Morgan lowered his head to cool it, and swallowed hard in a dry throat. Never before had he seen the true extent of American energy.
“So now,” he said, “so now you want to go around breaking down doors, do you? Kindly reflect a moment, Curt. Consider what you have already done to Captain Whistler’s blood pressure. You fathead, why don’t you go up and smash down the captain’s door and get put into a strait-waistcoat and have done with it? You said I was to give the orders, and I’m giving some now. You’re to stop absolutely quiet. Do you understand?”
“Ay haf an idea,” volunteered Captain Valvick, who was scratching his short sandy hair. “Coroosh! Ay yust t’ink of it. Suppose de port where you t’row dat elephant wass in de cabin of dat English duke which own de elephant in de first place? Coroosh! But he iss going to be surprised if he wake up in de morning and find it dere. Maybe he t’ink Captain Whistler hass got mad at him for somet’ing and come down in de night and t’row dat elephant back at him trough de port.”
“No, that won’t work,” said Warren. “Old Sturton’s got a suite on B deck. But we’ve got to find out who does sleep in that cabin. Think. Baby! Get your brain working.”
Peggy’s face was screwed up with intense concentration. She made slow gestures to bring the scene back.
“I’ve got it now,” she said. “Yes, I’m sure. It was either the second or third porthole from the end of the wall where we were standing. They look so much alike and you ought to remember it yourself. But it was either the second or third porthole.”
“You’re absolutely sure of that, are you?”
“Yes, I am. I won’t say which one, but I’ll swear it was one of those two.”
“Den dass all right,” rumbled Valvick, nodding. “Ay go out right now and find de numbers on dem cabins, and we look it up in de passenger-list. Also ay got anudder bottle of Old Rob Roy in my locker, and ay get it and we out of it a nightcap haff, hey? Yumping Yudas, but ay am t’irsty! Hold on. Ay won’t be a minute.”
Morgan protested in vain. The captain insisted that he would only be a minute, and went out foraging, with the approval of the other two lieutenants.
“ … Also,” Morgan continued, turning to them when Valvick had gone, “what the devil’s the use of bothering about that emerald now? Has it occurred to you what happened in this place to-night? What about that woman? What happened to her?”
Warren made a savage gesture. “I’ve got it all figured out,” he snapped. “I knew it the minute we came back in here, but I didn’t very well see how I could tell old Popeye. We’ve been outsmarted, that’s what. They got us to fall for that as neat as you please, and it’s another thing that makes me mad … Why, that girl was our crook’s accomplice, don’t you see? They arranged it between them for her to pull a fake faint, calling my name, mind you—which wasn’t natural to begin with … ”
“And you don’t think the injury was real?”
“Of course it wasn’t real. I read a story once about a bird who could suddenly make funny noises and go into a cataleptic fit, and while the doctor was poking him his gang came in and robbed the doctor’s house. I thought it was a low-down dirty trick at the time; but that’s what they’ve done. Yes, and don’t you remember in your own books, in Aconite in the Admiralty? where that detective what’s-his-name gets into the master criminal’s luxurious den in Downing Street, and they think they’ve stabbed him with the poisoned needle?”
“The literary formula,” agreed Morgan, “is excellent. Still, I doubt it in this case. Granted that the crook was watching us, knew where we were, and all that, I don’t see how it would help him much. He knew we’d certainly take the girl into one of these two cabins, so it wouldn’t be much easier. It was only chance in old Whistler’s coming in when he did, so that we were dragged away and the crook had a clear field.”
Peggy also refused to listen to this line of argument. Warren had got out a damp package of cigarettes, and he and Peggy lit one while Morgan filled his pipe. The girl said, between short puffs, as though she were rather angrily trying to get rid of the smoke:
“But, I say, it’s going to be easy now, isn’t it? It was rather a dreadful bloomer on their part, wasn’t it? Because we shall know that girl when we see her again, and then we’ve got ’em. She wasn’t disguised, you know. She hardly had any make-up on, even. That reminds me—my compact. Give it to me, Curt. I say I must look a sight! Anyway, we can’t miss her. She’s still aboard the boat.”
“Is she?” said Morgan. “I wonder.”
