"How so?"
"Well, look here. Suppose I pitched you over the rail this minute. Suppose I got my hands under your arms, takin' you off guard, and gave you a strong heave. Son, you'd be a goner as soon as your feet left this deck."
Max hunched his shoulders uneasily. In this darkness it seemed impossible to tell who "was friend or foe. You might look round, and see the wrong face behind you.
"Don't go trying it," he warned. "I'd be fairly hefty to handle. I have powerful lung power in the water. And I'm a good swimmer."
"I doubt if it would help you," said H.M. calmly. "That's what I meant by sayin' you'd be a goner if your feet left this deck. The point is, they wouldn't be able to find you. They wouldn't be able to see you. Look out there! Black as the underside of Tartarus! Not a shine, not a gleam. You'd drown in a smother, or be left behind to freeze to death, while six hundred people heard you call and couldn't save you—because they don't dare turn on a searchlight. Oh, my eye. These black-out conditions were made to order for the convenience of a murderer."
Max shivered.
"Do you mean to say," he demanded, "that even if they knew where and when you went over, they wouldn't show a light?"
"They daren't, son. It's orders. Your own brother couldn't disobey. Where other lives would be put in danger, the one life would have to go. That's war."
For the first time Max realized something of the cruelty of a black sea, and a blind ship trying to grope without success in the direction of a vague shout.
"I'm not tryin' to play bogey-man," said H.M., with an unmirthful chuckle. "But there it is. A rope couldn't be seen, and they daren't launch a boat. So it's a possibility to be considered. And—"
"Listen!" said Max.
Sweepingly, their ears were filled with the myriad small noises which make up the clamor of the sea. You did not realize how loud they were until the wind blew them at you.
From the pitch blackness far up ahead in the forepart of B Deck, Max heard the scuffle. He saw the flash and heard the explosion of a revolver-shot. It was followed less by a scream than by a harsh, hoarse release of breath, merging afterwards into a heavy splash which brought the feet of the look-outs on the boat-deck scurrying like rats. There were no more identifiable sounds; relentlessly the strong waves smoothed out over them.
10
Shortly before these events took place, Valerie Chatford was going up the main stairs to the lounge.
She contemplated her image, as she passed, in the big mirrors fronting each landing. Her problem was how to make two evening-gowns seem like half a dozen on a voyage of eight (or more) days. Her problem, moreover, was to get on with the job she had to do. On the first night, she had been uncompromisingly seasick. On the second night, she had still been so unsteady inside that as a defense she had put on an air of haughtiness which surprised even herself. But it had been of great assistance when she saw that body sprawled in B-37.
Tonight there was color in her cheeks. She turned" her head left and right, tilting the chin, to examine the smooth face and thick curly hair. She smiled—a smile which would have astonished Max Matthews, for it brought animation to her features like a lamp turned on. She was wearing her pink dress.
Valerie wavered between determination and excitement. She had almost bungled everything last night. She mustn't bungle again, or the people at home wouldn't like it. They would hardly be as proud of her as she wanted them to be.
But how to get at the man?
That was her difficulty.
Following an announcement on the bulletin-board that the ship's orchestra would play in the lounge at nine o'clock, the orchestra had begun only a few minutes ago. Its strains floated down the stairs with defiant lightness. Valerie walked into the lounge, sank down in one of the deep chairs, and saw her opportunity.
For chance or accident—which Sir Henry Merrivale called, simply, the blinkin' awful cussedness of things in general— flew over the Edwardic with the usual malice in its beak.
It decreed that at this moment the Hon. Jerome Kenworthy should come crawling up on deck for his first public appearance in proper clothes. The ship had now been steady for nearly twenty-four hours. That was enough. Kenworthy was headed in a bee-line for the bar in the smoking-room. But, lulled by a siren orchestra, and reflecting that healing liquids could be brought here just as well, he flopped down in a chair in the lounge.
And Valerie saw her chance.
