"Mr. Griswold," said the captain, with muffled thunder echoing under his tone, "well have no more of that, if you please. The question isn't what the murderer wore or didn't wear. The question is how in holy blue blazes two thumb prints—real, honest thumb-prints—were left on the scene of the crime by a ghost! By somebody who isn't aboard the ship at all! By ..."
After holding up his own thumbs to illustrate, Commander Matthews let his arms fall and made a hopeless gesture.
"I don't believe it!" he added. "It's impossible. And the question is, what are we going to do?"
"I know what I'd do, if I were in your place," said Lathrop "Well?"
"I'd put it up to Sir Henry Merrivale," answered Lathrop "I've never met him, but I hear he's the real goods at untangling impossibilities."
Max stared at Lathrop's calm face.
"Sir Henry Merrivale?" Max shouted, with a feeling that the world was going still more mad. "I used to know him seven or eight years ago, when I was in Fleet Street But he's two thousand miles away! He's—"
"No, he's not," returned Lathrop practically. "He's up in a cabin next to the Commander's on the boat deck."
"Old H.M. aboard this ship?"
Lathrop looked surprised. "Didn't your brother tell you? No, I see he didn't. That's the ninth passenger. I don't know why they're being so hush-hush about it, or what all the mystery is about But the Commander had to produce him when it was a question of taking everybody's finger-prints."
"Old H.M.! Good Lord, he's the very man for our money! Where is he now?"
Commander Matthews consulted his watch.
"Nearly dinner-time. At the moment, I expect he's up in the barber's shop getting a shave. I told him most people would be out of the way by this time." The captain permitted himself a bleak grin. "You say you know him pretty well, Max?"
"He used to kick me out of his office about twice a week."
"Then go up and see him. He won't listen to me. Rummiest blighter I ever dropped across," declared Commander Matthews, shaking his head. 'Tell him the story. And see what happens. I'll be rather interested to hear what he says to this one."
9
"Looky here," howled an irate voice. "Burn me, you don't have to be tactful about it. I know I'm as bald as Julius Caesar. But I don't want any hair-restorer! I want a shave. S-h-a-v-e, shave. That's all I want. For the love of Esau will you stop gabblin' about hair-restorer and get on with it?"
"Very good stuff, sir," hissed the tempter. "Grow whiskers on billiard-balls, this preparation would. Why, my uncle—my own uncle, mind you, sir—" Max peered round the corner of the barber's door.
The sight he saw was sufficiently impressive.
H.M., weight two hundred pounds, was tilted back in the barber's chair at such a perilous angle that you momentarily expected him to slide out backwards when the ship pitched. A voluminous white cloth covered him to the chin, and almost covered the chair as well. All you could see of him, projecting out of this, was his head. His face was set in an expression of malevolence beyond description as, wooden and martyred, he glared at the ceiling from behind his big spectacles.
The barber, a trim little man in a white jacket, was stropping a razor with long and loving sweeps like Sweeny Todd.
"And mind you, sir, he was as bald as you are, if you'll allow me to say. Balder! After all, you have got a little bit here," declared the barber, pulling down one of H.M.'s ears and peering behind it.
"And he said to me, 'Jack,' he said, 'where did you get that wonderful stuff you gave me? It's marvelous.' And I said, Tm glad to hear it, Uncle William: was it efficacious?' 'Efficacious?' he said, 'I tell you, Jack, without a word of a lie, twenty-four hours after I put the first batch on, me 'air started coming up like one of those nature-study motion pictures where they show a flower coming up whingo overnight. Black 'air, too, and I'm sixty-three if I'm a day.' Now what might your age be, sir; if I may make so bold?"
"Looky here, son. I don't want any hair-restorer! I got—"
"Just as you like, sir. It's your look-out," said the barber, putting down the razor, touching a lever with his foot, and sending the chair still further backwards in a way that brought a howl of apprehension from its occupant. "Could I interest you in a nice false nose, now?"
