The Blind Barber (Dr. Gideon Fell series Book 4)

by John Dickson Carr

  Either he had been too quick for them or he had been frightened away. With a rather satiric wink, the rubber edging of the door caught and contracted; the gilt piston closed softly. Over the tortured wrenching and bone-cracking of the woodwork, when the whole ship seemed to be heeling over down a colossal chute, Warren let out a howl and charged for the door. The inrush of wind smashed over them as he got it open; they were whirled sideways in the trough of the wave, and the wind carried away something Captain Valvick was crying, about “be careful,” and “hold de rail,” and “close to water line.”

  The spray took Morgan in the face as he clambered out into darkness. Between spray and bellowing wind, he was momentarily blind. The wind cut through him with paralysing chill, and his foot slipped on the wet iron plates. A whistle and drumming went by in the halloo of the blast. A few lights from high up in the ship gleamed out across a darkness shot with ghostly white. The lights shone on creaming white flickers; on a curl of grey-black swell that shone like grained wood, and then a mist of spray as the wet deck tilted sickeningly and the crash of water rose high in a spectral mane. Morgan seized at the bulkhead rail, steadied himself, and shaded his eyes.

  They were on the windward side. D deck was long, rather narrow, and very dimly lighted. He saw it go up before them on the rise—and he saw their man. A little way ahead, not holding to the rail, but, head down, a figure was hurrying towards the bow. Even in the dull yellow flicker in the roof they could see that this figure carried something under its arm. And this was a circular black box, flattish, and about ten inches in diameter …

  “Steady, boys!” said Warren, exultantly, and flapped against the rail. “Steady, boys!” Here we go down again. “Hang on!” He stabbed his finger ahead. “And there’s the son-of-a—”

  The rest of the sentence was lost, although he seemed to keep on speaking. They were after him. Far ahead, Morgan could see the lamp on the tall foremast swing up, rear, and swerve like a diver. He thought (and thinks to this day) that they did not so much run down the deck as hook their elbows to the rail and sail down it like a stupendous water-chute. They were going so fast, in fact, that he wondered whether they could stop in time, or whether they would go straight at the big enclosure of glass that protected the fore part of the deck from the wind’s full violence. Their quarry heard them now. He had reached the turn of the deck by the glass enclosure when he heard the clatter of pursuit; he was almost in darkness, and he whirled round towards them. Juggled on flying water, the liner crested another rise …

  “HAAA!” screamed Warren, and charged.

  To say that Warren hit the man would be a powerful understatement. Morgan afterwards wondered why that crack did not jar the other’s head loose from his spine. Warren landed on his quarry’s jaw, with the weight of his own thirteen stone and the catapult-start of the Atlantic Ocean behind. It was the most terrific, reverberating smack since Mr. William Henry Harrison Dempsey pasted Mr. Luis Angel Firpo clean over the ropes into the newspapermen’s laps; and it is to be recorded that, when the other hit the glass enclosure, he bounced. Warren did not afterwards even give him time to fall. “You’ll go around smacking people with a blackjack, will you?” he demanded—a purely rhetorical question. “You’ll come into a guy’s cabin, hey! and crack him one with a lead pipe? Oh, you will, will you?” inquired Mr. Warren, and waded in.

  Both Captain Valvick and Morgan, who had been ready to lend assistance, clutched the rail and stared. The circular tin box slid from the victim’s arms, clattered on the deck, and rolled. Valvick caught it as the deck was carrying it overboard.

  “Yumping Yudas!” said the captain, his eyeballs bulging. “Ho! Hey! Go easy! Ay t’ank you going to kill him if you keep on … ”

  “Whee!” said a voice behind them. “Darling! Sock him again!”

  Reeling, Morgan turned round to see Peggy Glenn, without hat or coat, capering in the middle of the spray-drenched deck. Her hair was blowing wildly, and she beamed as she spun to keep her footing. She had the whisky-bottle in one hand (“in case somebody needed it,” as she afterwards explained), and she was waving it encouragingly.

