by Q. Patrick
All other passengers (except Robinson, to be dealt with later). Opportunity: None. Motive: Query.
After we had tabulated these findings, we sat back in our deck chairs and had a long talk about Robinson. Both of us felt inclined to believe that he would probably turn out to be the guilty party, otherwise, why should he have given himself a false name and then completely disappeared? Beyond this point, however, we agreed to differ. For Adam believes that the man is actually Robinson and that he is hiding somewhere on board the ship. I, on the other hand, cannot make up my mind whether he has gone overboard (as Robinson) or whether he is someone else who impersonated Robinson for the evening.
If he is an impersonation, it is extremely unlikely that he is anyone at our table, since most of them were neither in or in and out of the smoking room the whole evening. And if not one of our crowd, it would be idle to speculate as to his real identity since he could easily have been any one of the two hundred men and women on board the ship.
Yes, women, Davy, I say it advisedly. His voice, as I remember it, was squeaky. His tan must have been false. And he was gambling on his knowledge that no one notices a person on the first night out—anyhow, why shouldn’t he be a woman? And he was so inconspicuous that I can’t even remember the color of his eyes behind the spectacles, or the shape of his nose.
But if he was the murderer, Davy, how did he know that, by playing solitaire at a nearby table, he would be invited to join the Lambert party?
How did he know that Daniels would conveniently order a rickey and that he’d be able to get out of the room before Lambert collapsed?
How did he know that everything would play into his hands so easily and so simply?
And, above all, how has he managed to conceal his identity when the whole ship has been turned upside down looking for him ?
Riddle me this, Davy darling.
Stateroom,
Monday, November 16th.
2:30 P. M.
Somewhere in this journal, Davy, I said that I was enjoying this easel My God! I actually did say that—I wrote it down in cold blood and I am ashamed to say that I probably meant it.
But now—now that this second hideous tragedy has occurred, I can only say that I wish I had the wings of a seagull so that I might leave my stateroom this instant and fly as far as possible from this horrible ship. Davy, if I ever get back to you, never, never let me set foot on a boat again. Do you remember how we used to quarrel about the ideal setting for a murder story? I always said it was a houseparty out in the country somewhere, preferably in England, where you knew it must be one of the guests. You said it was a boat, where you didn’t know your shipmates, but where you did know that one of the people brushing past you, sitting in the same room with you, perhaps eating at the same table, must be the murderer—because no one could escape. And where at any time you might catch a glimpse, when you least expect it, of that dark side of his nature that allows him—that prompts him—to kill.
Davy darling, as usual you are right. Nothing could be worse than this—nothing could be. It’s not that I’m fearful for my life, exactly; it is just the horrible uncertainty, the suspicion of everybody; it’s the inhumanity. I keep forgetting the tragedy in the situation for Mrs. Lambert, for Earnshaw; all I can feel is the horror.
And all my superstitious Welsh ancestors seem to be rising up around me with mocking eyes and pointing fingers, saying: “Fancy a Llewellyn daring to take a boat that sailed on Friday the thirteenth!”
But, at this point—in case you are anxious, dearest—I feel I should tell you that I personally am all right. In fact I have just waked up after about ten hours of drugged sleep. Don’t worry about me, Davy. My body is safe and well—but mentally, morally and spiritually, I don’t think I shall ever be quite the same again.
When Mr. Lambert was killed it was, of course, horrible, but after all he was almost a total stranger to me, and he was an old man with a weak heart who had not so very many years to go, anyhow. But when a young person is killed—someone who had all the best of life ahead—and killed in such an unthinkably terrible way—well, Davy, then I feel it’s time for me to take to my bed, pull the covers up over my head and never face the wicked world again.
And that’s where I am now—at two-thirty in the afternoon! I haven’t even got the spirit -to get up and go out on deck. My heart is sick, Davy, and there’s nothing for me to do but fall back on this journal—blessed anodyne—as a relief for my pent-up feelings.
Now I suppose the best thing is to stop dwelling on my own private emotions and begin at the beginning—or where I left off last night.