She saw a lean, wiry, fair-haired young man with a worried crease across his high forehead, and several short wrinkles, like commas, round the corners of his mouth. His face also was long in more senses than one, decorated by octagonal spectacles with gold wires to the ears. He had put on a dinner-jacket without any dinner to pad it out. He opened and shut his mouth like a fish. He gave his order to a steward. Stretching out his arms to lean back in the chair, he closed his eyes.
Valerie glanced round the lounge. Except for the orchestra and Kenworthy, it was empty.
She had long debated exactly the course she would take with this young man. This was the first time she had ever set eyes on him, but his character had been fully reported to her. And he looked rather nice, which made it easier.
Nevertheless, Valerie's heart was pounding with excitement. Even her eyesight seemed to jump. She waited a few minutes more. Then she gathered up the skirts of her gown, pink satin inside pink lace; she slipped across to the felt-topped mahogany table beside which he sat; she slipped into a chair opposite him, and put her plump elbows on the table.
"Don't worry," she said, looking into his eyes. "I'll save you, cousin."
Jerome Kenworthy, just raising to his mouth his first whisky-and-soda in three days, started violently.
From that mouth there escaped a long, shuddering noise like, "A-a-a-a-h!" with which even strong natures, on certain occasions, will greet the sudden ringing of a telephone. His bones shook inside him. He stared back at her, getting a firm grip on himself.
"I am, madam," he said, "much obliged to you. But who— er—?"
"It's all right," she assured him. "I'm Valerie."
Kenworthy searched his memory.
'To the best of my knowledge," he said truthfully, "I never set eyes on you before. Valerie who?"
"Valerie Chatford. But that's not the point." Her voice was urgent. "You don't need to worry about You-Know getting her throat cut last night. The murderer got all the letters. I am absolutely sure of that."
Jerome Kenworthy gave her a long look, and then put down his glass carefully on the table.
He said: "Is this another rib?"
It was Valerie's turn to be puzzled.
"Rib?"
"I beg your pardon. I will shed the sinister Yankee influence. Is this some more of Griswold's tomfoolery? Like the gas-mask? Or routing me out to get my fingerprints for no good reason on God's earth?"
"Who is Griswold?"
"Ha ha ha," observed Kenworthy. "My head aches, and a drowsy numbness pains, as though of scented hemlock I had drunk. Hemlock. That reminds me. Just one moment." He picked up his glass, drained it, became for a moment a man in agony, and settled back. "I have a strong presentiment that you and I are talking at cross-purposes. Before we go any further, will you tell me just who you think I am?"
"But you're Jerome Kenworthy!" she cried, while waltz-music filled the dimly lighted lounge. "Your father is Lord Abbsdale; he's something at Whitehall now; I don't know what—"
"Admiralty. That's right."
"And you live, or used to live, at Thetlands Park in Oxfordshire. I used to visit you there. Your mother is my Aunt Molly. My mother, your Aunt Ellen—"
Light came to Jerome Kenworthy. He remembered, twelve or fifteen years ago, a dim little girl in braids playing on the green lawns at Thetlands; and fierce arguments, and a swing by the Dutch garden.
The whisky flowed softly to his head and made him sentimental. After the three days he had been through, he thought with affection of Thetlands and even of his father, that
old pain in the neck. If this accursed war were ever over, he would settle there cushily as master of broad acres.
"Great Scott," he said, "of course I remember you! Valerie . .. What did you say your married name was?"
"I'm not married."
"No, I mean Aunt Ellen's married name. Chatford, that's it! This is something in the nature of a celebration. Won't you join me in a drink?"
"I'd love to. May I have a Grand Marnier?"
Kenworthy gave the orders. "But, I say! Where are you all now? And how are you? And where have you been keeping yourselves?"
Valerie clasped her hands loosely. Her eyes, gray and dark-fringed and set rather wide apart, she kept fixed on the top of the table. Her face, which Max Matthews had thought over-bred, had that look only in its delicate formation and the expression of the thin, smooth-shining lips.
"Oh, everywhere," she answered. "Mother and Daddy and I moved out to Bermuda. . . . You remember?"
"Yes, I knew it was something like that."