  “You blasted little fool,” yelled Morgan, “go back!” He seized her arm and dragged her to the inside rail, but she broke loose and stuck out her tongue at him. “Go back, I tell you! Here, take this—” he got the tin box from Valvick, and thrust it into her hands—“take this and go back. We’ll be there. It’s all over … ”

  It was, and had been for some seconds. By the time she was persuaded to work her way back some distance, Warren had arranged his tie, smoothed the hair over his sticking-plaster, and come up to them with the deprecating air of a person who regrets having caused a fuss.

  “Well, boys,” he said, “I feel a little better. Now we can examine this blackjack-user and see if he’s carrying the first part of the film on him. If not, we can easily find out his cabin.” He drew a deep breath. A high wave careered, swung and broke close to the deck, drenching him; but he only adjusted his tie and wiped the water from his eyes in a negligent fashion. He was beaming. “This isn’t a bad night’s work. As a member of the Diplomatic Service, I feel that I have earned considerable thanks from Uncle Warpus, and—What the devil’s the matter with—!”

  The girl had screamed. Even with the sea noises, it went up shrill and thin above them, paralysing on the darkened liner.

  Morgan whirled round. She had taken the lid off the tin box, and Morgan noted in fascinated horror that the lid had a hasp and a hinge, which he did not remember having seen … Holding tight to the rail, he wove his way to where the girl, under a sickly electric bulb, was holding the box out and staring into it.

  “Coroosh!” said Captain Valvick.

  The box was not tin; it was thin steel. Inside, it was padded and lined with gleaming white satin. Bedded into a depression in the middle was a glow of green brilliancy which shifted and burned under the moving light. There were two rubies for eyes in the exquisitely carven thing; a piece of subtle Persian workmanship somewhat larger than a Vesta matchbox, and wound with gold links into a pendant.

  “Hold it!” shouted Morgan, as a jerk of the deck nearly carried the box overboard. He clutched it in. Wet splashes flashed out on the satin … “Thought,” he yelled, “gone overboard … ”

  He swallowed hard, and a nauseating suspicion struck him as he peered over his shoulder.

  “By the Lord! had he pinched the emerald elephant?” demanded Warren. “Look here; we did better than we knew. Getting this back—ha! Why old Sturton’ll—What’s the matter with you all? What are you thinking about?” His eyes suddenly widened. They all stared at one another under the wild screaming of the night. “Look!” muttered Warren, swallowing hard. “That is, you don’t think—hurrum?”

  Captain Valvick groped his way down to where a stout mass in a waterproof, dead to the world, was wedged into an angle of the glass enclosure. Bending down, and sheltered by the enclosure, they saw the spurt of a match.

  “Oh, Yesus!” said the captain, in an awed voice. He got up. He pushed back his cap and scratched his head. When he came back to them his leathery face had a queer, wrinkled, wryly amused expression, and his voice was matter-of-fact.

  “Ay t’ank,” he observed, scratching his head again—“ay t’ank we haf made a mistake. Ay t’ank we are in one most hawful yam. Ay t’ank de man you haff busted in de yaw is Captain Whistler.”

  6

  The Missing Body

  MORGAN REELED, IN A more than merely literal sense. Then he recovered himself, after a long silence in which everybody stared at everybody else. He hooked his arms in the rail and took a meditative survey of the deck. He cleared his throat.

  “Well, well!” he said.

  Captain Valvick suddenly chuckled, and then let out thunderous guffaws. He doubled up his shoulders, shook, writhed in unholy fashion, and there were tears in those honest old eyes as he leaned against the rail. Warren joined him; Warren could not help it. They chortled, they yow
led, they slapped one another on the back and roared. Morgan eyed them in some disapproval.

  “Not for the world,” he observed, in a thoughtful yell, “would I care to be a spirit of Stygian gloom upon the innocent mirth and jollity of this occasion. Go on and gather rosebuds, you fatheads. But certain facts remain for our consideration. I am not thoroughly familiar with maritime law. Beyond the obvious fact that we have compounded and executed a felony. I am therefore not fully aware of the exact extent of our offense. But I have my suspicions, gentlemen. It would strike me that any sea-going passenger who willfully up and busts the captain in the eye, or is found guilty of conniving at the same, will probably spend the rest of his life in clink … Peggy, my dear, hand me that bottle. I need a drink.”

