“You were gone a long while.” Mr. Waggish eyed him protectively. “Did you see what I meant?”
Nappleby nodded. “Mania of a rather uncommon variety. Thalassophilia. Or ought I to say ‘tellurophobia’?” He regarded the First Officer’s ingenuous face with some compunction. “I should say, better yet, that he hates the land and adores the sea.”
The First Officer shook his head respectfully at the apology implicit in the last remark. “It’s a privilege to hear you, even if I don’t always understand, Sir Jon. Anybody can tell you’re an educated man.”
“I suppose”—Nappleby experienced a recrudescence of anxiety —“that the Chief Engineer is aware of the Captain’s—idiosyncrasy?”
“Oh, the engineers are all dotty.” Mr. Waggish proffered this equivocal reply (which Nappleby found distinctly barren of reassurance) with unshadowed cheerfulness, as prelude to a query of his own. “Now what, Sir Jon.? Anderson?”
“Anderson. The time has come, I fancy, to tackle him. We must have a little éclaircissement.”
Mr. Waggish remembered something as they made their way above. “Whilst you were with the Old Man, Anderson tried to get into Price’s cabin. There’s a man on guard whilst Inspector Tourneur searches the room. When he was challenged Anderson pretended he’d mistaken the door, and went away. That’s suspicious, is it not?”
“It is. Though if he killed Price, why is he waiting so long to go to his cabin to cover his traces, if that was his intention?”
“There he is now.” Mr. Waggish indicated a bulky form at the rail. As he spoke, Anderson turned to face them warily.
“This paper is in your writing, is it not?” Nappleby held up the check for him to see, without preliminaries.
Mr. Waggish’s warning cry was too late: Anderson’s spatulate fingers seized the check with greater speed than they seemed capable of, and flung it out to sea; he emitted a gross and exultant grunt.
With a mocking swish the wind blew the check back, fluttered it in coquettish derision against his conoid nose, loosed it, and tossed it against a bulkhead, whence Mr. Waggish retrieved it deftly.
Anderson’s eyes bulged; his jowls quivered; he appeared reduced to a gelatinous state by what he must have considered a wanton flouting of Newtonian protocol.
“The first law of the sea, Mr. Anderson.” The First Officer viewed him equably. “‘Never spit to windward.’”
The signs of some inner agitation were visible upon the triangular countenance as upon the face of some squat and putty-colored metronome whose works had suddenly gone on the blink. Anderson gibbered. “I didn’t kill Price! It was a legitimate business deal!”
Mr. Waggish turned red with moral indignation. Nappleby placed a restraining hand on his arm, and said: “In that case, you will not object to our examining your cabin.”
“But . .” Anderson’s protest died as he looked from the First Officer’s outraged face to Nappleby’s implacable one. He grunted again, but this time in acquiescence—an acquiescence at first grudging and vengeful, but then displaying, in nicely graded succession, tinges of willingness, eagerness, excitement, pleasure, and triumphant pride.
“He may have some dirty trick up his sleeve.” Mr. Waggish held Nappleby back as Anderson turned to conduct them below. “There may be a booby trap—some bloody gadget—”
“I fancy we are in no danger.” Nappleby started calmly after the titubating financier. “Pabulum, pap for babes, Mr. Waggish.”
In emulation of this nonchalance the First Officer lit a cigarette; he deposited his match in a sandbox with a hand that shook a little.
Anderson dragged a heavy foot-locker from under his berth. He unlocked it and put the cover back. His head and shoulders cut off their view of his actions: a clanking sound suggested the withdrawal of nameless metallic objects.
“There!” Still on his haunches, Anderson moved aside at last.
On the deck was spread a miniature city: ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples, based on plastic, lay open to the grey light seeping through the porthole; a factory and a school, a park and a carrousel. At right and left were tall pylons, with a silver wire hanging between them. Anderson’s finger touched a button, and the carrousel revolved to the tinkling of “Three Blind Mice”; a troop of inch-high soldiers marched out of a red-brick barracks, halted, turned, and marched back in again.