There was dancing on the deck after dinner. The night was calm and still, but with a hint of menace in its stillness. The stars were bright—suspiciously bright—and perhaps it was just my imagination, but an atmosphere of restlessness and feverishness seemed to hang about the ship like a miasma. It was stiflingly hot and every now and again one would see people casting anxious eyes seaward as though they were expecting a storm to break at any minute. Even the sailors appeared restive as they did their odd jobs about the deck. The air was vibrant with anticipation.
But the orchestra on board is really quite good and, although I hadn’t intended to dance during the trip, I promised Adam one sedate and careful turn around the floor. Just as we were about to start, however, Daniels came up to us and said:
“Do you happen to know, Miss Llewellyn, if Miss Demarest cares to dance?”
Adam smiled down at the little Cockney and said, “Of course, Daniels, all women like to dance, or at least, they like to be asked. Just march straight up to her, grasp her firmly around the knees and—off you go!”
As Daniels trotted meekly towards the large-limbed lady of his affections, something must have hit my funny-bone because I started to laugh and laugh—
“Oh, I can’t dance,” I cried weakly, at last. “I must sit down, oh—oh, my incision!”
And it was lucky I spoke when I did, Davy, for at that very moment the ship must have run into a terrific rainstorm. I say rain, but it was just as though some mischievous angel had opened a trap door in heaven and thrown bucketful after bucketful of water on the ship. I have never seen such wetness in my life. It came down like cats and dogs—lions, tigers and elephants—scrambling, tearing, roaring! And all so suddenly that all the dancers who were not under cover became drenched to the skin before they could so much as run across the deck.
And then came the thunder and lightning. I have read my Conrad—I have often heard of tropical downpours, but I never imagined they could be anything like this. The lightning seemed to rip the sky into fragments and the thunder crashed around the boat is though we had suddenly run into a heavy bombardment from an enemy battleship. Then the sea started to swell the symphony—and within a few minutes of being in the middle of a still, summer night we found ourselves tossed violently about till I know I felt like a cowboy trying to ride a steer.
It was fearful, yet fascinating, Davy. I sat there watching it all for about twenty minutes and feeling for the first time in my life that I was not an over-civilized young woman, but a tiny cosmic atom in the grip of the elements.
Then some officer shouted to me to go inside and I reluctantly got up and made my way to the smoking room. Adam had deserted me as soon as the storm broke, saying that he must go down below to see that his porthole was properly shut. Apparently he has a horror of damp sheets.
There was no one I knew in the smoking room except Earnshaw, who was sitting alone at a side-table with a plate of sandwiches in front of him. He wore a grey lounge suit and looked tired after his day’s work.
“This is my dinner,” he said, pointing cheerily at the sandwiches. “Want to come and share it?”
I sat down.
“And now, how about something to keep the damp out? Isn’t it a marvelous storm? I got caught in it and had to change my clothes. Which, I think, indicates a double brandy. What’s yours?”
“Brandy sounds go
od to me.”
While we were waiting for the drinks to be brought, we stood by the window and watched the lightning. The rain had now stopped almost as suddenly as it had begun and one or two hardy, mackintoshed figures were venturing out on deck, either to get cool or to watch the still mountainous waters.
“How’s Mrs. Lambert?” I asked when we sat down to our drinks.
“She seems a little brighter tonight, poor-soul, but she won’t like this weather. Luckily Betty sleeps in the stateroom next to her suite, so if she needs anything in the night—but she seems more resigned now—and less frightened, thank heaven.”
At this point Adam came into the room and moved towards us as though he were going to come to our table. I shot him a warning glance, remembering that Earnshaw had asked me specially for a tête-à-tête earlier in the morning. Adam left the room looking quite unreasonably aggrieved.
“Are you feeling very sympathetic this evening, Miss Llewellyn?” asked Earnshaw as we sipped our drinks.
I nodded, doing my best to look middle-aged and friendly.