  The girl’s lips were twitching with unholy mirth, but she put the steel box under her arm and obediently handed over the whisky. Morgan sampled it. He sampled it again. He had sampled it a third time before Warren got his face straight.

  “It’s aaal-ri-whooooosh!” roared Warren, doubling up again. “It’s all riii-whi-choosh! I mean, wha-keeeee! It’s all right, old man. You people go on back to the cabin and sit down and make yourselves comfortable. I’ll throw some water over the old walrus and confess to him. Huh-huh-huh!” His shoulders heaved; he swallowed and straightened up. “I pasted him. So I’ll have to tell him … ”

  “Don’t be a howling ass,” said Morgan. “You’ll tell him what?”

  “Why, that—” said the other, and stopped.

  “Exactly,” said Morgan. “I defy anybody’s ingenuity to invent a reasonable lie as to why you came roaring out of your cabin, slid down sixty yards of deck, and bounced the captain of the Queen Victoria all over his own deck. And, when that walrus comes to, my boy, he’s going to be WILD. If you tell him the truth, then the fat’s in the fire and you’ve got to explain about Uncle Warpus—not that he’d probably believe you, anyway … ”

  “Um,” said Warren, uneasily. “But, say what do you suppose did happen, anyway? Hell! I thought I was hitting the fellow who tried to break into my cabin … ”

  Morgan handed him the bottle. “It was his captainly solicitude, my lad. Peggy told him all about your accident at dinner. Now that I come to think of it, what she neglected to tell him was that you were supposedly taken to the infirmary. So he came to call on the wreck … ”

  “After—” shouted Captain Valvick excitedly—“after he hass persuaded de English duke to give him dat hemerald helephant, and he take it wit’ him to put in de safe … ”

  “Exactly. He glanced in your cabin, saw you weren’t there, went out, and—bang,” Morgan reflected. “Besides, my lad, there’s another good reason why you can’t confess. The one thing we’ll be forced to report to him is that girl—the one in the cabin now—with a crack over the back of the head. You’ll certainly be in for it if you admit slugging the captain. To our friend Whistler’s forthright intelligence, the explanation would be simple. If one of your simple pleasures is to go about assaulting the skippers of ocean liners, then you would consider beaning his lady-passengers with a blackjack as only a kind of warming-up exercise. Especially as—Holy Mike!” Morgan stopped, stared, and then seized the rail again as the ship roared down. “Now that I remember it, our good Peggy informed the captain at dinner that she was afraid you suffered from bats in the belfry … ”

  “Oooo, I never did!” cried the girl, and undoubtedly believed it. “All I said was—”

  “Never mind, Baby,” said Warren, soothingly. “The point is, what’s to be done? We can’t stand here arguing, and we’re soaked to the skin. I’m pretty sure the old what-not didn’t recognise me, or any of us … ”

  “You’re positive of that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well, then,” said Morgan, with a breath of relief, “the only thing to do is to shove the box inside his coat and leave him where he is. Every second we stay here we’re in danger of being spotted, and then—whaa! I—er—don’t suppose there’s any danger of his rolling overboard, is there?” he added, doubtfully.

  “Noooo, not a chance!” Captain Valvick assured him, with cheerful scorn. “He be all right where he iss. Ay fold him up against de bulkhead, Ha-ha-ha! Giff me de box, Miss Glenn. Ah, you shiver! You should not haf come out wi’out de coat. Now you giff me de box and go back where it iss warm. Dere iss not’ing to be afraid of now, because we haf—”

  “Captain Whistler, sir!” cried a voice, almost directly above their heads.

  Morgan’s heart executed a somersault over a couple of rowdy lungs. He stared at the others, who were stricken silent, and stayed motionless without daring to look up. The voice seemed to have come from the top of the companionway to B deck, near which Warren and Valvick were standing. They were in shadow, but Morgan feared the worst. He glanced at Peggy, who was petrified, and who held the steel box like a bomb. He saw what was passing in her mind. She looked at the rail, as though she had a wild impulse to toss the box overboard, and he gestured a savage negative. Morgan felt something knocking at his ribs …

  “Captain Whistler, sir!” repeated the voice, more loudly. The sea battered back in answer. “I could’ve sworn,” the voice continued, in tones which Morgan recognised as belonging to the second officer, “I heard something down there. What’s happened to the old man, anyway? He said he’d be up … ” The rest of it was lost in the gale, until a second voice—it sounded like the ship’s doctor—said:

  “It sounded like a woman. I say, you don’t suppose the old man’s up to any funny business with the ladies, do you? Shall we go down?”

