[Mark Twain Mysteries 03] - The Prince and the Prosecutor

by Peter J. Heck

  Prinz Karl rose slowly to his feet, his face a frightening mask of anger as he dusted off his clothes. “You will pay for this, young man,” he said in a chillingly quiet voice. “I will say no more for now, but I do not make idle threats.”

  “That will be sufficient,” said the captain, in a voice that exuded authority. “If either of you misbehaves further, I will confine the offender to his cabin until we dock in England. Sir, I suggest you take advantage of the opportunity to leave the room while this young man is still under restraint.”

  The prince looked at the captain and nodded. “Very well, Captain. I know how to bide my time,” he said, then turned on his heel and stalked out of the room.

  “Oh, I’m so frightened,” said Babson, smirking. “Bide your time, mister. I’ll be ready whenever you are.”

  “Robert, I would advise holding your tongue,” said Mr. Mercer, who had at last come up beside him. “You are already in more trouble than you appreciate.”

  “Don’t you worry, Mr. Mercer, I can handle myself,” said young Babson. He looked a bit less defiant, face to face with his intended father-in-law. At the captain’s gesture, the rest of the audience had begun to file out the door, with the ladies casting sidelong glances at the truculent young man. He grinned at them as if he had won a solid victory over a brave opponent, instead of launching two cowardly attacks on an older man who was not expecting violence—who, in fact, had not long before given his fiancée a compliment on her musicianship. Seeing Babson in that stance, I found it hard to understand what Miss Mercer saw in him.

  The heavy seas seemed to have abated during the concert—or perhaps it was the audience’s absorption in the music that made the weather less noticeable—but almost as soon as we left the Grand Saloon, the ship began to roll and pitch even more disturbingly than earlier. Mr. Clemens and I adjourned to the smoking lounge for a nightcap with Mr. Kipling and Colonel Fitzwilliam, and found the place half-empty. Even the two veteran crib-bage players, who had hardly moved from their table except for meals since we had left New York, were absent tonight.

  The weather was certainly the roughest I had felt on our trip so far. After the short trip down the corridor from the Grand Saloon, I was glad to find a good firm seat and plant myself securely in it. The waiter who negotiated the tilting deck without spilling a trayful of brimming glasses must have been a preternaturally skilled acrobat: I found it hard to keep my drink from sloshing out of my glass while holding it in my hand. As for setting down the glass, that was next to pointless, unless one saw some benefit to irrigating the carpet with whisky.

  Despite the wretched weather, Mr. Clemens seemed to be in high spirits—at least, once he had a drink in his hand and a cigar in his mouth. He began swapping tales of storms at sea with Colonel Fitzwilliam, who had sailed at one time or another to almost every place Her Majesty’s army had troops stationed. Mr. Kipling had done his share of sailing, as well, between England, India, Australia, and America. Compared to these three veterans of the high seas, I felt a veritable tadpole—though I had grown up with the Atlantic practically in my backyard.

  After several progressively more colorful stories from Mr. Kipling and the colonel, Mr. Clemens said, “Well, the Atlantic can be rough, I’ll grant you. I’ve crossed it often enough to know. But the damnedest voyage I ever had was on the Pacific—the first voyage I ever took, in fact. She was a three-masted sailing ship, and there were quite a few young people aboard besides me—I was young then, believe it or not, Wentworth. We left San Francisco for the Sandwich Islands. It must have been near thirty years ago, just this time of year, too. And at first, everything went pretty well, all things considered. But halfway to the islands, two thousand miles from any shore, we were becalmed.”

  “Ah, that must have been dreary,” I said. “How long were you without wind?”

  “Well, it must have been two weeks,” said Mr. Clemens. He carefully reached out to tap the inch-long ash off his cigar. “We kept our spirits up by singing songs every evening. It struck me as very funny that one of the favorite songs was ‘Homeward Bound’—we sang it every blessed night, though of course we weren’t bound anywhere at all, being becalmed. We sat the entire fortnight in that one single spot, in sweltering heat, but it was pleasant enough, singing under the stars with that group of young people. Lord knows what’s happened to most of them.” He paused a moment, seemingly immersed in reverie over his lost youth.

