The Brass Chills

by Hugh Pentecost

  Bradley came over to me quickly. “You feeling all right, Chris?”

  “A great deal better than I ever expected to.”

  He gave the scratch on my temple a critical look. “I think you’ll live,” he said. We turned to Cleave.

  I wondered if the man ever slept. I wondered if that lined, gray mask of a face ever relaxed. He lifted his head as if it were a tremendous physical effort.

  “I’m glad your wound was no more serious, Mr. Wells,” he said in a hollow voice.

  “You need rest, sir,” I said. I couldn’t help it when I saw his haggard eyes.

  He waved his hand vaguely. “There’ll come a time for that, Mr. Wells. You realize what a near thing that attack was. If Carver hadn’t caught that short-wave message, the chances of any of us being alive this morning would have been extremely remote.”

  “I know, sir.”

  “The point is the danger hasn’t been removed.” He sounded beaten. “We’ve searched this place from top to bottom; every building, every inch of ground. There’s no short-wave sending set on the Island.”

  “And yet there is,” said Bradley quietly.

  “Which means we have no way of guarding against a repetition of last night’s business. Another time we won’t be so lucky. They’ll come in force.”

  “I realize that, sir.”

  He brought his white, transparent-looking hands down on the desk. “We’ve got to stop it!”

  “Yes, sir,” I said stupidly.

  And there we were. Bradley looked troubled, but he wasn’t in the same blue funk that had engulfed the captain. “We’ve come some distance, at any rate,” he said. “We know the two nurses are in the clear. They were working together in the hospital when the short wave was being sent. They alibi each other. The court-martial cleared you, Chris. I do not suspect myself or Captain Cleave. Cameron, the electrician, is dead. I gave him quite a lot of thought while I was lying there in the dark waiting for the Japs to strike. And you know how I feel about Regan. That leaves Tubby Garms, McCoy, Ed Winthrop, big Joe, and Lewis.”

  “It simply can’t be — ”

  “Now hold it, Chris,” Bradley interrupted. “We’ve been saying that all along. It simply can’t be. But it is.”

  “Look,” I said. “Garms is a practical-joking wise guy. But I’ll eat my hat if he’s a murderer. McCoy is a swell guy and much too dumb to have carried out anything so elaborately cunning. Ed Winthrop lives and breathes boats and tools. He could no more sabotage a ship or a piece of equipment than he could cut out his mother’s heart. I don’t like Joe Adams. He’s a strong-arm guy who doesn’t do any thinking at all. But I saw him giving those Japs a workout last night. It was a hell of a funny way for an enemy spy to behave. It won’t add, Red. It simply won’t add.”

  “Go ahead,” said Bradley calmly. “You’ve left one out. What about Lewis?”

  “I scarcely know him,” I said. “He isn’t a very talkative guy. I’m not as certain about him as the others. But I’ve no reason to think he’s guilty.”

  “For God sake!” Cleave said. “For God sake!” I thought he was going to crack, but he didn’t. He drew a deep breath and went on in a low voice. “We’ve been all over this, Bradley. It never gets us anywhere.”

  “I think it has, sir. We have a pretty fair picture of things now. It’s been costly, but I think we can add up the qualifications and requirements of fact, and when we have, I think only one man will fill the bill. Let’s see, what do we know after all this? Write them down, Chris, as I list them.”

  I took a sheet of paper and a pencil from Cleave’s desk. Bradley leaned back in his chair, his eyes half closed. “Let’s see what we’ve got,” he said. “First: Psychologically, we know the murderer is twisted. He hates his country. He’s bending every effort to destroy it. That doesn’t suggest the placid background of Portsmouth to me. We should get the story of early backgrounds.

  “Second: The murderer had to be on the Ship twenty-four hours, at least, before we sailed. That lets Chris and me out, by the way.

  “Third: He had to have some knowledge of poison, specifically the bacillus botulinus.

  “Fourth: He had to have access to the food those first five men ate. I might point out that not everyone can get into the galley without attracting attention. The murderer wasn’t noticed.

  “Fifth: He had to know something about Alec Walker’s habits. He must have known that was Alec’s tomato juice. He was gunning for Alec.