  Feet scuffled on the iron companion-ladder, but the second officer said: “Never mind. It might’ve been imagination. We’ll—”

  And then, to the horror of the little group by the glass enclosure, the captain’s corpse sat up.

  “!!!!¾½&£!?!??°???” roared Captain Whistler—weakly it is true, and huskily, but with gathering volume as his sticky wits ceased to whirl. “!&£&/£/!” He gasped, he blinked, and then, as the full realisation smote him, he lifted shaking arms to heaven and set soaring his soul in one hoarse blast: “!!!!&/£—!!?????&—&£/!!/? ⅔¾⅓!? THIEVES! MURDERERS! HELP!”

  “That’s torn it,” breathed Morgan, in a fierce whisper. “Quick! There’s only one … What are you doing?” he demanded, and stared at Peggy Glenn.

  After saying, “Eiee!” the girl did not hesitate. Just behind her there was the porthole to somebody’s cabin, open and fastened back. As the obliging boat rolled over to assist her aim, she flung the steel box inside. It was a dark cabin, and they heard the box bump down. Without looking at the others, who were staring aghast, she had turned to run, when Morgan caught her arm …

  “Gawd lummy!” said the ghostly voice from the top of the companionway, as though it were coming out of a trance, “that’s the old man! Come on!”

  Morgan was shooing his charges before him like chickens. He spoke so fast, under cover of the crashing swell, that he wondered if they heard him: “Don’t try to run, you fatheads, or Whistler’ll see you! He’s still groggy … Stick in the shadow, make a lot of noise with your feet as though you’d heard him and were running to help! Say something! Talk! Run about in circles … ”

  It was an old detective-story trick, and he hoped it would work. Certainly their response was magnificent. To Captain Whistler, opening gummy eyes as he sat on the deck, it must have seemed that he was being rescued by a regiment of cavalry. The din was staggering especially Captain Valvick’s realistic impersonation of a horse starting from far away and growing louder and more thunderous as it galloped near. Morgan’s stout-hearted trio also cut the gale with such cries as, “What is it?” “What’s wrong?” “Who’s hurt?” They had timed themselves to spin round the forward bulkhead just as the second officer and the doctor came pelting up, their waterproofs swishing and the gilt ensigns on their caps gleaming out of the murk. There was silence while everybody clung to what was convenient, and several moments of hard b
reathing. The second officer, bending down, snapped on his flashlight. One good eye—undamaged, although the pickled-onion blaze of its pupil was distended horribly—one good eye smouldered and glared back at them out of a face which resembled a powerful piece of futurist painting. Captain Whistler was breathing hard. Morgan thought of the Cyclops, and also of incipient apoplexy. Captain Whistler sat on the wet deck, supporting himself with his hands behind him, and his cap was pushed back over his short white hair. He did not say anything. He was incapable, at that moment, of saying anything. He only breathed.

  “Gor!” whispered the second officer.

  There was another silence. Without removing his gaze from that terrifying face, the second officer beckoned behind him to the doctor. “I—er—” he faltered; “that is, what happened, sir?”

  A certain terrible spasm and shiver twitched over the captain’s face and chest, as though a volcano were trembling at its crust. But he still said nothing, and continued to wheeze noisily. His Cyclopean eye remained fixed.

  “Come on, sir!” urged the second officer. “Let me help you up. You’ll—er—catch cold. What happened?” he demanded, bewilderedly, turning to Morgan. “We heard—”

  “So did we,” agreed Morgan, “and came running when you did. I don’t know what happened to him. He must have fallen off the bridge or something.”

  Among the dusky figures Peggy pressed forward. “It is Captain Whistler!” she wailed. “Oh, the poor dear! This is awful! Whatever can have happened to him? I say—” She seemed to have a shocking presentiment. Although she lowered her voice, there was only a hissing recoil of waters on the rise, and her shocked whisper to Warren carried clearly. “I say, I hope the poor man hasn’t been drinking, has he?”