“Look!” Anderson had forgotten his troubles in a concentration of glee. He delved into the trunk again, and brought out a model airplane: this be attached to the wire near the right-hand pylon. “Bang, bang!” he muttered absorbedly: pressing a second button. The plane slid along the wire. There was another, louder Bang, a genuine crash “embowled with outragious noise the aire,” and a huge cloud of white dust billowed up, powdering the tweed jacket of Nappleby, the dark twill of Mr. Waggish. As the dust cleared, and the smoke, they beheld a heap of whitish fragments, the residuum of the bustling metropolis.
Anderson tore his eyes from this feast to view his guests. “How do you like that? Better than popguns, hey?”
“Good God!” Mr. Waggish brushed ineffectually at his uniform. The door opened to reveal the pale face of a steward and the nozzle of a fire-hose; Mr. Waggish waved them out again.
“How’s that?” Anderson beamed in sanguinolent tripudiation.
“Incredible.” Nappleby was succinct.
“Of course, this is only a rough model. There is room for improvement. The beauty of it is, the bomber can be used over and over, but the buildings are only guaranteed for one game; then the kids have to get replacement kits at three-fifty per.”
“They have their choice of cities—London, Paris, New York?”
“They— Say! What do you think I am, a Red? This is a legitimate business deal.”
“This is, I suppose, the Kiddie Kit.”
“No!” Anderson was contemptuous. “That’s what we call the junior size—no real explosion, just marbles fall out of the bomb-door and knock the houses down. We use a farmhouse in the Kiddie Kit—two cows, a pig, a bunch of hens.”
“You hadn’t thought of supplying toy corpses?”
“In the Superset you get Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, plus the soldiers, plus an extra set of A-bombs. Then—” Anderson directed a suddenly distrustful and comminatory look at his visitors. “You understand this is all on the Q.T.! The patent’s pending. When we get manufactured in quantity we break out with a big advertising campaign. Radio! TV!”
Mr. Waggish found voice at last. “You’ll hand the whole bloody mess over to me this minute. And”——he checked an outraged yell on Anderson’s part—“you can stow the gaff! Or rather”—Mr. Waggish changed his mind—“you can explain that check to us.”
Anderson glowered, Caliban torn from play. He was defiant. “I won’t talk without a lawyer. I guess I know my rights.”
“Your rights!” Mr. Waggish swallowed.
For the second time, Nappleby prevented an outburst. He led the First Officer into the passageway. “We may as well wait. Commandeer his toys by all means. But he is not a spy.”
“And I thought he was our villain!” Mr. Waggish had not yet recovered his equanimity. He sighed.
“Of course, one may choose to regard what he is doing as atrocious enough. On the whole I prefer some spies I have known.”
“And we still don’t know why he gave Price a check for fifteen thousand dollars—for blackmail or whatever!”
“Any lawyer will tell him to say he paid Price for help in advertising his little games. He may even think of saying so, himself.”
Mr. Waggish was struck by this suggestion. “It might even be true.” He frowned dubiously. “Do you think he killed Price, Sir Jon.?”
“I don’t know.”
“And how did you discover what he was up to?” Mr. Waggish seemed to remember something: “Did you use logic, and simply put misplaced details into place in the proper system?”
“It was rather a matter of pursuing certain themes from
Wordsworth and Gray.”
The First Officer was wistful. “It must be hard to be a detective unless one reads a great deal of poetry?”
“It is difficult to solve a case without a thorough knowledge of the classics and of modern European literature.” Nappleby considered. “Indeed, I suspect that crime and indagation are not only inherently arcane, fantastic, and polysyllabic, but quintessentially allusive.”
Mr. Waggish sighed. “Well—I should like to put Anderson into the brig; but since you say not”—he brushed ineffectually at the powder on his trousers—“we had better go and change our clothes.”
Jerry Pason
Jerry Payson hummed to himself as he knotted his tie before the mirror on his cabin wall.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in!” Jerry Pason called.
The door opened. A large, heavy man with a conic-shaped head appeared. He wore a worried, nervous expression.