Warren, who was about to make some impatient comment, glanced up and saw the other’s expression. He took the cigarette out of his mouth; his eyes grew curiously fixed.
“What—what’s on your mind, General?”
“Only that Peggy’s right in one sense. If that girl was an accomplice, then the thing would be too easy, much too easy for us. On the other hand, if that girl had been coming here to try to warn you about something … I know you didn’t know her, but let’s suppose that’s what she was doing … Then the thief gets after her and thinks he’s done the business. But he hasn’t. Then—”
The droning engines seemed to vibrate loud above creaking woodwork, because the wind had died outside, deep tumult was subsiding, and the Queen Victoria was rolling almost gently as though she were exhausted by the gale. All of them were relaxed; but it did not help their nerves. Peggy jumped then as the door opened and Captain Valvick returned with the passenger-list in one hand and a quart of Old Rob Roy in the other.
“Ay told you ay only be a minute,” he announced. “It wass easy to find de ports, and den de cabin numbers from inside. One is C 51 and the other C 46. Ay t’ank … Hey?” he said, peering at the strained faces in the room. “What iss de matter, hey?”
“Nothing,” said Morgan. “Not for a minute, anyhow. Come on, now. Set your minds at rest. You wanted to know. Find out who occupies those cabins first, and then we can go on.”
With a jerk of her head, still looking at him, Peggy took the passenger-list. On the point of speaking, she said nothing, and opened the list instead. But she rose and sat on the couch this time. Under cover of Captain Valvick’s talk, Warren helped him take the extra glasses off the rack and pour drinks. They all glanced furtively at Morgan, who had begun to wonder whether he were merely flourishing a turnip ghost. He lit his pipe during a queer silence while Peggy ran her finger down the list, and the ship’s engines beat monotonously …
“Well?” said Warren.
“Wait a bit, old boy. This takes time … Mmmm. Gar—Gran—Gulden—Harris—mmm—Hooper, Isaacs mm, no—Jarvis, Jerome … I say, I hope I haven’t missed it; Jeston, Ka-Kedler—Kennedy … Hullo!” She breathed a line of smoke past her cigarette, and glanced up with wide eyes. “What was it, skipper? C 46? Righto! Here it is. ‘C 46 Kyle, Dr. Oliver Harrison.’ Fancy that! Dr. Kyle has one of those cabins … ”
Warren whistled.
“Kyle, eh? Not bad. Whoa! Wait a bit,” said the diplomat. He struck the bulkhead. “My God! wasn’t he one of the suspects? Yes, I remember now. This crook is probably masquerading … ”
With difficulty Morgan shut him up, for more and more was Warren impressed by the general rightness and poetic reasonableness of a crook with a taste for using the blackjack adopting the guise of a distinguished Harley Street physician. His views were based on the forthright principle that, the more respectable they looked, the more likely they were to turn out dastardly murderers. He also cited examples from the collected works of Henry Morgan in which the authors of the dirty work had proved to be (respectively) an admiral, a rose-grower, an invalid, and an archdeacon. It was only when Peggy protested that this was merely the case in detective stories that Morgan took his side.
“That’s just where you’re wrong, old girl,” he said. “It’s in real life that the crooks and killers always go in the most solidly respectable dress. Only, you see them at the wrong end—in the dock. You think of them as a murderer, not as the erstwhile ch
urchgoing occupant of Number 13 Laburnum Grove. Whisper softly to yourself the names of the most distinguished croakers of a century, and observe that nearly all of them were highly esteemed by the vicar. Constance Kent? Dr. Pritchard? Christina Edmunds? Dr. Lamson? Dr. Crippen—”
“And nearly all of ’em doctors, eh?” inquired Warren, with an air of sinister enlightenment. He seemed to brood over this incorrigible tendency among members of the medical profession to go about murdering people. “You see, Peggy? Hank’s right.”
“Don’t be a lop-eared ass,” said Morgan. “Wash out this idea of Dr. Kyle’s being a crook, will you? He’s a very well-known figure … oh, and get rid of the notion, too, that somebody may be impersonating him while the real Dr. Kyle is dead. That may be all right for some person who never comes in contact with anybody; but a public figure like an eminent physician won’t do … Go on, Peggy. Tell us who’s in C 51, and then we can forget it and get down to real business.”
