The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  After that, however, he suddenly felt strange. He thought he had been doped, and told the helmsman so. He asked Jones to strike the bell for him, and, going up on the forecastle head, lay down on the boards and fell asleep. He did not waken until he heard six bells struck - three o'clock. And, before he had fully roused, I had called him.

  "Then," I said, "when the lookout saw you with the axe, you were replacing it?"

  "Yes."

  "The lookout says you were not on deck between two and three o'clock."

  "How does he know? I was asleep."

  "You had threatened to get the captain."

  "I had a revolver; I didn't need to use an axe."

  Much as I disliked the man, I was inclined to believe his story, although I thought he was keeping something back. I leaned forward.

  "Singleton,"- I said, "if you didn't do it, and I want to think you did not, - who did?"

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  "We have women aboard. We ought to know what precautions to take."

  "I wasn't the only man on deck that night. Burns was about, and he had a quarrel with the Hansen woman. Jones was at the wheel, too. Why don't you lock up Jones?"

  "We are all under suspicion," I admitted. "But you had threatened the captain."

  "I never threatened the girl, or Mr. Vail."

  I had no answer to this, and we both fell silent. Singleton was the first to speak:-

  "How are you going to get back? The men can sail a course, but who is to lay it out? Turner? No Turner ever knew anything about a ship but what it made for him."

  "Turner is sick. Look here, Singleton, you want to get back as much as we do, or more. Wouldn't you be willing to lay a course, if you were taken out once a day? Burns is doing it, but he doesn't pretend to know much about it, and - we have the bodies."

  But he turned ugly again, and refused to help unless he was given his freedom, and that I knew the crew would not agree to.

  "You'll be sick enough before you get back!" he snarled.

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE WHITE LIGHT

  With the approach of night our vigilance was doubled. There was no thought of sleep among the crew, and, with the twilight, there was a distinct return of the terror of the morning.

  Gathered around the wheel, the crew listened while Jones read evening prayer. Between the two houses, where the deck was roped off, Miss Lee was alone, pacing back and-forward, her head bent, her arms dropped listlessly.

  The wind had gone, and the sails hung loose over our heads. I stood by the port rail. Although my back was toward Miss Lee, I was conscious of her every movement; and so I knew when she stooped under the rope and moved lightly toward the starboard rail.

  Quick as she was, I was quicker. There was still light enough to see her face as she turned when I called to her:

  "Miss Lee You must not leave the rope."

  "Must not?"

  "I am sorry to seem arbitrary. It is for your own safety."

  I was crossing the deck toward her as I spoke. I knew what she was going to do. I believe, when she saw my face, that she read my knowledge in it. She turned back from the rail and faced me.

  "Surely I may go to the rail!"

  "It would be unwise, if for no other reason than discipline."

  "Discipline! Are you trying to discipline me?"

  "Miss Lee, you do not seem to understand," I said, as patiently as I could. "Just now I am in charge of the Ella. It does not matter how unfit I am - the fact remains. Nor does it concern me that your brother-in-law owns the ship. I am in charge of it, and, God willing, there will be no more crimes on it. You will go back to the part of the deck that is reserved for you, or you will go below and stay there."

  She flushed with anger, and stood there with her head thrown back, eyeing me with a contempt that cut me to the quick. The next moment she wheeled and, raising her hand, flung toward the rail the key to the storeroom door. I caught her hand - too late.

  But fate was on my side, after all. As I stood, still gripping her wrist, the key fell ringing almost at my feet. It had struck one of the lower yard braces. I stooped, and, picking it up, pocketed it.

  She was dazed, I think. She made no effort to free her arm, but she put her other hand to her heart unexpectedly, and I saw that she was profoundly shocked. I led her, unprotesting, to a deck-chair, and put her down in it; and still she had not spoken: She lay back and closed her eyes. She was too strong to faint; she was superbly healthy. But she knew as well as I did what that key meant, and she had delivered it into my hands. As for me, I was driven hard that night; for, as I stood there looking down at her, she held out her hand to me, palm up.