“You’re Jerry Pason?” he asked.
“That’s right,” Pason said.
“I’m Homer T. Anderson,” the big man said.
“I know,” the lawyer said. “I’ve seen you about the ship. What can I do for you, Mr. Anderson?”
“I want a lawyer,” Anderson told him. “I hear you’re a good one. I’ve been trying to get hold of you for hours.”
Pason said: “I’ve been busy. Sit down, Mr. Anderson.”
Anderson sat down, wiping his forehead. He gazed anxiously at Pason.
Pason said, “Have a cigarette.”
Anderson’s puffy hands shook as he took one from the pack Pason held out. Pason lit the cigarette. Anderson said: “I’m a rich man, Mr. Pason. I’ll pay anything—anything!”
The lawyer raised his hand. “One moment, Mr. Anderson.” He pressed a button marked “Steward.”
When the steward put his head into the room Jerry Pason told him: “Ask my secretary, Miss Deet, to come here with her notebook.”
Anderson protested: “I don’t want anyone else in on this.”
“You’ll have to let my secretary hear it,” the lawyer said, “or go elsewhere for counsel.”
There was another knock on the door. The door opened. Stella Deet came in.
“You wanted me, Chief?” she asked.
“We have a client,” Pason told her. “This is Mr. Homer T. Anderson. You remember I told you he might run into trouble.”
“You knew I’d come to you?” Anderson demanded.
“Just a hunch,” Pason said enigmatically.
Stella Deet sat down, crossed her shapely legs, propped her shorthand notebook on one knee, and waited with her pencil poised in the air.
Anderson blurted out: “I’m afraid I’m going to be arrested for the murder of Paul Price.”
Pason said suavely, “Oh?” He raised his eyebrows.
Anderson gasped, “You know about it?”
“I want to hear you tell about it,” Pason said noncommittally.
“I didn’t kill him!” Anderson said, wiping his forehead. “But things are piling up against me. I tried to keep a certain business deal secret, so I made some misstatements. The people who are investigating know I talked with Price last night, and so far nobody has been found who saw him later. They found a check I gave him for fifteen thousand. But I didn’t kill him!”
“Start from the beginning,” Pason said crisply. “How long have you known Price?”
“Only since coming aboard. I never saw him before that.”
“And was it just coincidence that brought you on the same ship?”
“Yes.” Anderson licked his mouth nervously. “Just coincidence.”
“You’re sure?” Pason asked sternly.
Stella Deet darted an alert, inquisitive look at the businessman.
“I—”
“I can’t help you unless you tell the truth,” Pason told him. “You needn’t be afraid. This is a privileged conversation. But you must be honest with me. I think you’re lying now. I saw you with Price the first night out, and it certainly looked to me as though you were doing your best to make his acquaintance—as if you’d come on purpose for that!”
Stella Deet’s pencil flew over the pages of her shorthand notebook. Her eyes went to Pason in poignant admiration.
“Well,” Anderson said reluctantly, “the fact is, I sailed on this ship because I heard Price would be on board.”
“You must have wanted to meet him pretty badly,” Pason said.
Anderson said glibly: “I have a new product coming out. I was anxious to have Paul Price give it publicity in his newspaper column.”
Stella Deet darted another alert, suspicious glance at him. She looked sidelong at Pason.
Pason asked: ‘What is this product? What’s your company?”
Anderson told them pompously: “I have lots of companies. This one is the Merry-O Novelty Company. It is a subsidiary of General Metals, of which I am a director! We have a series of children’s games coming out: a death-ray kit, an A-bomb kit, and so on. The patents are pending. I had a sample kit in my cabin I’d show you, only the First Mate stole it from me.” Anderson’s voice rose. His face turned purple.
“Take it easy,” the lawyer said mollifyingly. “Let’s get the facts straight. You say you had this game, and you wanted publicity. Well, that seems harmless enough. Was that why you chased Price around the ship?”
“Yes, that’s why.”
“Why were you so frightened?”
“Who says I was frightened?” Anderson demanded belligerently.