  The door to the smoking lounge came open, and I saw Prinz Karl stick his head in for a moment. He had evidently been out on deck—his hair was damp, and windblown. His expression was unreadable, but after glancing around the room a moment, he withdrew as he had earlier in the day, closing the door behind him.

  “It’s not much of a night for singing under the stars tonight, is it?” said Mr. Kipling, shaking his head. I thought at first that he was referring to Prinz Karl’s appearance, but then I realized that he and Mr. Clemens were facing away from the door and could not have seen the prince.

  “Well, I’m not much of a singer in any case,” said Mr. Clemens. He took a sip of his whisky and wiped his mouth. “You know, I’d almost forgotten that voyage. The most curious thing happened. After two weeks of sitting in the same place, a breeze sprang up, and we thought we were on our way at last—homeward bound, after all our wishing for it in song. The sails filled, the ropes strained, and all our hearts were lighter. And yet, the ship didn’t seem to be moving at all.”

  “I’ve never heard the like,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, a skeptical look on his face.

  “Well, it certainly surprised the captain,” said Mr. Clemens. “It took us the better part of the day to figure out what was wrong.” He paused, taking another long sip of his whisky.

  Mr. Kipling had a little smile on his face. “I assume you’re going to tell us what the problem was,” he prompted.

  “Why, of course,” said Mr. Clemens, with a hurt look. “It was completely unprecedented. The captain had been sailing the Pacific for years and years, and his first mate was even more experienced, and neither of them had ever seen the like.”

  “The like of what?” asked the colonel.

  “The barnacles, of course,” said Mr. Clemens. He glanced around at his listeners, and experience told me that he was preparing one of his leg-pulls. “While the ship was sitting becalmed on that one spot for two weeks, the barnacles had been fastening themselves to the bottom of the ship. They grow very quickly in warm climates, you know. And then more barnacles had attached themselves below, and then another layer still.”

  “By Allah, I think I see what’s coming,” said Mr. Kipling.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Clemens. “The barnacles grew so thick that they formed a solid column all the way to the bottom of the ocean, and the ship was anchored fast to the floor of the Pacific—five miles deep.”

  “Why, I never heard of anything like it,” said Dr. Gillman, who had joined our little circle for the evening. “How on earth did you get the ship loose?”

  Mr. Clemens tapped the ash off his cigar again. “You know, I’ve entirely forgotten how we got free. It’s curious, because we must have gotten free, somehow. After all, here I am. So it must be the truth, mustn’t it?”

  “Every word of it, I’m sure,” said Mr. Kipling, chuckling deeply.

  “I’m glad to hear that, Kipling,” said Mr. Clemens, still keeping a grave expression. “I’d be very disappointed in myself if I’d made up something so improbable.”

  At this, there was a general round of laughter, in which even Dr. Gillman joined. I felt relieved that he had finally caught on to the joke; it was not that long since I myself had listened to my employer’s tall tales, believing every word until he finally pulled the rug out from under me.

  15

  Next morning, the sea was still choppy, but the sky had begun to clear, and I thought the worst of the storm might be over. It was again possible to put on one’s trousers in a standing position, rather than safely seated. Mr. Clemens
even managed to shave himself without an explosion of profanity. I looked forward to being able to go out on the open decks again.

  But at luncheon, it was impossible to ignore the whisper that went around the dining room: Robert Babson is missing. I had noticed his absence at breakfast, but had drawn the obvious conclusion that he was paying for his overindulgence in liquor the night before. I had not thought it significant at the time, but now I remembered seeing his father striding along the corridor outside our cabin before breakfast, an anxious look on his face.

  “One of the officers saw young Babson on deck last night,” said Dr. Gillman, with the smug expression of one who retails a choice morsel of gossip. The doctor had been one of the winners of the mileage pool the day before, and had learned the news when he went to the purser’s office to collect. “The sea was still very rough, and the deck was slippery, of course. The officer warned him of the danger, but Babson told him to mind his own business.”

  “That sounds just like the blighter,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, gruffly. “No respect for authority. No great loss, I say.”