  "Please!" she said pleadingly. "What does it mean to you, Leslie? We were kind to you, weren't we? When you were ill, we took you on, my sister and I, and now you hate us."

  "Hate you!"

  "He didn't know what he was doing. He wasn't sane. No sane man kills - that way. He had a revolver, if he had wanted - Please give me that key!"

  "Some one will suffer. Would you have the innocent suffer with the guilty?"

  "If they cannot prove it against any one -"

  "They may prove it against me."

  "You!"

  "I was in the after house," I said doggedly. "I was the one to raise an alarm and to find the bodies. You do not know anything about me. I am -'Elsa's jail-bird'!"

  "Who told you that?"

  "It does not matter - I know it. I told you the truth, Miss Elsa; I came here from the hospital. But I may have to fight for my life. Against the Turner money and influence, I have only - this key. Shall I give it to you?"

  I held it out to her on the palm of my hand. It was melodramatic, probably; but I was very young, and by that time wildly in love with her. I thought, for a moment, that she would take it; but she only drew a deep breath and pushed my hand away.

  "Keep it," she said. "I am ashamed."

  We were silent after that, she staring out over the rail at the deepening sky; and, looking at her as one looks at a star, I thought she had forgotten my presence, so long she sat silent. The voices of the men aft died away gradually, as, one by one, they rolled themselves in blankets on the deck, not to sleep, but to rest and watch. The lookout, in his lonely perch high above the deck, called down guardedly to ask for company, and one of the crew went up.

  When she turned to me again, it was to find my eyes fixed on her.

  "You say you have neither money nor influence. And yet, you are a gentleman."

  "I hope so."

  "You know what I mean" - impatiently. "You are not a common sailor."

  "I did not claim to be one."

  "You are quite determined we shall not know anything about you?"

  "There is nothing to know. I have given you my name, which is practically all I own in the world. I needed a chance to recover from an illness, and I was obliged to work. This offered the best opportunity to combine both."

  "You are not getting much chance -to rest," she said, with a sigh, and got up. I went with her to the companionway, and opened the door. She turned and looked at me.

  "Good-night."

  "Good-night, Miss Lee."

  "I - I feel very safe with you on guard," she said, and held out her hand. I took it in mine, with my heart leaping. It was as cold as ice.

  That night, at four bells, I mustered the crew as silently as possible around the jollyboat, and we lowered it into the water. The possibility of a dead calm had convinced me that the sooner it was done the better. We arranged to tow the boat astern, and Charlie Jones suggested a white light in its bow, so we could be sure at night that it had not broken loose.

  Accordingly, we attached to the bow of the jolly-boat a tailed block with an endless fall riven through it, so as to be able to haul in and refill the lantern. Five bells struck by the time we had arranged the towing-line.

  We dropped the jolly-boat astern and made fast the rope. It gave me a curious feeling, that small boat rising and f
alling behind us, with its dead crew, and its rocking light, and, on its side above the water-line, the black cross - a curious feeling of pursuit, as if, across the water, they in the boat were following us. And, perhaps because the light varied, sometimes it seemed to drop behind, as if wearying of the chase, and again, in great leaps, to be overtaking us, to be almost upon us.

  An open boat with a small white light and a black cross on the side.

  CHAPTER XIV

  FROM THE CROW'S NEST

  The night passed without incident, except for one thing that we were unable to verify. At six bells, during the darkest hour of the night that precedes the early dawn of summer, Adams, from the crow's-nest, called down, in a panic, that there was something crawling on all fours on the deck below him.

  Burns, on watch at the companionway, ran forward with his revolver, and narrowly escaped being brained - Adams at that moment flinging down a marlinespike that he had carried aloft with him.

  I heard the crash and joined Burns, and together we went over the deck and, both houses. Everything was quiet: the crew in various attitudes of exhausted sleep, their chests and dittybags around them; Oleson at the wheel; and Singleton in his jail-room, breathing heavily.