  “Sixth: He had to know that there would be something on botulism in that medical dictionary, or he wouldn’t have bothered to hunt for it and tear it out of the book.

  “Seventh: He had to know about Quartermayne’s medicine. He had to have access to Quartermayne’s room.

  “Eighth: He had to know, Bill Regan’s smoking habits to plant those cigarettes so effectively.

  “Ninth: He had to be able to smuggle short-wave equipment ashore in some fashion which defied detection.

  “Tenth: He had to have enough technical knowledge to put the short-wave set together and make it work.

  “So what have we got?” Bradley asked. He paused for a moment to tamp down the tobacco in his pipe and relight it. “We have a man whose background drove him to a violent hatred of the system under which he lived; a man with a high degree of technical knowledge in the field of radio; a man with at least some medical knowledge. Of course, any layman could get knowledge of a specific poison if he set out to, but his realization that the medical dictionary contained information on the proper treatment for botulism, suggests to me more than a casual knowledge of medicine. He is a keen observer of human behavior. He knew all about Alec’s habits. He knew about Bill’s smoking habits. He knew about Quartermayne’s medicine-taking. He found a way to send a short-wave message under the noses of people who were watching him. Because we were all watching each other. It adds up to education, cleverness, keen powers of observation, and utter ruthlessness. Signaling the enemy last night was the same thing as attempting mass murder. That’s what he hoped for. Do any of our suspects fit all those categories, Chris?”

  “Sounds like Frankenstein himself,” I said.

  “We’ve overlooked a study of personal backgrounds,” Bradley said. “We must go over the records of these men, and then probe even deeper. We must … ”

  “We must find that radio, Lieutenant!” Cleave said.

  “I think that can be managed, sir.” Bradley said it with such calm confidence that both Cleave and I stared at him. He smiled. “You see, sir, I think I know, at last who the murderer is. I hope I may be able to prove it quickly.”

  “But who, for God sake?” I demanded.

  Bradley started to answer, when his voice was drowned out by the wild shriek of the warning siren. We waited after the first long, drawn-out wail, for a second. We all assumed another attack was underway. But the one blast was all.

  “Accident!” Cleave said.

  A marine swung open the door and ran in.

  “Trouble at the foundry, sir.”

  The foundry was Bill’s shop.

  “What’s happened?” Cleave demanded.

  “Mr. Winthrop, the boss workman, sir. He’s dead. They think it’s poison.”

  V

  I felt a sliver of ice run down my spine as I followed Cleave and Bradley out of the office. Bill’s bailiwick! We were on the merry-go-round again. Was the brass ring going to turn out, once more, to be Bill? I was too tired in the head to think anything more about it. Cleave kept the lead, plunging through another small jungle of trees and bushes.

  In the clearing in front of the foundry forty or fifty excited men were grouped around the entrance. I could feel that strange, frightening experience of mass hysteria in the air once more. The men opened a passage for Cleave, and we followed him through into the plant.

  I saw Alec Walker in his white laboratory coat first, kneeling on the ground. Ed Winthrop’s long, lean body was stretched out on the floor beside him. Alec looked u
p at Cleave.

  “Here it is again, sir,” he said grimly.

  “Botulism?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I was searching the crowd for Bill, but I couldn’t see him anywhere. I turned to one of the men who had crowded up close to me and was staring at Ed’s body with a kind of white fascination.

  “Where’s Regan?” I asked.

  The man’s eyes were angry. “Gone, sir,” he said, as if I were to blame. I heard Cleave ordering a stretcher to take Ed to the infirmary.

  “There’s no hurry,” Alec said. “He’s quite done for.” He looked badly shaken as he stood up and faced Bradley. “Our search for the poison wasn’t worth a hoot in hell, Lieutenant.”

  Bradley was like a rock in the midst of a hurricane. His orders were crisp and concise. The men were to go back to work. Those who had been with Ed when the poison struck him, or who had any notion about what had happened, were to come with us into the master founderer’s office, which was just inside the entrance.

