“Captain’s orders,” I heard faintly from outside. “He wants to get this investigation finished with.”
“Aha, so maybe the old scoundrel wasn’t stalling me after all,” said Mr. Clemens, but Mr. Kipling shushed him as we heard the opening of the corridor door, and the sound of several pairs of feet entering. I wondered who Jennings had brought with him, but didn’t dare look. Perhaps I could identify them from the voices.
Prinz Karl saved me the trouble. “Mr. Jennings, I hope you will not take long. I was just preparing for sleep. Good evening, Mr. Babson. Signor Rubbia, what is your part in this sorry business?”
“We’ll ask the questions,” said Mr. Babson, with a nasty edge to his voice.
“Ask, then,” said the prince. “Please feel free to take a seat; but I hope you will pardon me if I do not offer you a drink.”
“It would take more than a drink to buy a pardon for the likes of you,” said Babson.
“Then I am glad I did not waste my time offering it to you,” said the prince icily.
“Please, gentlemen,” said Jennings. “Let’s stick to our business. This investigation is unpleasant for all of us; we don’t have to make it any worse than it is. Signor Rubbia, will you be so kind as to repeat the story you told me earlier today?”
“It is no story,” said the painter, whose distinctive accent would have identified him to us even if no one had mentioned his name. “It is what I saw. It is the truth.”
“Please tell us, if you don’t mind,” said Jennings again, patience wearing thin in his voice. I did not envy him as he tried to mediate among these prickly personalities.
“Yes, of course. Wednesday evening, you remember that was a very bad stormy night, I was restless, not able to sleep. I thought the fresh air would do me some good, just to walk outside a little bit. The stormy weather, it inspires me—it is the raging passions of nature that echo the power of the human soul. I knew it would raise up my spirits.”
“What time was this?” asked Jennings.
“I don’t know—after the music.”
“Didn’t you look at a watch?” asked Mr. Babson.
I could almost hear Rubbia stiffen with scorn. “A watch—I do not need such a thing. I am an artist, I do not work by the clock but by my own genius!”
“On this man’s testimony you mean to condemn me?” said Prinz Karl sarcastically. “Take me to the gallows now—I have no hope to clear myself!”
Jennings interrupted, again in a consoling tone. “Now, now, let the gentleman tell his story—you should hear it all before you rebut him. Would you go on, please, Singor Rubbia?”
“I go out on the deck, on the left side of the boat, near the middle. The rain is heavy, but with my cloak and my hat it does not bother me. Still, I think the wind will not be so bad if I go more to the back of the boat.”
“So you walked along the portside to the stern,” said Jennings.
“Yes, is that not what I said? I come close to another door, and I am thinking perhaps I will go back inside after all, when I realize there is someone else outside. It is the Babson boy—your son, Mr. Babson. He acts as if he is sick, maybe from the rough waves, maybe from the drink.”
“It must have been the sea,” said Mr. Babson, though not with a great deal of conviction.
“Whatever the case, he is by the rail, leaning over the side. I say nothing, for fear of disturbing him, and besides, there was a little shelter here, so I thought I would wait until he left to go past him to the doorway. So I stood there a short while and waited.”
“How far were you from him?” asked Jennings.
“Twenty feet, perhaps,” said Rubbia, after a brief pause. “Not very far. While I stood there, I realized there was another person on deck—hiding in the shadow of the doorway behind the boy. I do not think he saw me.”
“Did you see who the person was?” asked Mr. Babson.
“Not at first, but then my eyes became accustomed to the dark, and I could see that it was this man here—this Ruckgarten, who calls himself a prince.”
“I am a prince, you ignorant man. And you cannot have seen me on that deck, because I was not there that night.”
“Please, gentlemen, let us not interrupt: each other. We need to hear Signor Rubbia, and then you can respond to what he says.” Jennings sounded exasperated, perhaps understandably. I wished I could see the faces of the arguing parties.
