenant waited until the captain’s mouth was full of foam. Then he said cautiously, “He seems to have been getting some legal advice from a very savvy yeoman on another ship in the nest, sir. He’s got himself a copy of Courts and Boards-”
“I’ll Courts and Boards him,” mumbled the captain around his toothbrush.
“He says there’s no evidence that he sent any fraudulent wire, and the confession, he says, he dictated under duress, and it doesn’t mean anything.”
The captain blew out a mouthful of water explosively. “Duress! What duress?”
“He claims you said something about a general court-martial-”
“For plain, wrongheaded, inside-out stupidity you can’t beat an enlisted man who suddenly gets hold of a goddamn book of regulations! Duress! I was offering him a way out of a general court-martial. I could probably get a reprimand for such undercover clemency. And that little sneak calls it duress! ... Give me a towel.”
Queeg mopped his face and hands. “Kay,” he said, tossing the towel aside and picking a shirt off the back of his chair, “where is our poor little mistreated innocent?”
“In my room, sir. He just told me-”
“Send him up here.”
Stilwell was in the captain’s cabin for an hour. Willie lurked on the well deck, perspiring in the vertical bluish glare of the noon sun, watching the captain’s door. At last the gunner’s mate came out. In one hand he carried his Courts and Boards,