The Girl Who Had To Die

by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

  * * *

  The Girl Who Had To Die

  Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

  This page formatted 2011 Munsey's.

  http://www.munseys.com

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  * * *

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I'M GOING to be murdered,” she said in her muffled, sad little voice.

  Killian sat on the foot of his deck chair beside her, hands clasped between his knees, his neat, dark head bent, no expression at all on his face. He could not help hearing her; but he did not have to answer, and he did not have to look at her.

  “Don't you care, Jocko?” she asked.

  He hated that name she had invented for him, and maybe he hated her. He was not quite sure about that.

  “Ever since I was fourteen,” she said, “I've known I was going to be murdered—”

  “Too bad!” he said, smiling and still not glancing at her. But he knew well enough how she looked: slight and delicate, in a pleated white chiffon dress with a silver belt, her pale, tawny hair brushed back from her brow, her young face wan, hollow temples, hollows beneath the high cheekbones, great forlorn eyes, wide mouth.

  She leaned forward and laid her hand on his knee, a frail little hand with nails cut short in a careless, childish fashion. Typical of her. She didn't care about anything. More than once he had met her on deck in the early morning in faded blue cotton pajamas, her hair ruffled, last night's mascara smudged about her eyes.

  “Jocko,” she asked, “for God's sake, can't you say one kind word?”

  He had to look at her then. “No,” he said, with a tight-lipped smile that broke up his swarthy young face, made vertical lines in his cheeks, wrinkles at the corners of his eyes; he looked droll, and gay. “I'm not kind.”

  Her thin little fingers dug into his knee. “Oh, please be kind, Jocko! I'm only nineteen, Jocko. I don't want to die.”

  “How about a drink?'' he asked.

  She drooped forward and rested her cheek on her hand, so that her hair was directly beneath his downcast eyes; his breath stirred it. Misty hair, fine as gossamer, glittering, alive, fragrant. He turned aside his head.

  “Let's have a drink, Jocelyn,” he said.

  “No,” she answered, in a faint smothered voice.

  “Well, sit up, anyhow,” he said. “If someone comes along, they'll think—”

  “I don't care what anyone thinks,” she said. “Jocko, I'm cold. Jocko, I'm sick.”

  “Come on!” he said; taking her by the shoulders, he made her sit up. But her head drooped forward, the bright soft hair falling across her forehead; her eyes were closed. She looked dead, martyred. He pushed her back until she was lying in her deck chair. “Shall I bring you a drink?” he asked, trying to keep his fear out of his voice.

  “Oh, God!” she cried. “Why do you want to keep pushing me down and down? Making me go on drinking—when there's nothing but gin running in my veins now. Little lights dancing in my head....”

  “I don't want to push you down,” he said. “Only what do you want?”

  “I want you to be kind,” she said. “I'm cold and sick and lonely.”

  A sort of rage came over him.

  “If you wouldn't be such a damn fool—” he said. “It's nearly nine o'clock, and you haven't had any dinner.... And you've kept me from having any either. Can't you pull yourself together now, and come down to the dining saloon?”

  She did not stir, or answer, or open her eyes. He hated her all right. He had had too many drinks with her; he was hungry, or tired—or something.... But he couldn't walk off and leave her like this.

  “If you're sick,” he said, “I'll get the doctor.”

  “I'm going to die, Jocko,” she said.

  He rose, straight and square-shouldered and stiff in hi* white dinner jacket, his dark face grim.

  “Then you certainly need the doctor,” he said.

  “The doctor can't save me, Jocko. Not from murder.”

  There were tears running down her thin, wonderful face from her closed eyes; her long lashes were wet.

  “If you'll give me the name of the murderer,” he said, “I'll speak to the Captain.”

  “Five of them, Jocko dear.”

  “Five of what?”

  “Five men who want to kill me,” she said, still weeping. “You're crazy!”

  “Maybe I am, Jocko,” she said. “But I'm only nineteen. I don't want to die.”

  “Now look here, Jocelyn. Pull yourself together and come down to dinner.”