  Adams's nerve was completely gone, and, being now thoroughly awake, I joined him in the crow's-nest. Nothing could convince him that he had been the victim of a nervous hallucination. He stuck to his story firmly.

  "It was on the forecastle-head first," he maintained. "I saw it gleaming."

  "Gleaming?"

  "Sort of shining," he explained. "It came up over the rail, and at first it stood up tall, like a white post."

  "You didn't say before that it was white."

  "It was shining," he said slowly, trying to put his idea into words. "Maybe not exactly white, but light-colored. It stood still for so long, I thought I must be mistaken - that it was a light on the rigging. Then I got to thinking that there wasn't no place for a light to come from just there."

  That was true enough.

  "First it was as tall as a man, or taller maybe," he went on. "Then it seemed about half that high and still in the same place. Then it got lower still, and it took to crawling along on its belly. It was then I yelled."

  I looked down. The green starboard light threw a light over only a small part of the deck. The red light did no better. The masthead was possibly thirty feet above the hull, and served no illuminating purpose whatever. From the bridge forward the deck was practically dark.

  "You yelled, and then what happened?"

  His reply was vague - troubled.

  "I'm not sure," he said slowly. "It seemed to fade away. The white got smaller - went to nothing, like a cloud blown away in a gale. I flung the spike."

  I accepted the story with outward belief and a mental reservation. But I did not relish the idea of the spike Adams had thrown lying below on deck. No more formidable weapon short of an axe, could be devised. I said as much.

  "I'm going down for it," I said; "if you're nervous, you'd better keep it by you. But don't drop it on everything that moves below. You almost got Burns."

  I went down cautiously, and struck a match where Adams had indicated the spike. It was not there. Nor had Burns picked it up. A splintered board showed where it had struck, and a smaller indentation where it had rebounded; but the marlinespike was gone, and Burns had not seen it. We got a lantern and searched systematically, without result. Burns turned to me a face ghastly in the oil light.

  "Somebody has it," he said, "and there will be more murder! Oh, my God, Leslie!"

  "When you went back after the alarm, did you count the men?"

  "No; Oleson said no one had come forward. They could not have passed without his seeing them. He has the binnacle lantern and two other lights."

  "And no one came from the after house?"

  "No one."

  Eight bells rang out sharply. The watch changed. I took the revolver and Burns's position at the companionway, while Burns went aft. He lined up the men by the binnacle light, and went over them carefully. The marlinespike was not found; but he took from the cook a long meat-knife, and brought both negro and knife forward to me. The man was almost collapsing with terror. He maintained that he had taken the knife for self-protection, and we let him go with a warning.

  Dawn brought me an hour's sleep, the first since my awakening in the storeroom. When I roused, Jones at the wheel had thrown an extra blanket over me, for the morning was cool and a fine rain was falling.

  The men were scattered around in attitudes of dejection, one or two of them leaning over the rail, watching the jolly-boat, riding easily behind us. Jones heard me moving, and turned.

  "Your friend below must be pretty bad, sir," he said. "Your lady-love has been asking for you. I wouldn't let them wake you."

  "My - what?"

  He waxed apologetic at once.

  "That's just my foolishness, Leslie," he said. "No disrespect to the lady, I'm sure. If it ain't so, it ain't, and no harm done. If it is so, why, you needn't be ashamed, boy. 'The way of a man with a maid,' says the Book."

  "You should have called me, Jones," I said sharply. "And no nonsense of that sort with the men."

  He looked hurt, but made no reply beyond touching his cap. And, while I am mentioning that, I may speak of the changed attitude of the men toward me from the time they put me in charge. Whether the deference was to the office rather than the man, or whether in placing me in authority they had merely expressed a general feeling that I was with them rather than of them, I do not know. I am inclined to think the former. The result, in any case, was the same. They deferred to me whenever possible, brought large and small issues alike to me, served me my food alone, against my protestations, and, while navigating the ship on their own responsibility, took care to come to me for authority for everything.