“All of the sudden, before I understood what was happening, this man rushes forward and strikes young Mr. Robert on the back of the head. The boy, he tries to defend himself, but he is sick, and Ruckgarten gives him no chance. He pushes him back like a sack of grain, with one hand on the boy’s throat. I am ready to cry out, but then I realize that nobody would hear me in the storm. I know I am not strong enough to help, but I step forward in hope that I could give the boy a chance to escape. But I was too late already. Ruckgarten pushed him over the rail, and he fell into the water with a terrible cry.”
“What happened then?” said Jennings. “Where did Ruckgarten go?”
“I went nowhere, because I was not there to begin with,” said the prince angrily. “This is nothing but lies—can you not see that?”
“Of course he’s going to say that,” said Mr. Babson. “The man has no conscience, no shame.”
“I have more shame than you, sir,” said the prince haughtily. “I at least do not go around the world blaming others for the things that go against my wishes. Your son was probably too drunk to keep his balance on the slippery deck. For all I know, he was so drunk that he leapt overboard on his own accord.”
“Aha!” cried Babson. “And if you were not there, how do you know the deck was slippery?”
The prince snorted. “I did not go in the water either, but I know it was wet and cold. Do you take me for a child?”
“Did you or did you not push Robert Babson into the water?” said Mr. Jennings.
“I did not, and I never would have. He provoked me, but I know better than to return violence for violence. That is a peasant’s kind of revenge. I have better ways to let a man know he has made a mistake. This time, I am almost sorry I will not have the chance to put them into practice.”
Mr. Babson pounced on this statement like a hawk. “So you admit that you had a grudge against my son.”
“Yes, so did many on this ship. This lying artist, for one. How do I know he did not push the boy overboard himself, then try to blame it on me?”
“It is you who are the liar, and a murderer besides,” shouted Rubbia.
Suddenly I heard the scuffling of feet, and Jennings shouted, “Grab him, Gallagher!”
There was a noise of someone bumping into some large piece of furniture, and then Rubbia said, “Let me go—I will teach him not to speak so rudely.”
“Gentlemen, that’s quite enough,” said Jennings. Then, after a pause which I was forced to fill with my imagination he went on. “I’m afraid we’ve gotten as far as we’re likely to tonight. Let’s go quietly, now. Mr. Ruckgarten, I am afraid we will have to bring these matters up again; I’ll be talking to you and to Signor Rubbia again. I am not sure whether we have learned anything useful here tonight or not.”
“Perhaps you have not, but I have, much to my sorrow,” said the prince.
“Oh?” said Jennings. “And what is that, sir?”
“I have learned not to turn my back to this little coward. I would advise you to watch him carefully, Mr. Babson, Mr. Jennings. If he has betrayed one person, he will not hesitate to do it to another—perhaps one of you will be next. I hope that you two gentlemen will put him to the question as carefully as you have me. Then you will begin to hear a different story, and I will be a free man again. Now, perhaps it is best that you all go.”
Rubbia said something vicious-sounding in Italian, and Gallagher cursed, evidently doing his best to restrain the artist; then Jennings said, “Get him out of here, men,” and after a brief interval we heard the door close, followed by a burst of li
ght as Prinz Karl threw back the curtain that had concealed us from his visitors, and turned on the electric light.
“I do not think I would have chosen this sort of entertainment for you gentlemen,” said the prince, in an unsteady voice. “Still, perhaps you found it more diverting than I did.” He was putting up a brave front, trying to cover up his anxiety with witty words, but it was clear to me that he was shaken by Rubbia’s accusation—which, despite the prince’s denials, seemed damning.
“It can’t have been very diverting to a man who still claims to be innocent,” said Mr. Clemens, rising to his feet. He handed the prince’s whisky glass back to him. “Drink up—I’d say you need it, just now. I don’t know about England, but American juries are likely to put a lot of faith in eyewitnesses.”
The prince sat heavily on the bed, in the place just vacated by Mr. Clemens, and drained his glass in two large gulps before answering. “I cannot understand it. My dear God, I do not understand it. I swear to you gentlemen, on my honor as a prince, that I did not kill that boy. I thought I could end this charade very easily by sending a few telegrams, once we landed in England. I have very powerful friends and relatives. But with an eyewitness—even a lying one—you are right, this will not be easy anymore.” He covered his face with his hands.