"I don't want a false nose," said H.M. "What's the matter, son? Are you goin' to cut off the one I've got already? And mind you be careful with that hot towel. I got a sensitive skin. I got—"
"Oh, dear, no, sir!" said the barber. "I won't hurt you. I once shaved fourteen customers in a hundred-mile gale, and never even nicked one of 'em. No: I was meaning for the fancy-dress party. I don't know as they'll have a fancy-dress party this time, what with so few passengers; but what I always say is, there's nothing like a good fancy-dress party. I could turn you into a fine brigand, sir. Or you could stick out your chin and wear a little hat and go as Mussolini."
"For the love of Mike be careful -with that towel! Be careful with—"
"Coming straightaway, sir," said the barber, deftly flicking off H.M.'s spectacles and swathing his face with a smoking towel. Then the barber caught sight of Max. "Come right in, sir! Have a seat. You're next."
"Nothing for me, thanks," said Max. "I want to talk to that gentleman there."
As he spoke, the figure in the chair appeared galvanized. A minor convulsion afflicted the white robe. A hand groped from beneath the robe and plucked off the towel. H.M.'s face, heated lobster-red, rolled round as malignant as the evil one's, and glared at Max.
"Reporters!" he howled. "Still reporters! Just when I thought I was goin' to get a little peace and quiet at last, the place starts to rain reporters again. Oh, my eye. Gimme my glasses."
"But, sir—" began the barber.
"Gimme my glasses," insisted H.M. "I've changed my mind. I don't want a shave. I'm goin' to grow whiskers clear down to here." The length of his projected beard, as illustrated by him, appeared improbable. He rolled out of the chair, thrust money at the barber, and put on his spectacles. His corporation, preceding him in splendor like the figurehead of a man-o'-war, was now decorated (in addition to the gold watch-chain) with an enormous elk's tooth which somebody had given him in New York.
Lumbering over to the hat-pegs, he put on a raincoat and a big tweed cap, which he pulled down as far as his ears: a sight which would have to be seen to be believed.
"But, look here—!" protested Max.
With enormous dignity H.M. waddled out of the room. Max followed him. He went as far as the doll-and-souvenir-stuffed shop. Then H.M.'s manner thawed a little.
"Now say what you got to say," he growled, sniffing querulously. "If you'd 'a' said it in there, it'd be whistlin' all over this ship in ten minutes."
A wave of relief flooded through Max.
"I'm glad to see you again after all these years, H.M.,'* he said. "You don't look a day older. But what in blazes are you doing aboard this ship? And why the secrecy?"
"I am older, though," said H.M. darkly. "I got indigestion, too. See?" From the pocket of his raincoat he produced a
Gargantuan bottle of white pellets, and sniffed at it "I'm probably not long for this world, son, but I'll do the best I can while I'm here. When I'm gone"—he gave Max a prophetic and sinister look, which boded the worst—"maybe they'll think more of the old man than they do now. And never you mind what I'm doin' here. I got my reasons."
"How long were you in America?"
"Five days."
Max forebore to question further. What H.M.'s position at Whitehall had become since the war, he did not know; but he believed that the old man still had twice the brains of any person who was apt to succeed him as chief of the Military Intelligence Department. Still, it seemed discreet not to throw out any hints—yet.
Instead he took another tack. It was past the dinner hour, but for the first time on this voyage he did not feel in the least hungry.
"Do you know," he asked, "what's been happening aboard this ship?"
As H.M. on
ly growled, he began to sketch out a brief account. H.M. listened with his sharp little eyes growing wider behind the spectacles.
"Oh, my eye!" he breathed. "Shades of Masters! Shades of—" Tortured and persecuted by fiends, he raised his big fists. "Not another impossibility?"
"I'm afraid so. And as bad as any you've ever encountered. If I remember some of your other cases, all you had to explain was how a murderer got out of a locked room,* or went across snow without leaving foot-prints, t Here you've got to explain fingerprints—real, living prints—left by a murderer who doesn't exist. You see how it is, H.M.' It would be a great help if you could look into it. Frank has enough responsibilities on his mind as it is."
"Don't you think I got any responsibilities on my mind?"
"Yes, I know. But then you thrive on being persecuted. Frank doesn't."