She wrinkled her forehead.
“Here we are, and this is odd, too. ‘C 51. Perrigord, Mr. and Mrs. Leslie.’ So-ho!”
“What’s odd about that? Who are they?”
“You remember my telling you about a very, very great highbrow and aesthete who was aboard, and had written reams of ecstatic articles about Uncle Jules’s genius? And I said I hoped for his sake as well as the kids who wanted to see the fighting that there’d be a performance tomorrow night?”
“Ah! Perrigord?”
“Yes. Both he and she are awfully aesthetic, you know. He writes poetry—you know, the kind you can’t understand, all about his soul being like a busted fencer-rail or something. And I believe he’s a dramatic critic, too, although you can’t make much sense out of what he writes there, either. I can’t anyway. But he says the only dramatists are the French dramatists. He says Uncle Jules has the greatest classic genius since Molière. Maybe you’ve seen him about? Tall, thin chap with flat, blond hair, and his wife wears a monocle?” She giggled. “They do about two hundred circuits of the promenade-deck every morning, and never speak to anybody, those people!”
“H’m!” said Morgan, remembering the dinner-table that night. “Oh, yes. But I didn’t know you knew them. If this fellow has written all that stuff about your uncle—”
“Oh, I don’t know them,” she disclaimed, opening her eyes wide. “They’re English, you see. They’ll write volumes about you, and discuss every one of your good and bad points minutely; but they won’t say how-de-do unless you’ve been properly introduced.”
All this analysis was over the head of the good Captain Valvick, who had grown restive and was puffing through his moustache with strange noises, as though he wanted to be admitted through a closed door.
“Ay got de whisky poured out,” he vouchsafed. “And you put in de soda. Iss it decided what we are going to do? What iss decided, anyway? Sometime we got to go to bed.”
“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,” said Warren, with energy, “and we can sketch out the plan of battle now. Tomorrow morning we’re going to comb the boat for that girl who pulled the fainting-act in here. That’s the only lead we’ve got, and we’re going after it as hard as Whistler goes after the emerald. That is—” He turned round abruptly. “Let’s have it out, Hank. Were you only trying to scare us or were you serious when you made that suggestion?”
Obviously this had been at the back of his mind from the beginning, and he did not like to face it. His hands were clenched. There was a silence while Peggy put the passenger-list aside and also looked up.
“What iss de suggestion?” asked Captain Valvick.
“It’s a queer thing,” said Morgan. “We don’t want our pleasant farce to turn into something else, do we? But why do you think new sheets and maybe blankets were put on that berth?”
“All right,” said Warren, quietly. “Why?”
“Because there may have been more blood afterwards than we saw there. Steady, now.”
There was a silence. Morgan heard the breath whistling through Captain Valvick’s nostrils. With a jerk Warren turned round; he regarded the berth for a moment and then began tearing off the bedclothes.
The cabin creaked faintly …
“You may be wrong,” said Warren, “and I hope you are. I don’t believe anything like that. I won’t believe it. Pillow—top-sheet—blanket—under-sheet of the bed … It’s all right. Look.” He was holding them up, a weird figure in shirt-sleeves, with a brown blanket and a whirl of linen about him. “Look at it, damn you! Everything in order. What are you trying to scare us for? See, this sheet of the bed … Wait a minute … !”
“Take it off,” said Morgan, “and look at the mattress. I hope I’m wrong as much as you do.”
Peggy took one look, and then turned away, white-faced. Morgan felt a constriction in his throat as he stepped up beside Warren and Valvick. A blanket had been neatly spread under the sheet and over the mattress; but stains were already soaking through it. When they swept off the blanket, the colours of the blue-and-white striped mattress were not very distinguishable in a great sodden patch spread for some length down.
“Is it … ?” asked Morgan, and took a deep draw on his cigarette. “Is it … ?”
“Oh, yes. It iss blood,” said Captain Valvick.
It was so quiet that even across that distance Morgan imagined he could hear the liner’s bell. They were moving almost steadily now, with a deep throb below decks in the ship and a faint vibration of glassware. Also Morgan imagined the pale classic-faced girl lying unconscious, with the dim light burning above her in the berth, and the door opening as somebody came in …
“But what’s happened to her? Where is she now?” Warren asked, in a low voice. “Besides,” he added, with a sort of dull argumentative air—“besides, he couldn’t have done that with a blackjack.”