"And then, a year or so ago, we moved to upstate New York. But, when the war came along, I—well, I thought I'd like to do my bit to help, that's all." She lifted her eyes, smiled, and lowered them. "I even hoped your father—sorry: Uncle Fred—might get me something to do. But I hardly liked to write, because you know the horrible row he had with both my mother and my father. And you know what he's like."
Kenworthy eagerly welcomed his second whisky.
"I do know. But that, light of my elder days, is unqualified ancient history. I can assure you with certainty that the old man will find something for you to do. You won't be able to avoid it. He had already, I deeply regret to say, snaffled me."
Kenworthy drank.
Valerie plucked at the edge of the table. "And there's another thing too . . ."
"Continue, star of my bosom. Prosit!"
"What did you say?"
"I said prosit. Mud in your eye!"
"Oh! Awfully good luck, Jerome." She picked up the small glass. "Do you mind if I'm perfectly shameless? But I can't help telling you." She moved the glass back and forth on the table. "Ever since I was a little girl, I've been rather a hero-worshiper of yours." She laughed a little. "It's true. Aunt Molly used to send us your school magazine. I know about all the prizes you won. I know you were trained for the Diplomatic, and—well, left it."
"Yes," said Kenworthy.
Dull red crept up his face.
"I've kept hearing about you. I even knew you were in New York. First from seeing it in the Society bits in the papers, and then in the gossip-columns, once or twice. And, when I heard you were tied up with that horrible woman . . ."
"Which particular woman?"
Valerie leaned across the table, even her pink dress seeming to swish with earnestness. She lowered her voice.
"But that's what I was trying to tell you. That woman—• you know—was murdered last night down in B-37. We're not supposed to know about it. She was, Jerome. Her throat was cut. It was awful. I saw it."
"But, my God!—what's her name?"
"Sh-h! Keep your voice down!"
"What's her name?"
"Estelle Zia Bey. In her handbag she had a stack of letters—oh, that thick!" said Valerie, illustrating with her hands. "Blackmailing letters. There must have been heaps of other letters besides yours, but yours were all I was interested in."
Kenworthy reflected, his wits whirling. "Look here, Valerie. Believe it or not, and so help me Harry, I don't know any woman named Estelle Zia Bey!"
"Jerome, please!"
"It's true."
She had not expected this.
Now, one thing must be made clear. The girl who called herself Valerie Chatford was not, according to her lights, dishonest. She followed a certain course because she believed she must. She was something of a complex character, in which shrewdness, naiveté, loyalty, zeal, passion, imaginativeness, and a certain weakness were all intermingled in cool blood. So far she had been safe. And his denial baffled her.
She knew that Jerome Kenworthy was not the murderer. For (if the truth must be told) she had seen the murderer at work. That knowledge of hers she meant to use, presently, as a part of her plan. But—up to now—all her second-hand information about Kenworthy had been correct.
She spoke in a pleading voice.
"B-but it must be!" she stammered. "You know Trimalchio's Bar, don't you? On East Sixty-Fifth Street?"
"I know Trimalchio's, and well I wot it! My sage friends from this ship advised me to go there as soon as I set foot on American soil."
"It was—what's that disgusting word they use?—a hang-out of hers. In the afternoon."
Kenworthy stared at the past.
"If she hung out at Trimalchio's, I fail to see how I could have avoided meeting her. My acquaintance with the females Infesting that place was extensive and peculiar. Could she have used another name? All I wish to point out, with some fervency, is that I never wrote an incriminating letter in my life. Our family lawyer told me the facts of life about that when I was fifteen; and I have been a temperate correspondent ever since. So I don't—" He broke off. "Look here, how do you happen to know about Trimalchio's?"
Valerie turned her eyes away from him.
"I'm sorry," she said in a low voice. "I was only trying to help you."
"Yes; but. . ."
"Perhaps it was foolish of me to go down and try to t-tackle her," said Valerie. "Like a silly school-girl with a favorite elder brother. And it's landed me in a dreadful mess, I'm afraid."
"A mess?"