  “I've got the names all written down in a little book,” she said. “I carry it with me all the time. My Murderers. That's what I've written on the cover.”

  “All five on board this ship?”

  “One's enough,” she said. “At a time.”

  “When you've had some hot coffee—” he said.

  “You're such a damn little— clerk,” she said in a monotone. “I've seen your type everywhere—in Paris, London, in Vienna. The same face, like a fox—ears pricked, ready to jump when someone gives you an order. Just a little clerk. Why do I have to love you?”

  “Maybe you'll be able to conquer it,” he said. Hating her. She knew exactly the words that goaded him most cruelly; she held up to him the image of himself he didn't want to see. The clerk, the subordinate who took orders, the obscure, hard-working young nobody.

  “I'm going to get some dinner,” he said. “Anything I can do for you before I go?”

  “What's the matter with Starry Eyes?” asked a voice behind him.

  It was Chauverney, the Purser, slender, olive-skinned, an Englishman queerly Latin. He spoke Spanish like a native, and with Latin gestures; seven years on this South American run had done something to him. All right! thought Killian. If he's such a man of the world—such a smooth caballero—let him look after her. “I'm going to get some dinner,” he said aloud.

  “How about Starry Eyes?” asked Chauverney, with a vivid smile; and she opened her eyes and looked at him. Starry Eyes... Not blue, not grey. What colour? Violet? Misty with tears, the wet, dark lashes like rags, her mouth so sad and sweet. “Come along and have a bite with me. Starry Eyes?”

  “Jocko asked me first, Purser,” she said.

  “Oh, never mind about me!” said Killian, and walked off. “In five days well be home,” he told himself. “Then I'll never have to set eyes again on that hellcat.”

  He went down to the dining saloon, and he was sorry that the other people had finished and gone. Dull enough people—two spinster schoolteachers and a prosy, middle-aged salesman of office fixtures—but he would have liked any or all of them now. They were cheerful and comprehensible. He didn't feel like sitting alone tonight.

  She'll come and sit here if she feels like it, he thought. It was typical of her that she ignored her allotted seat in the saloon. She would wander in and sit where she chose; at his table, at the Purser's, at the doctor's, anywhere. Travels like a damn ghost, he thought. That last word startled him. A ghost? “I'm going to be murdered, Jocko.” Was it because she was close to death that she was a ghost?

  “The chicken is good, sir,” said Angelo.

  “Muy bien,” said Killian.

  Angelo was half Italian, half Brazilian. He looked like a gigolo, tall and willowy, with sideburns, long black lashes, a gentle elegance about him. He was a goo
d steward, but Killian didn't like him.

  “Soup first, sir?”

  “No soup.”

  “Little salad, sir?”

  “No salad. Chicken, and a pot of black coffee.”

  He lit a cigarette while he was waiting. Bad habit. Silly, neurotic habit. It's because I've been drinking too much, he thought. Every day since we left B. A. I'm going to quit. Not tomorrow, but now. I'm not going into the smoke-room after dinner. No nightcap. I'll take a walk and turn in early. I didn't know I had it in me to be like this.

  A little clerk, she had called him. He had been a model clerk. Strictly sober and industrious. Ambitious. All ready and waiting when Opportunity knocked. We need someone who can speak Spanish, to substitute for Wilcox until he's well enough to go back to his work. Oh, I can speak Spanish, sir. I've been taking lessons in the evenings. Good little clerk. And where did it get me? Three months in B. A., and now home again to the same old job. Only now I'm ruined. I don't want to wander. I want to be rich, and important. On the inside of things.

  Angelo hastened forward and pushed back a chair at the Purser's table. That was for Jocelyn; followed by Chauverney, she crossed the saloon with her light step, the pleated chiffon dress flattening back against her long legs. No one else had that grace of line and movement; no one like her.

  “Jocko!” she called. “Come over here with us.”

  “Dinna fash yersel', laddie,” said Chauverney, with his sudden vivid smile.

  “I want you, Jocko!” she cried, as if in despair, or anguish.