For a moment he thought he had said too much. H.M. eyed him with a glare of such awful and Jovian power, one eye squinted shut and the other wide open, that he searched his mind for a compliment to deflect the thunderbolt.
♦ The Judas Window, William Morrow & Co., 1938.
t The White Priory Murders, William Morrow & Co., 1934.
However, H.M. concluded by turning down the corners of his mouth with sour dignity.
"I want air," he announced. "Plenty of it. Come on out on deck and tell me the whole story."
They groped out through the black-out compartments which were set up at nightfall. If there can be degrees of blackness—as opposed to mere darkness—the third night at sea was perhaps a little lighter than the other two. It was just possible to discern your hand before your face, but no more.
They were on the lee side of B Deck, unprotected by canvas screens. A few stars, looking unsteady with the slow rise and fall of the decks, glittered in tiny bitter points. The air, a degree or so above freezing, crawled under Max's shirt; it numbed his chest, and made his scalp and hands tingle; but he liked its clean chill.
Standing by the rail, they could look down into luminousness. Where everything else was black, the wash past the ship's side glowed faintly white and phosphorescent. It threw back no reflection. It was dead light, a corpse's candle at sea. It curled and wove in small veins and lines, spreading like disentangled lace in the midst of a vast seething noise which filled the ears to the exclusion of all other sound. It held the eye hypnotically, while that seething dulled the brain to drowsiness.
"Now, son," said a voice from the darkness beside him.
Staring at the wake and beyond—at black, oily-looking water which made up their world—Max told the full story. He left out nothing. As it afterwards proved, that was just as well.
When be had concluded, H.M.'s silence was a little ominous. Max had lost all sense of time. They seemed to be talking in a cold void, which was not sea or earth or sky. The seething of the wash droned eternally in his ears.
"So!" muttered the distant-sounding voice. "Not the pleasantest kind of doings. Hey?"
"No."
"And it's your idea," rumbled H.M.'s voice out of the dark, "that the murderer is the same feller who was throwing knives at a picture of a woman—presumably Mrs. Zia Bey— outside Dr. Archer's door on Friday night?"
"I should think so."
"Also, that it's the same feller who put on a gas mask and cither by accident or design stuck his head into young Ken-worthy's cabin?"
Max hesitated. That doesn't necessarily follow. Kenworthy seems to be a target for that sort of thing. It may have been a joke of the purser's."
"Ufa-hull. Sure. It may have been. This purser, y'see, strikes me as being . . . never mind. Still, you do think the gas-mask incident was connected with this."
"Maybe, or maybe not All I can tell you is that it struck me as being particularly ugly. Why, I don't know."
"I can tell you why," growled the voice, with an air of knowing more than anybody else in the world. "Because it's the infantile mind, that's why. It's the infantile mind that planned this murder, and every detail of the business. That's what you're dealin' with, son: arrested development in an adult What makes it worse is that it seems to be an adult of caution and brains as well; and that's an awful bad combination. Tell me. Have you people been doin' any detective work? Have you tried to find out, for instance, where all the passengers were between nine-forty-five and ten last night?"
"You think the murderer was a passenger?"
"I dunno, son. It may have been a passenger. Or a ship's officer. Or anybody down to the cook's cat. But we got to make a beginning somewhere. Have you questioned 'em? Or found out where they were?"
"No." Max reflected. "I can tell you what a few of them say. Valerie Chatford was in my cabin. Dr. Archer was having a turn in the swimming-pool down below. Lathrop was out on deck. I don't know about any of the others."
"The Frenchman?"
"No information. He was in his own cabin at shortly past eleven o'clock, but that means nothing at all."
"Besides," argued H.M., "a French officer wouldn't be wearing ..." He paused, while the hissing of the water filled a dead world. A hollow, incredulous note had come into H.M.'s voice. There was a sound as though he were hammering his fist on the wooden rail. "Oh, Lord love a duck! Is there anything in that, now? I was just thinkin' about Saturday morning."
"You think the Frenchman's tied up in this somehow?"
"I think he knows something, son," answered H.M. seriously. "And I'd dearly love to know what he was tryin' to tell the two finger-print hounds when they nailed him in his cabin last night. I also think—"
"Yes?"