“Why do you think Rubbia is lying about you?” asked Mr. Clemens, squinting a little in the light. His voice was gentle, but even I could detect an edge of doubt in it.
“I cannot guess,” said the prince, looking up with a worried expression. “I admit I made a few rough jokes against him, but I did nothing to deserve these lies. They must be paying him to say these terrible things.”
“Who are they?” asked Mr. Kipling. “If you had enemies on board, surely you know who they are.”
The prince shook his head. “I do not know of any—that does not mean there are none. I do not think that any of the commercial travelers would do such a thing. But a man in my station of life has many who hate him just because of his family. These are not good times to be of royal blood.”
“Don’t give up hope yet,” said Mr. Clemens. “The cards may be stacked against you, but if we can find some way to put the game back on the level, we’ll do it. It seems to me our two best chances for undercutting Rubbia are either to prove he was somewhere else all night, or to prove somebody besides you murdered Babson. We’ve still got some poking around to do in a few dark corners, but maybe we can find enough to prove you’re innocent, Prinz Karl. And on that note, I think we’ll take our leave. We have some plans to make and some work to do, and time’s the thing we have the least of. Would you like me to fill up that glass again before we leave?”
“No, but I thank you,” said the prince. “I need my own wits about me, I think.” He stood and led the three of us out to the door.
I opened the cabin door a crack, and Herbert Watts turned to look at me, his face white as a sheet. “Lord!” he said, as we stepped out into the corridor. “I was sure Gallagher ’ad caught the three of you dead to rights, and me along with you. I’ve been shiverin’ in my boots the ’ole time you were in there—’ow’d you give ’im the slip?”
“We ducked into the bedroom and closed the curtain. They didn’t expect us, so they didn’t search for us,” said Mr. Kipling, reaching in his pocket. “It must have been quite a scare for you, though. Here’s a little something extra to ease your nerves.”
“Bless you, guv’nor,” said Watts, touching his hand to his cap. “I’ve been sittin’ and worryin’ what I’d say when they found you, and never findin’ a good answer, but this makes up for it all.”
Back in Mr. Clemens’s cabin, my employer filled his pipe and poured himself another glass of whisky, then stretched out on the sofa. “Well, I don’t know about you boys, but I had a couple of mighty uncomfortable moments back there in the prince’s bedroom. At least, in the theater, you can smoke a cigar while you’re sitting in the dark waiting for something to happen.”
“Yes, and they give you a bit of music besides,” said Mr. Kipling dryly. “Who do you think’s the bigger liar, the prince or Rubbia?”
“Oh, the prince—he must outweigh him thirty pounds,” said Mr. Clemens. “Still, that story about meeting the fellow on the open deck in a howling storm to talk about the price of hops is just dull and unbelievable enough to be true—though I wouldn’t be surprised if the prince is holding part of the story back on us. I suppose we’ll have to go find the brewery man and ask him, just to confirm the alibi, but I doubt we’ll get any closer to the truth than we already are.”
Mr. Kipling peered at my employer over his glasses. “I think we can get pretty close without bothering to cross-examine the brewery agent too carefully—what was his name? Lehrmann? Remember what I told you when Cabot here told us about his friend’s wild notion of spies aboard the ship?”
“Oh, bosh,” said Mr. Clemens, in an annoyed tone. “You don’t take that seriously, do you?”
Mr. Kipling spread his hands. “Why not? As Ruckgarten himself pointed out, there are lots of Germans in America—and I’ll wager most of them have family back home. Some of them must be unhappy with the way the Prussians have intervened in the affairs of formerly sovereign states. I’d be very surprised if Ruckgarten couldn’t find sympathetic supporters among the Germans in America.”
“Supporters for what?” Mr. Clemens frowned.
“That’s the part it would be interesting to know, though I doubt we ever will,” said Mr. Kipling. He took a sip of his drink, then continued. “If we had the time and resources to follow it up, perhaps we’d learn something of interest—for example, whether Rubbia is an agent for any foreign government. I doubt he’s everything he claims to be.”
“You can go to the bank on that,” said Mr. Clemens dryly. “He’s barely an artist, and I doubt he’s spoken three true sentences since he’s come aboard the ship. That story of his stinks like a week-old mud cat.”