“That’s good. I’ve wanted so badly to talk to someone about Betty and—er—myself. I’m in a terrible predicament and I can’t make up my mind what is the decent thing to do. You see, Miss Llewellyn, I—I love Betty and I’ve asked her to marry me.”
“Splendid,” I said enthusiastically. “She’s a grand girl and you’re very lucky, that is—if Barkis is willin’!”
The young man looked ruefully down at his hands and then pulled out a cigarette. Incidentally, he omitted to offer me one.
“Here’s the story,” he said, as he inhaled deep puffs of smoke. “I’d been seeing a good bit of Betty lately—before we came on this trip, I mean. I’ve been living with the Lamberts while we were working out the details of this Rio contract. Mr. Lambert thought that, by cutting prices to the bone, we could underbid all our competitors. I was round at the house a lot figuring like mad and Betty was always in and out. The old man was quite fond of me and one day he asked me if anything was going on between us. I told him frankly that I’d fallen in love with his niece. Although the most unsentimental of people, he was quite surprisingly decent about it—far deccnter than he has ever been to his own son—and said that he’d do all he could to help me, on one condition. The condition was that I shouldn’t propose to Betty until after the Rio contract was all sewed up and safe in the bag. If we pulled it off, he said, he’d give me his blessing and a very handsome wedding present.”
At this point Adam came into the smoking room again, looking around, and seeing no one besides ourselves whom he knew, walked disconsolately out once more.
“That elderly boy friend of yours is a nuisance,” said Earnshaw petulantly. “Am I boring you, by the way?”
I hastily and emphatically assured him of my interest.
“Well, that was all very well,” he continued, “but I didn’t bargain for Betty’s coming on this trip with us. It was Mrs. Lambert who arranged that and—well, it was very sweet of her —but you can imagine how difficult it was for me. The inevitable happened the very first night out—the night Mr. Lambert died. We went for a tour all round the ship and finally we landed in a secluded nook, where—well, never mind about that, but I lost my head completely and told Betty that I adored her. To my surprise I found that she—er—loved me too. We became engaged—secretly of course—then and there. I was absurdly happy until—until—you know the rest.”
Earnshaw paused in his story to light a fresh cigarette. This time I asked him for one. He passed his case apologetically.
“But,” I said, “I don’t see that there’s anything so tragic in that, Mr. Earnshaw, you love each other—you—”
“Oh, but everything’s so different now. Two days ago I had a good job with Lambert—enough to keep a wife on—but I am not a member of his company. I was hired by Mr. Lambert personally as his private secretary. With his death my job dies too and, of course, he didn’t leave me a cent. I radioed the office at once to ask permission to go to Rio and carry through the deal. Today I had their refusal, and a kind but firm intimation that my services were terminated. I’m thirty-four years old, out of work and have only a few thousand dollars saved. Betty’s people are wealthy and socially ambitious. She is only twenty—popular and pretty. I ask you, Miss Llewellyn, wouldn’t it be pretty inexcusable to hold her to an engagement which was entered upon against the wishes of her family? It may be years before I can keep her in what is usually known as the manner to which she is accustomed, even supposing I did manage to find another job. You are a girl and you know how women feel about such things. Now what ought I do?”
He looked so pathetic, so distraught and so handsome that I instinctively moved towards him and put out my hand. The ship was still rolling pretty badly and a sudden lurch almost threw me into his arms. I clutched at his sleeve to steady myself.
“It’s the ship, not the brandy, Mr. Earnshaw,” I laughed. “I’m sorry, but if you want to know how one girl feels, I can easily tell you. In three months I’m going to be married myself. I’m going to marry a man who earns forty-five dollars a week. He’s a far better journalist than I am, but I can earn twice that much. Now, if he lost his job or got a cut or fell sick, I’d marry him the instant I set foot on shore and work my head off to keep him. Wild buffaloes couldn’t drag me away from him. Now, if Betty loves you—and if she’s the girl I take her for—she feels the same as I do.”