  Three or four of them followed us. There were enough of us to crowd the office, which wasn’t more than ten feet square. There was a desk, a metal wastebasket, and a swivel chair facing a glass panel which looked out into the foundry proper. On the desk was a blueprint, held down by a cast-iron battleship ash tray. In the ash tray was a half-empty package of Bill’s brand of cigarettes. On the corner of the desk was a thermos bottle, the bottle I’d seen Bill bring from the mess hall.

  “Now,” said Bradley, “what’s become of Regan?”

  “He was here, sir, not half an hour ago,” one of the men said, “Ed Winthrop came in to talk things over with him. They were figuring stuff in here for quite a while. Then Regan came out of the office with a list of things Ed wanted done. He gave the orders and walked away. I didn’t see where he went. A few minutes ago I come in here to the office to look for him and found Ed on the floor, writhing and twisting.”

  “You dragged him out of here?”

  “We were going to carry him to the hospital, sir. Gus, there, ran to warn the doctor. But it wasn’t any use. It seemed to make it worse for Ed to be carried, and so we laid him on the floor.” The man swallowed hard. “Christ, the sweat spouted out all over him.”

  Bradley swung around on Cleave. “We’ve got to find Regan, sir. If you’ll detail some marines to — ”

  “You won’t need any marines, Lieutenant,” said Bill’s voice from behind me. He was standing in the office doorway. The spring seemed to have gone out of him.

  The man who had been doing the talking seemed to explode. “Ed trusted you!” he shouted at Bill. “He thought you were on the level when everyone else had your number. So you turn around and murder him, you dirty, double-crossing — ”

  “Quiet!” Bradley’s voice was harsh. “You men get back to work. I’ll deal with Regan.”

  The members of the foundry crew looked rebellious, but they shuffled out. I didn’t think much work would be done. Through the glass panel I could see groups of them huddled together, talking.

  “Well, Bill,” Bradley said quietly.

  “I didn’t kill him,” Bill said in a dull voice, “but it was my fault.” Cleave and Alec and I stared at him. “It was the coffee,” Bill said. He gestured toward the thermos bottle. “I brought it with me from the mess hall, but I didn’t touch any of it myself. Ed came to talk to me. He hadn’t bothered about breakfast, and he looked all in. I told him to help himself to the coffee and he did. He finished off the bottle. Then I left. I hadn’t been gone more than a minute when he toppled over.”

  “Where did you go?” Bradley asked. “Why didn’t you stay here to help him?”

  “I went to get the doctor,” Bill said, looking down at his tightly clenched fists. “I didn’t find him. I … well, I looked around for him.” It sounded very lame.

  “I was in my office,” said Alec coldly, “as the man who did find me can testify.”

  “Well, Regan?” Bradley demanded.

  “I … I guess I lost my head,” Bill said.

  Something stank about this and we all knew it. Bill wasn’t the kind of guy who lost his head. The whole thing sounded phony. But Bradley didn’t press it.

  “Why do you say it was your fault?”

  Bill looked up. “Why, don’t you see, Lieutenant, that stuff was meant for me! If I’d drunk it, as I was expected to, Ed would be alive. It has to be that way. How could anyone possibly guess that Ed was going to drink my coffee?”

  “It would have been simple enough for him to slip the poison in the thermos while he opened it and poured for Ed,” Alec said. His eyes were red-rimmed. I could see that he was close to breaking himself. He had been taking care of the dead and wounded all night, men who had been sacrificed because of the murderer’s little game with the shortwave set. He had barely escaped with his own life on the ship. He was beginning to react like the others. He wanted it settled. He didn’t care how flimsy the evidence was.

  “But I didn’t, Alec,” Bill said.

  I could see the old battlefronts realigning themselves. Alec had turned against Bill. I could almost read Cleave’s mind. He was thinking that, innocent or guilty, Bill was dynamite.

  And then Wasdell walked in the office and settled things. He looked none the worse for his adventure except that his eyebrows had been singed. It gave his blue eyes a curious birdlike sharpness.

  “The men outside aren’t working,” he said.

  “My dear Commander,” said Cleave, in a weary voice, “we’ve had another murder. We — ”

  “I don’t give a good God damn about that,” Wasdell snapped. “The Seahorse has got to be floated. How the hell do we know the Japs won’t be back tonight or tomorrow or the next day? Can’t you let Regan alone for five minutes so he can get those tubes cast?”