  But he wasn't going to take that seriously. “See you later,” he said, and went on with his dinner.

  Chauverney was able to talk to her. She was growing animated with him; she was leaning forward, looking into his face with a dazed, lost look in her eyes. She was interested, and suddenly she laughed. Killian couldn't stand that laugh of hers, low, almost hoarse. “Like one of those high-yaller wenches...” he thought.

  “Coffee, Angelo, and cheese.” Angelo did not answer, and did not hear him. He was staring at Jocelyn with his mouth open; giving him a forlorn and idiotic look. “Snap out of it, Angelo!” said Killian, sharply.

  “Senor? Excuse. You want?”

  “Nothing!” said Killian. He would have coffee in the smoke-room, or maybe he wouldn't have any coffee. He wanted to get away from Jocelyn. But he had to pass her table, and she reached out and caught his hand.

  “Jocko, wait for me on deck. Jocko, I've got to see you!” she said.

  “Well, we're on a ship,” he said. “I can't escape.” Certainly he smiled, and she could take it as a joke if she chose. He gave her shoulder a pat and went on out of the saloon. He walked up and down the promenade deck for a while, not a long while; then he went to his cabin and locked the door. “And she can't get me out,” he said to himself. “No matter what she says or does, she can't get me out.”

  He was mistaken about that.

  He put on a dressing gown and lay down on the bed with a Spanish book to read. The air flowed in at the open port like fresh water, warm and sweet; the sea was quiet tonight. Homeward bound, he thought. All right! I'll admit I don't want to go home. Back to the office, back to another room in somebody's apartment. In Buenos Aires he had lived in the house of a young German couple; a boy brought coffee to him every morning—coffee like nectar—ran his bath for him, cleaned his shoes. When he came in after dinner, the bed would be turned down, the lamp lighted, pajamas laid out.

  He lit a cigarette and read; after a time he turned out the light and lay in the dark. I don't know what I want, he thought, filled with melancholy. Nothing much. That's the trouble. I'm negative now.

  A few months ago he had been positive, definite. Ambitious to get on in the business. Now he didn't care. He felt cold, indifferent; he felt old. You can't measure age in years, he thought. I'm old—at twenty-three.

  He was asleep, or half asleep, when a strange, horrible sound shocked him: a voice crying, “Oooooo...” He sat up straight, in a sweat, and it came again. “Man ooo-verboard...” The ship quivered and jarred, checked; the engines reversed.

  He sprang up and ran across the cabin in the dark. When he opened the door, he came face to face with a tall man with a grey beard, standing motionless, his eyes dilated.

  “I fancied I heard—man overboard...” he said in a sort of bleat.

  They stared at each other, and Killian ran past him along the alleyway and out on deck. He saw four women starting up the ladder to the boat deck like ducks. He went after them; the last one was stout and climbed slowly, bent forward from the waist—so slowly that he pushed her a little. She looked back over her shoulder.

  “My! What a dreadful thing!” she said. “That poor girl!”

  “What girl?” he asked.

  “That bitch!” said another voice ahead of them.

  The stout woman tried to cover that. “That Miss Frey,” she said.

  So it was Jocelyn.

  The woman straightened up as she reached the boat deck, and Killian went past her. An officer was superintending the lowering of a lifeboat in a strong circle of light. “Oh, God...!” he said to himself. “Oh, God! Jocelyn in her white dress... She said that she was lonely.” Lonely? Now she knew what that word meant, all right. Still swimming, was she, in her white dress with the silver girdle? That made you think of fishes with silver scales. Sharks. Swimming, her long slender arms moving up and down, her slender legs wrapped in the long white skirt. Calling, screaming for help, all alone—until something seized her and dragged her under.

  “Got caught in the propellers,” a man said. “Inevitable...”