Pason looked at him with a level gaze. He let the subject drop. “Well, what happened next?” he asked coolly.
“Last night I finally persuaded Price to say he’d write the game up, for fifteen thousand dollars. But he was alive when I left him! I tell you—”
“I want the details,” Pason said quietly. “Where did you have this talk? When? What was said?”
“On deck, near where they found the body. It was about eleven-thirty or eleven-forty. I left at ten to twelve. I looked at my watch.”
“All right,” said Pason. “Go on.”
“He agreed to write a plug in his column. I said I’d make out a check right off and bring it up to him, but he said to take it to his cabin because he’d be there soon, he had an appointment there at twelve-thirty.”
“Who with?” Pason asked sharply.
“He didn’t say. That’s all. He gave me a cigarette. He mentioned his niece, how she was a nuisance to him. He said it was a profitable trip. He laughed and said something screwy about how he hated the water except for the ice.”
“Do you know what he meant by that?” asked Jerry Pason.
“No.”
“And that was all?”
“Yes. I went down and made out the check. I knocked at his door, but there was no answer; so I slipped the check under the door in an envelope. It was about twelve-ten. That Scotland Yard dick has the check now—or the First Mate.”
“This may help establish the time,” Pason said thoughtfully. “If Price did not keep his twelve-thirty appointment it was probably because he was already dead. If he did keep it he must have gone out on deck again later.”
Stella Deet asked, “Isn’t it suspicious that the person he was supposed to meet hasn’t come forward, Chief?”
Pason smiled. “Not necessarily. The person might be innocent of murder but have some reason for concealment. For instance, it might be a woman.”
“He was playing around with that actress, Dolores Despana,” said Anderson.
“Did he tell you she was the person he had a date with?”
“No,” Anderson admitted.
The lawyer asked him: “Well, why is all this so damaging for you?”
Anderson cleared his throat. He said: “Well, it wouldn’t be except that I denied having any dealings with Price. And then I tried to dispose of the check by throwing it overboard. Also when I heard about the murder I went to his cabin to get the check back, and I was se
en.”
Pason said: “It may interest you to know that I have already heard about this check from the First Mate, and he did not find it in Price’s cabin. Someone else took it from the cabin, and put it where the investigators would be sure to see it!”
Anderson stared at him. He looked terrified. He did not speak.
“Have you told me everything you know?” Pason asked him grimly.
“I— Yes!”
“Well,” Pason told him, “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll get in touch with you. Meanwhile don’t talk unless I’m present.”
Anderson went out.
Stella Deet looked at Jerry Pason with secretarial solicitude. “Chief,” she said tenderly, “this is your vacation!”
“If he needs my help, that’s what I’m a lawyer for,” Jerry Pason said, smiling.
“Do you believe him, Chief?”
The lawyer frowned. “Half and half, Stella. I believe about half what he says, and I don’t believe the other half. He’s already thrown a lot of lies about. He wouldn’t be in a mess if he’d told the truth about seeing Price. You notice he hasn’t told us about the blackjack someone stole from him, or about how he tried to get Winifred Price into trouble. And there’s more behind that check than payment for publicity. He’s high up in a big concern. He’s a director of General Metals, after all. Men like that don’t usually handle advertising themselves. Remember, when we saw him chasing after Price, he was scared. My guess is, Price had something on him!”
“Blackmail!” Stella Deet exclaimed.
The lawyer smiled, nodded. “It’s what you’d expect. You know Price’s reputation. Well, we have some questions to work on. Who gave that check to the First Mate? Certainly Anderson did not. It was completely against his interests.”
“A frame?” Stella Deet asked with quick intelligence.
Pason said: “It could be. A clumsy frame. Extemporaneous. The whole thing strikes me, Stella, as unplanned. Sometimes that’s the hardest kind of case to crack. Another question; Whom did Price expect to meet?”
He frowned. “I wish we knew exactly when the killing took place.”
“It’s too bad,” Stella Deet smiled, “that the two old ladies I heard were on the wrong side of the ship!”
Murder in Pastiche Page 7