  Talking to Cleave that way was rank impertinence, insubordination, and God knows what else. Cleave could have thrown the book at him, but he didn’t.

  “I know how you feel, Commander,” Cleave said. “But you see, Regan is … ”

  Wasdell swung around on Bill. “Maybe he is a murderer, Captain, but he also happens to be a founderer. I’ll stand over him every second he’s at work, if you say the word. But we’ve got to get to work. We can’t sit here wrangling. If Bradley has no positive evidence, we can’t wait for it to turn up.”

  Alec passed a hand across his red eyes. “You want your torpedo tubes to stay together, don’t you, Commander? I wouldn’t trust this man to make a rattle for my baby.”

  “How can they go wrong?” Wasdell demanded. “We’ve got a radium-ray camera that’ll show up any flaws in the casting. If he fumbles or muffs the job, we’re no worse off than if we wait for the court-martial. This is a war, Captain Cleave. Caution is one thing; delay another.”

  Cleave didn’t seem to have the strength left to make a decision. “What’s your opinion, Bradley?”

  “I say let him go to work,” Bradley said.

  “You’re crazy, Bradley,” Alec said.

  “We have to man the ship, doctor, not you,” Wasdell said. “We run the risks. The quicker Regan gets on the job the better pleased we of the Seahorse will be.”

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” Bill said.

  “I’ll have two of my officers supervise the work,” Wasdell said. “Let’s get started.”

  Bradley touched my arm. “Stand by in the foundry for me, Chris. I’ve got some chasing around to do, and I don’t want to miss any tricks that turn up there.”

  “Right,” I said.

  I turned and saw Bill looking at me. He still had his smile, but it was strained, I thought.

  “Keep pitching for me, will you, pal?” he said. “I haven’t got eyes in the back of my head.”

  So he did recognize the danger to him.

  VI

  Bill was a changed man in that foundry. Two naval ensigns and I tagged around after him, but if he knew we were there it didn’t show. The casual indolent manner I’d come to associate with him fe
ll away like a discarded coat. And then you couldn’t have heard a wisecrack over the noise of the chipping hammers, the crane, and the great oil-burning furnaces sunk in the ground to melt metal, with men in dark goggles tending them. You can’t look at steel, bubbling at 2800 degrees, without protection. The crane moved back and forth across the ceiling, its warning bell giving off an incessant clamor. More men, working at what looked like bakers’ ovens, shoveled intricate sand moulds into intense heat for hardening.

  It was evident his own men still believed in him. A toothless, white-haired old man who looked like a Walt Disney gnome who might have come with the cave was inspecting the moulds as they came out of the ovens. He must have been a grandfather many times over.

  “How about it, Doc?” Bill said to him.

  “When there’s something wrong I’ll tell you, you blankety-blank-so-and-so,” the old man said, in a blood-curdling voice. Then he grinned, and Bill slapped him on the back and went on. So this was what Quartermayne had picked Bill for. His crew was a closely knit, well-organized team. Take away the quarterback, and confidence would be lost, hands slowed, steps made uncertain. I began to feel that queer tightening in my throat I’d felt that day at the recruiting office.

  A tough-looking bos’n’s mate came in with some sort of specifications for Bill.

  “Don’t put no granulated sugar in this stuff, bud,” he said. “We gotta go back after them yella-bellies.”

  “Okay, pal,” Bill said. “We mould ’em. You sock ’em.”

  Murder! Murder had no place here. These were fighting men, fighting in the way they were best equipped to fight. These were men fighting for liberty, for the people on the streets, for the safety of their cottages on Cape Cod, apartments in the city, and for a lot of simpler things — for the Good Humor man and Sundays on the beach and a dog for the children. And somewhere, like a white slug in the middle of a perfect apple, was a man trying to break down this fight. I had thought of him, from time to time, as one man delivering a series of annoying pinpricks. I was suddenly aware that he was not alone. He was an extension of, one slimy feeler of, a monster that was encircling each one of us, every free man on earth, with the intention of crushing him into permanent and everlasting submission.