"I have friends who go to Trimalchio's. They told me about you. And mother always said you could be redeemed. I thought perhaps if I could argue with Mrs. Zia Bey, and persuade her to give up the letters—or even steal them—"
"Dash it all, I tell you I never wrote any letters!"
Valerie grew curt. "That, if I did something like that, you might like me a little better when I introduced myself to you. That even Uncle Fred might like me a little better, and perhaps help me in war-work. Please forget it. I see now it was a silly romantic notion, like most of my notions."
He was instantly all contrition.
One part of her mind exulted with glee in her ability to be so smoothly and undetectably tough. The other part said that this was a decent fellow who was being taken for a ride. She only wished fervently that, instead of Jerome Kenworthy, the person in his place were that black-avised limping young; man who spoke in short syllables and seemed to have the weight of the earth on his shoulders. She detested the ape Matthews, who was afraid of fire.
"Valerie my ancient of days," said Kenworthy, "you are; a brick. Sit down again. Allow me to buy you another drink.! And if it's a chance to help your country you want—"
"I don't think I'm really interested."
"A chance to help this home of majesty, this sceptered isle, this England," pursued Kenworthy, with the whisky singing on an empty stomach; "well, let me tell you the sort of work I've been assigned to do."
"Oh? What's that?"
"But, before we proceed to it, let me inform you that I feel guilty as the very devil. What is this mess you're in?"
"It's nothing, Jerome. Really it isn't."
"Probably not. Still, what is it?"
"I'd rather not say."
"Ne'er tilt that proud chin at me, my pet. So far as I can ' see, some exceedingly dirty work must be going on here--abouts." Kenworthy's eyes narrowed behind the octagonal spectacles. The small comma-wrinkles deepened round his mouth as he stared at his empty glass. "Murder! Suffering cats, murder; I'd better see if I've ever met the woman, by the way. Griswold can probably arrange that. He might have said something about it, confound him. Have they any idea who did it?"
"I don't think so."
"Just what is your part in it?"
"I—I was hiding in a cabin opposite. And a foul beast; named Matthews, a brother of the captain, went and told the captain all about it." Evidently on the verge of tears, she outlined th
e story. It was only what she had told Max Matthews: no more.
Kenworthy was shaken.
"And you did all that for me? Devil burn my body!"
"It was nothing, Jerome. It was only stupid and silly and: romantic, and it may make dreadful trouble for me when the captain comes to question me about it. What on earth am I to do?"
"Do?"
"Yes. You see, that's not all. Mrs.—Mrs. 23a Bey left a sealed envelope with the purser, in his office. I thought it might contain more letters of yours. So I asked this man Matthews to get it for me, but he wouldn't. The captain probably knows all about it by now."
Kenworthy blinked at her.
"My dear Valerie, there is only one thing you can possibly do. Griswold,- the purser, is a great friend of mine. He'll understand. Tell him the truth. Tell the captain the truth."
"Of course, I thought of that the first thing. But mightn't that make it awfully difficult for you?"
"Valerie, I keep telling you—there aren't any letters. On my solemn word of honor there aren't."
She drew a deep breath. Her clear gray eyes, which had been turned sideways to contemplate a mahogany pillar, now moved back to his face.
"Yes, Jerome.. But suppose they thought there were?"
"Suppose what?"
"Suppose they thought there were letters. I should have to explain about the letters, you know, in telling why I- went to Mrs. Zia Bey's cabin. And it was common gossip at Trimalchio's that you had been about with her and had written her letters. If it was the ship's officers who introduced you to Trimalchio's, they'll probably have heard it. In any case they'll have to question you. You'll be dragged into this. Jerome, Jerome"—her eyebrows were pinched together over the short, straight nose; her face was passionate with earnestness, and her voice almost a moan—"I'm thinking of you. Think of the publicity of a murder investigation, when we get to England! And your father."
(Checkmate.)
Throughout the latter part of this conversation, when both persons had experienced strong emotions of different kinds, the orchestra had been hurtling through to a grand finale of popular airs. It made a sort of musical explosion under the glass roof, and fell away in dead silence.
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