  Lady Fitzwilliam put down her soup spoon. “Henry!” she said in an imperative whisper. “I’m sure none of us were fond of the young man, but you should have some consideration for his parents’ feelings.” I noted that she already spoke of Babson in the past tense.

  “Yes, of course. Still, the fellow might have had some consideration for everyone else’s feelings,” muttered the colonel, in a more conciliatory tone.

  Dr. Gillman leaned forward and continued in a low voice. “The officer went on his rounds, and the next time he came by, the boy was gone. Of course, the officer thought young Babson had taken his advice after all—it was not a night most people would want to be out in the weather. His mother went to look for him this morning and found his bed hadn’t been slept in. They’re searching the ship now, but odds are he’s fallen overboard.”

  “I wouldn’t be so certain,” said Mr. Kipling. “There’s still a chance he’ll turn up somewhere below decks. He could have gone looking for mischief somewhere—a card game, or a bottle of something to drink. If I were in charge of the search, I’d look for him down in steerage—most likely in a vacant bunk, sleeping off the liquor.”

  “Yes, that would be like him,” I said. I thought of my Yale friends in steerage, and wondered if he’d ended up in their company. I suspected the DeWitt brothers would find Robert Babson as uncongenial as I did, but even so, they would have helped him find a bed if he’d gotten too drunk or sick to return to his own cabin by himself. If that had happened, they might even conceal his whereabouts from any of the crew who came looking for him, adopting him as a fellow rebel against the authority of First Mate Gallagher. But they would tell me. And while I had no affection for Robert Babson, it would be a kindness to relieve his family’s anxiety if it was in my power. I decided to pay my friends a visit.

  After lunch, I went to the stern and made my way down a series of increasingly narrow stairways to the lower decks. Johnny Dewitt and his brother Tom were in the steerage dining room, the only public area other than the open deck for steerage passengers. The steerage dining room was in stark contrast to the richly decorated first-class areas. Instead of polished wood and fine art, there were plain metal walls, painted a drab gray color, with bare electric bulbs for illumination and exposed pipes running across the ceiling. A first-class passenger would meet with only the occasional reminder that the City of Baltimore was a huge machine instead of a luxurious hotel. Here, there was no illusion. But my friends had found a backgammon set somewhere, and were playing a lively game. “Hallo, Cabot, what brings you to the nether regions?” said Johnny. “Sit down, and you can play the winner.”

  “I’m not much good at backgammon,” I confessed, plopping myself on the bench next to him.

  “Good. We’ll play for money, then,” said Johnny, grinning. “Maybe it’ll pay me back for all those times you murdered me at the billiard tables. You owe me a chance to get my money back, now that you’re one of the privileged few, hobnobbing with the first-class passengers.”

  “I’ll have you know I work for a living,” I said, giving him a playful punch in the shoulder. “While you loaf your way across the ocean, playing backgammon and chasing pretty Smith girls, I’m earning my passage to Europe. That first-class ticket is the fruit of honest labor. Let that be a lesson to you, Master DeWitt.”

  “I’d rather learn how to get money without honest labor,” said Tom DeWitt, idly toying with the dice. He seemed to be over his seasickness, at last. “Half the boys up at Yale seem to come from families where nobody’s worked since the school was founded, and they never seem short of money. But they won’t tell me the secret, whatever it is. You’d think they’d do as much for a classmate, wouldn’t you?”

  “Oh, if everyone knew how to make money without work, it wouldn’t be a secret worth keeping,” said Bertie Parsons, strolling through the door. “Speaking of secrets, have you any idea what that weasely Gallagher fellow is up to? He just now stopped and quizzed me about some passenger they can’t find, but he wouldn’t say what it was about. So of course I kept mum. I don’t know what the poor devil’s done to get the crew after him, but I’m certainly not going to help old man Gallagher find him.”

  “Well, as it happens, I came down here to ask you fellows about that exact same thing,” I told Bertie, and I saw him raise his eyebrows. I outlined what I knew about Babson’s disappearance, including his drunkenness and the fight with Prinz Karl the evening before. “So either he’s hiding somewhere they haven’t thought to look yet, or he fell overboard in the storm last night,” I concluded.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Johnny, sitting upright in his seat. “What did this Babson look like again?”