“And why should he do it, anyway?” asked Peggy, trying to control her voice. “Oh, it’s absurd! I won’t believe it! You’re scaring me! And—and, anyway, where did he get the linen for the bed? Where is she, and why? … Oh, you’re trying to frighten me, aren’t you?”
“Steady, Baby,” said Warren, taking her hand without removing his eyes from the bed. “I don’t know why he did it, or what he expected to gain by making the bed over. But we’d better cover that up again.”
Carefully putting down his pipe on the edge of the thrumming washstand, Morgan choked back his revulsion and bent over to examine the berth. The stains were still wet, and he avoided them as much as he could. So strung up was he into that queer, clear-brained, almost fey state of mind that sometimes comes in the drugged hours of the morning, that he was not altogether surprised when he heard something rattle deep down between mattress and bulkhead. He yanked over a corner of the sheet, wound it round his fingers, and groped.
“Better not look, old girl,” he said after a pause. “This won’t be pretty.”
Shielding the find with his body so that only Captain Valvick could see, he pulled it up in the sheet and turned it over in his palm. It was a razor, of the straight, old-fashioned variety, and closed; but it had recently been used. Rather larger than the ordinary size, it was an elaborate and delicate piece of craftsmanship with a handle so curiously fashioned that Morgan wiped the blood away to examine it.
The handle was of a wood that resembled ebony. Down one side ran a design picked out in thin silver and white porcelain. At first Morgan took it for an intricate nameplate, until, under cleaning, it became a man’s standing figure. The figure was possibly three inches high, and under it was a tiny plate inscribed with the word Sunday.
“Ay know,” said Captain Valvick, staring at it. “It iss one of a set of seven, one for every day of de week. Ay haff seen dose before. But what iss dat t’ing on it, like a man?”
The thin figure, in its silver and white and black, was picked out in a curious striped medieval costume, which recalled to Morgan’s mind vague associations with steel-cut engravings out of Doré. Surgeon, surgeon—barber,
that was it! There was the razor in the thing’s fist. But most ugly and grotesque of all, the head of the figure was subtly like a death’s head, and a bandage was across the eyes so that the barber was—
“Blind,” said Warren, who was looking over his shoulder. “Put it away, Hank! Put it away. Blind … death and barber … end of the week. Somebody used that, and lost it or left it here. Put it away. Have a drink.”
Morgan looked at the evil and smeared design. He looked at the door, then at the white-painted bulkhead in the bunk, the tumbled bedclothes and the spotty brown blanket. Again he tried to picture the girl in the yellow frock lying here under a dim light, while the outside door was opening. So who was the girl, and where was she now, wrapped round in the soaked sheets that were here before? It was five miles to the bottom of the sea. They would never find her body now. Morgan turned round.
“Yes,” he said, “the Blind Barber has been here tonight.”
9
More Doubts at Morning
AS THE HANDS OF THE travelling-clock at the head of Morgan’s bed pointed to eight-thirty, he was roused out of a heavy slumber by the sound of an unmusical baritone voice singing with all the range of its off-keys. The voice singing, “A Life on the Ocean Wave.” It brought nightmares into his doze before he struggled awake. As he opened his eyes, the heartening bray of the breakfast bugle went past in the gangway outside, and he remembered where he was.
Furthermore, it was a heartening morning. His cabin—on the boat-deck—was filled with sunshine, and a warm salt-spiced breeze fluttered the curtain at the open porthole. It was winelike May again, with a reflected glitter of water at the porthole; and the ship’s engines churning steadily in a docile sea. He drew a deep breath, feeling a mighty uplift of the heart and a sensual longing for bacon and eggs. Then somebody threw a shoe at him, and he knew Warren was there.
Warren sat across from him on the couch under the porthole, smoking a cigarette. He wore white flannels, a careless blue coat, and a sportive tie; he showed not at all the rigours of last night, nor any depression of spirit. His hair was brushed smoothly again, unpropped by sticking-plaster. He said:
The Blind Barber Page 9