  That would be better, that would be quicker than swimming all alone. Lonely? That was the absolute of loneliness, out there. There were stars in the sky, and it's a fact that they twinkle. There were probably things in the depths of the sea not yet discovered. Things worse than sharks. You look at the ocean and call it empty, but that's a damned he. It is teeming and crawling with life. Different layers of life. Jocelyn would not sink to the bottom. She would drift down in her white dress. If the ocean was whisky, and I was a duck, I'd dive to the bottom, and I'd never come up.

  “I want a drink,” Killian said aloud. There were a lot of people on the boat deck, but he was not talking to them. The ship had stopped, and that made him seasick. Very sick. He went below to the smoke-room and the bar was closed.

  I'm glad! he thought suddenly. He did not want a drink, or anything to blunt his sick horror. If she had to go through this, let him bear his part of it, every moment of it. He sat down on a table, barefoot in his dressing gown. “Oh, God!” he said to himself. “God, what a way to die! She said she was lonely...”

  Some people were coming into the smoke-room, and he left it and went to his cabin. It was dark in there, and hot; the breeze was gone. Because we're lying to, he thought. He could hear, or thought he could hear, the motor in the lifeboat. Only a gesture, to lower a boat into this vast, dark sea, to look for a girl in a white dress.

  “I hope it's all over now,” he said to her. “I hope you're dead. Starry Eyes... I hope to God you're dead now.” Not still swimming; he had seen her in the pool in a black knitted suit. Slight and tall, elegant. Elegance in the set of her head, in her wrists and ankles. Only nineteen....

  “So things like this do happen?” he said to himself. Life and death were real, were they? Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream... Don't kid yourself, you fool. It's no dream.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, he lit a cigarette. They say there's no use smoking in the dark. That's another he. The end of the cigarette burned red. Port light is red. She would have seen the lights of the ship rushing away from her. Did she call me? Did she call “Jocko”? She asked me, she begged me to wait for her. I didn't. My fault? My fault?

  The ship shook in a preposterous way, making his teeth chatter; everything in the cabin rattled. Then the breeze came back. We're under way again. We've left her. Adios, Starry Eyes! Quede con Dios.
.. Remain with God. With the sharks, with the little fish and the great fish... He lay flat on his back on the bed, so very sick....

  He wanted another cigarette and he could find no matches; he felt in the pockets of his dressing gown, sat up and groped among the things on the table, rose and moved around in the dark cabin. Impossible to turn on the light. He rang the bell, and stood by the door waiting. Very promptly someone came, knocking.

  “Can you get some matches for me?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” said the voice of the watchman. A decent old fellow with a grey moustache. What does he do all night? Every night.... He knocked again. “Here you are, sir.” Killian opened the door and held out his hand, and the watchman filled it with matchbooks. “Nobody's getting much sleep tonight, sir.”

  “No, I suppose not,” said Killian.

  “It's a funny thing, sir... Young lady like that... You'd say she had everything to live for. Yet she wants to kill herself.”

  “Kill herself?”

  “That's what they're saying, sir. It's a funny thing. I'm sixty-six years of age, sir, but I can enjoy life. And there's a young lady like that, rich, everything to live for, you'd say; and she tries to kill herself.”

  “Tries...?”

  “Didn't you hear, sir? They picked her up and brought her back. They're working over her now.”

  “Thanks,” said Killian, and closed the door.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE SUN CAME raining down like hot silver that sizzled when it touched the deep blue sea; the sky was a bright burning blue. The steward came knocking at the door with Killian's coffee.

  “Great excitement last night, sir,” he said. “Wasn't it?”

  “Just put the tray down, will you?” said Killian.

  The moment he was alone, he began to drink the coffee, black and strong. “I wanted that,” he said to himself. “In a way, I know what's the matter with me. In a way. The reason I'm so damn miserable is because I'm a fake. I've made myself into this. This good little clerk. Underneath it I'm—what? A crazy Irishman. I had to choose. I knew that when I was a kid. I knew that I could be either a crazy little fool or a good boy. I chose to be a good boy. Hardworking. I save money. I make plans and I stick to them. But if I let go for one minute, I'd be—the other one. It's there all right. I can't kill it. I can just kick it into a comer, and keep on kicking it....”