  Before I went below that morning, I suggested that some of the spare canvas be used to erect a shelter on the after deck, and this was done. The rain by that time was driving steadily - a summer rain without wind. The men seemed glad to have occupation, and, from that time on, the tent which they erected over the hatchway aft of the wheel was their living and eating quarters. It added something to their comfort: I wag not so certain that it added to their security.

  Tuner was violent that day. I found all four women awake and dressed, and Mrs. Turner, whose hour it was on duty, in a chair outside the door. The stewardess, her arm in a sling, was making tea over a spirit-lamp, and Elsa was helping her. Mrs. Johns was stretched on a divan, and on the table lay a small revolver.

  Clearly, Elsa had told the incident of the key. I felt at once the atmosphere of antagonism. Mrs. Johns watched me coolly from under lowered eyelids. The stewardess openly scowled. And Mrs. Turner rose hastily, and glanced at Mrs. Johns, as if in doubt. Elsa had her back to me, and was busy with the cups.

  "I'm afraid you've had a bad night," I said.

  "A very bad night," Mrs. Turner replied stiffly.

  "Delirium?"

  "Very marked. He has talked of a white figure - we cannot quite make it out. It seems to be Wilmer - Mr. Vail."

  She had not opened the door, but stood, nervously twisting her fingers, before it.

  "The bromides had no effect?"

  She glanced helplessly at the others. "None," she said, after a moment.

  Elsa Lee wheeled suddenly and glanced scornfully at her sister.

  "Why don't you tell him?" she demanded. "Why don't you say you didn't give the bromides?"

  "Why not?"

  Mrs. Johns raised herself on her elbow and looked at me.

  "Why should we?" she asked. "How do we know what you are giving him? You are not friendly to him or to us. We know what you are trying to do - you are trying to save yourself, at any cost. You put a guard at the companionway. You rail off the deck for our safety. You drop the storeroom key in Mr. Turner's cabin, where Elsa will find it, and will be obliged to acknowledge she found it, and then take it from her by forc
e, so you can show it later on and save yourself!"

  Elsa turned on her quickly.

  "I told you how he got it, Adele. I tried to throw it -"

  "Oh, if you intend to protect him!"

  "I am rather bewildered," I said slowly; "but, under the circumstances, I suppose you do not wish me to look after Mr. Turner?"

  "We think not" - from Mrs. Turner.

  "How will you manage alone?"

  Mrs. Johns got up and lounged to the table. She wore a long satin negligee of some sort, draped with lace. It lay around her on the floor in gleaming lines of soft beauty. Her reddish hair was low on her neck, and she held a cigarette, negligently, in her teeth. All the women smoked, Mrs. Johns incessantly.

  She laid one hand lightly on the revolver, and flicked the ash from her cigarette with the other.

  "We have decided," she said insolently, "that, if the crew may establish a dead-line, so may we. Our dead-line is the foot of the companionway. One of us will be on watch always. I am an excellent shot."

  "I do not doubt it." I faced her. "I am afraid you will suffer for air; otherwise, the arrangement is good. You relieve me of part of the responsibility for your safety. Tom will bring your food to the steps and leave it there."

  "Thank you."

  "With good luck, two weeks will see us in port; and then -"

  "In port! You are taking us back?"

  "Why not?"

  She picked up the revolver and examined it absently. Then she glanced at me, and shrugged her shoulders. "How can we know? Perhaps this is a mutiny, and you are on your way to some God forsaken island. That's the usual thing among pirates, isn't it?"

  "I have no answer to that, Mrs. Johns," I said quietly, and turned to where Elsa sat.

  "I shall not come back unless you send for me," I said. "But I want you to know that my one object in life from now on is to get you back safely to land; that your safety comes first, and that the vigilance on deck in your interest will not be relaxed."