There was no reply. H.M. remained silent for so, long that Max wondered whether he had gone to sleep with his elbows on the rail. But, by straining his eyes in the gloom, Max could just make out a faint reflection on big spectacles set malignantly, and a rain-coated figure which might have been an over-stout gargoyle leaning out from a cathedral roof.
Then his voice rose querulously. YI can't be bothered with this!" he growled. (Which meant that he had struck a snag, and wouldn't admit it.) "Burn me, ain't I got enough on my mind as it is? Has every twiddlin' crime in the world got to be heaped on me?"
Max said quietly: "This could concern your department, H.M."
"Meaning what?"
"It could be espionage."
Again H.M. was silent. It need hardly be said that Max could not read his expression. In the first place, it was so dark that he could not be seen at all. In the second place, poker-players at the Diogenes Club have found this a very unprofitable proceeding even in full light
The Edwardic rolled slowly, so that the small, keen stars in a blue-black sky swayed and shifted up past the hood of the deck. Even with eyes growing used to these conditions, you could discern little more than that the sea seemed vaster and more oily-black, polished with white-veined waves.
"It could be," H.M. admitted at length. His voice sounded heavy, not very sure of itself. "Espionage, son, is far from being a joke in these days. It's wide and it's deep and it sinks under your feet—like that water out there. It runs much deeper than it ever did twenty-five years ago. Not picturesque like all the legends have made it, or always dealin' with very important issues. The proper enemy agent is an ordinary insignificant sort of person. The clerk, the small professional man, the young girl, the middle-aged woman. Not askin' for rewards, or even very brainy: but all fanatical idealists. You could shoot the lot of 'em without causing much of a flurry to G.H.Q. But each one of those little mites, individually, is a potential death's head.
"Take this ship, for instance. Suppose somebody left a porthole open all night on a lighted room. You wouldn't need to be very clever to do that. You wouldn't need to be deep in the enemy's councils. But, considering that light can be seen for five miles at sea, the general result might be disconcertin' to many of us."
"You think a person would do that? And take the chance of being blown to glory along with the rest of us?"
H.M. sighed gustily.
"Oh, son! If
you're a fanatical idealist, you know the submarine captain'll be too gentlemanly to open fire before he's seen everybody safely into the boats."
"Do you?"
"Sure you do."
"And, anyway, they've posted watches along the boat-deck. Wouldn't the light be seen from here?"
"It probably would," conceded H.M. with the same off-handedness of manner. "Still, no harm in trying. Before we left New York, I had information that one of the women aboard this ship was an enemy agent. I dunno whether it's reliable information or not. And I'm givin' nothing away. I wanted to broadcast the news far and wide; post it on the bulletin-board, if necessary, like a warning against card-sharpers. But your brother said no, and he's the skipper." H.M.'s voice grew bitter. "Still, I'm only an old cloth-head. See anybody in Whitehall."
Max stared down at the phosphorescent mist boiling and flickering forty feet below.
"A woman. You don't mean Estelle Zia Bey?"
"I dunno who was meant. Neither does the captain: he got the information, not me. It doesn't sound like Mrs. Zia Bey to me, even if it's true. More probably some stewardess. Some dream-fed zealot who quite honestly thinks she's serving a great cause, and who'd be better served with the back of a hair-brush than with a firin'-squad. Phooey."
"And that's why you're aboard this ship?"
"Ho ho!" said H.M., with ghoulish amusement. "No, son. I'm glad to say I've got other fish to fry. Whoever this would-be spy may be, she's no Mademoiselle Docteur. She's just a fool. But we do get murder on top of it, which (to say the least) is rather a rummy coincidence."
His big voice sharpened. He was disturbed. He played with ideas, slapping at them, like a heavy-pawed cat with a ball of wool.
"Y'see, that murder was planned very skillfully. That's what bothers me like blazes. The mentality behind it may be infantile; but it was also efficient and swift as that"—he snapped his fingers—"for getting results. I hope there's no more fun and games in store for us."
Nine and Death Makes Ten Page 8