I hadn’t realized it, Davy, but all the time I was making this impassioned outburst, I must have been hanging on to the sleeve of his coat. You may imagine my embarrassment, therefore, when I looked up and saw Mrs. Lambert standing at the table by our side. She had obviously dressed in a hurry and wore a long coat buttoned up to the neck. She nodded to me politely but, I thought, rather disapprovingly. Earnshaw sprang to his feet as soon as he saw her.
“Why, Mrs. Lambert, I thought you were in bed. Is there anything I can do?”
“Why, yes, Jimmie, I was in bed and so was Betty—at least she came in over an hour ago to wish me good-night. When I woke up not long since, I suddenly remembered that the poor child has always been scared to death of thunder and lightning, so I called out to her. She didn’t reply. I sent the stewardess in to see if she was all right. But she wasn’t there at all. Her berth was untouched. I waited a bit and then I began to get worried, so I slipped on a few clothes and came up to look for her.”
An anxious frown passed over Earnshaw’s forehead. “She told me quite distinctly that she was going to bed, and that was some time ago,” he murmured.
“Well,” said Mrs. Lambert, and there was a decided snap in her voice, “it may interest you to know that she is sitting out on deck at this moment with a man—his back was turned so I couldn’t see who it was. I naturally thought it was you. Then I happened to catch a glimpse of you in here with Miss Llewellyn. Do you by any chance happen to know whom she’s with?”
We both shook our heads.
“In that case,” said Mrs. Lambert with the rather aggressive importance of a self-appointed chaperone, “I’m going out to tell her that it’s after eleven o’clock and high time she was in bed.” And with these words she turned her back on us as if we were in disgrace and marched off to starboard.
Earnshaw looked at me with a wry little smile.
“Oh, Betty!” I murmured.
But the words were hardly out of my mouth, Davy, when we heard a sound that froze the blood in my veins and fixed the smile on Earnshaw’s face into a horrible grin.
It was a desperate, human shriek, rising clear and piercing above the noise of the engines and the sound of the waves.
And the ghastly thing about it, Davy, was that it did not seem to come from anywhere on the ship. It was as though some wailing Banshee in flying round the vessel had uttered this solitary cry of despair to the winds of heaven and then passed on. For a few seconds we stood rigid, staring at each other in mute horror. The silence which followed that shriek was one of the m
ost tense and terrible moments in my life. I shall never forget it.
But it did not last long, for almost immediately there was a succession of very human, very feminine screams—this time from the starboard side of the ship—and a wild voice, coming nearer and nearer cried:
“Help—help—Betty—!”
Earnshaw sprang towards the door, but before he had got half way across the room Mrs. Lambert appeared, her hair flying in disorder, her face livid with terror.
“Betty—thrown overboard—stop the ship,” she gasped.
Earnshaw and I brushed past her and dashed out on deck, where a group of sailors and passengers had already assembled.
And then, Davy, I saw it for the first time and my heart seemed to go cold and dead like a stone inside me. It was Betty’s beautiful orange shawl, floating in the air a few yards from the ship, bobbing playfully and wantonly up and down as it was lifted by the breezes. Lightly—almost laughingly it floated—as though the following winds were driving it along to keep pace with the ship—as though it mocked for a moment those cruel dark waters below. Then it began to drop downwards.
I caught one glimpse of Earnshaw’s face as he recognized the shawl. In the twinkling of an eye he had thrown off his coat and reached the rail. Three stalwart sailors rushed forward to stop him.
“No, no, sir—it’s madness—with this sea!”
Before they could close in on him, Earnshaw’s fist had shot out and caught one of the sailors on the point of the chin. The man rolled over as though he had been hit with a hammer. Then, still struggling with the two others, Earnshaw climbed the rail and, well, I don’t know what happened exactly, but I do know that I stood there waiting with sickening apprehension—waiting for the splash which would tell me that he had joined Betty.
But one of the sailors must have caught him by the hair or the collar just as he jumped. An officer, who had been shouting orders through a megaphone, joined the group and the next thing I knew was that they were dragging the still struggling Earnshaw back on to the deck.