  “About your size, light brown hair, sort of a round face with a smug expression,” I said. “Pretty well dressed, and probably half-drunk or worse, at least last night.”

  “Bobby Babson—yes, that’s the same fellow,” said Bertie, nodding. “He was down here, all right, but not last night, as far as I know. We saw him the night before. He came looking for a card game.”

  “And by any chance did he find one?” I asked.

  Johnny gave a sheepish grin. “Well, Bertie and I took a poll, and determined that we had enough money to risk finding out whether he was a good enough player to beat us despite being thoroughly sloshed. As it turned out, he wasn’t. After a couple of hours of losing, he gave up and went to look for something else to do. Not before we got a good bit of his money, of course.”

  “We paid a terrible price, though,” said Bertie, a rueful look in his eye. “While we were taking the rascal’s money, he drank up all Johnny’s rye whisky. And there doesn’t seem to be an open bar down on this deck—very shortsighted of the steamship line, I must say. Surely the steerage passengers want something to drink as often as their betters—maybe even more often.”

  “So we’ll have to be strict teetotalers until we land in England. Unless, of course, you know somebody who could help three Christian gentlemen in their hour of need,” added Johnny, turning a speculative look in my direction.

  “I would be glad to look into the possibilities for you,” I said, thinking that Mr. Clemens might be persuaded to part with some of his supply of Scotch whisky. That reminded me of the subject I was more directly concerned with. “Are you sure that was the only time you saw Babson here in steerage?”

  “We didn’t know we were supposed to be keeping track of him,” said Bertie. “Say, old boy, is this Babson fellow a particular friend of yours, or are you taking up police work in case the literary game doesn’t play out?”

  I laughed. “Neither one, thank you. As it happens, he has a very pretty sister. Very good-natured, too—quite unlike her brother, who was a rotten apple if ever I saw one.”

  “Was?” asked Johnny DeWitt. His expression turned serious. “You talk as if he’s dead and gone. How do you know he didn’t crawl inside a lifeboat and f
all asleep? There’s hundreds of places to hide on a big ship like this. Half an hour from now he’ll come crawling out from somewhere, with a world-record hangover, and you’ll feel foolish for ever wasting time looking for him.”

  “I guess you’re right,” I said. “I’m probably worrying too much. I’ve been involved in two murder cases since I became Mr. Clemens’s secretary, and I suppose I’ve become suspicious. Of course there’s no reason to think he’s dead—and even if he is, no reason to suspect anything but an accident.”

  “That’s right,” said Bertie. “Now, if you want to play detective, why not see if you can track down another bottle for some friends in need?”

  “I’ll get on the case immediately,” I promised, and shook hands with all three of them before climbing upstairs to the first-class decks again, whistling a little tune. Talking with my Yale friends had cheered me up immensely; I had far better things to do than to worry about Robert Babson. And besides, it was not really any of my concern, though I felt sorry for his family, especially Rebecca, if he really had fallen overboard in the night.

  Mr. Clemens and I spent the afternoon in our cabin, proofreading his manuscript. We were interrupted briefly by one of the stewards knocking on the door: Harrison, who’d shown us to our cabin when we’d first boarded. “Beggin’ your pardon, gentlemen,” he said. “There’s a young gentleman gone missing, and we’re searching the ship for him. Captain’s orders. Have either of you by any chance seen Mr. Robert Babson?”

  “Not since last night,” said Mr. Clemens. “Come in and look around, if you want to.”

  “If you gentlemen don’t mind. Pardon the interruption.”

  “No trouble at all,” said Mr. Clemens. “There’s no news, then.”

  “Well, no news is good news, so they say,” said the steward, opening the door to Mr. Clemens’s bedroom and peering in. “But I guess that don’t apply to a man missing at sea. If he hasn’t turned up by now, I wouldn’t be too sure he’s going to. Terrible shame—I hear his mama’s taking it awful hard.”