I could not let this gibe pass. “Really, Mr. Clemens, I don’t see how you can summarily dismiss everything Signor Rubbia says. As you yourself said, his eyewitness testimony is likely to carry heavy weight in court. I would be disappointed if you rejected it simply because of a personal dislike of the man, or a fondness for the man you think he’s slandering. Even before I heard Signor Rubbia’s account, I found Prinz Karl’s alibi quite unconvincing. Besides, I must say that whatever you may think of Signor Rubbia’s theories, he is a very talented artist. I have seen his drawings, and they are quite good.”
Mr. Clemens was about to answer when Mr. Kipling cut him off. “Cabot has a point, you know,” he said. “Ruckgarten’s admitted telling us at least one lie, about his country of origin, and he may have told more. And Rubbia’s story is not, on the face of it, as preposterous as Ruckgarten’s tale of a midnight meeting in a howling gale to talk about the price of hops. The question is really whose story we’re going to trust. What in Rubbia’s story is so obviously false?”
Mr. Clemens stood for a moment, saying nothing, then nodded. “All right, you both have a point, men. I reckon I’m willing to accept the prince’s alibi because it’s so damn weak that it only makes sense if we assume it’s true. If he was really trying to cover up a murder, he wouldn’t offer such a preposterous fabrication. So it must be mainly true—and maybe it’s even verifiable.”
“Well, in that case, I suppose we should make an effort to find this Mr. Lehrmann,” I said. “I’ll get word to the Yale boys to search him out and see what he says. Maybe they can find somebody else who saw the prince down there, too. That’ll at least give us a check on his story.”
“That would help,” said Mr. Clemens. “But even if the prince is telling the truth, it only gives him an alibi for part of the evening. Babson’s bound to point out that he could have been exactly where he said, when he said, and still have had ample time to walk up to the top deck and shove the boy overboard. We have tu refute Rubbia’s entire story, if we’re going to get to the bottom of things. The onl
y question is how we start.”
“The easiest way would be to prove he couldn’t have seen what he said he did, because it didn’t happen when he said it did,” I suggested. “I wish we had a better idea of when the murder supposedly happened.”
“Without a body or another witness, that’s unlikely,” said Mr. Clemens. “But that gives me another idea. Why don’t we take a look at the supposed scene of the crime? I’m in the mood for a bit of a walk, anyway, and unless we get another storm, this is as close as we’ll ever get to the right conditions.”
Mr. Kipling gave a groan. “I suppose it makes sense, though I’ve spent quite enough time in the dark this evening. At least we can walk around out there without worrying whether anyone will arrest us if we sneeze, or care what business we have there.”
“Oh, they may very well care,” said Mr. Clemens. “If somebody else did kill Robert Babson, they’d be very unhappy that we haven’t swallowed the idea that the prince did it after the fight. But of course, they have no way of knowing what we think—or why we’re out on deck, taking a late-night stroll.”
“Late-night is right,” said Mr. Kipling, taking his watch out of his pocket and looking at it. I checked my own and saw that it was nearly eleven o’clock. “We’d best get to it before it becomes early morning.”
* * *
We stepped out onto the port deck just aft of the first-class dining room. The gibbous moon I’d noticed earlier was now high above the southern horizon, and the night was clear but cool. Earlier, I had seen little reflections off the distant waves; but the port side of the eastbound ship faced north, and so was shadowed from the direct light of the moon. On an overcast night, the deck where we now were would have been only faintly illuminated by the onboard electric lights.
“Do you think this is where Rubbia came on deck?” said Mr. Kipling in a quiet voice.
“I reckon it’s close enough,” said Mr. Clemens. “If the story’s true to begin with, this is about the right place; then he’d have gone aft.” He stepped over to the rail and looked down at the waves. There was a chill in the air, and I wondered for a moment whether I should have brought my topcoat with me. But I doubted we would be outside for long; as much as my employer might be curious to see the scene of the crime, he was also fond of his comfort.
[Mark Twain Mysteries 03] - The Prince and the Prosecutor Page 27