Dr. Wordsworth whispered to Dr. Eisenstein, “This must be hell for van Leyden.” She drained her glass and shook the remaining ice.
Dr. Eisenstein whispered back, “And for the old lady. She must be wild with anxiety over the boy.”
Van Leyden said, “I think that we should all go to the dining room now. The cook has prepared an excellent meal for us. We must eat, you know.”
Mr. Smith took his wife’s hand. “This is more than Phair’s murder, Patty.”
“That nice young boy.” She squeezed his hand. “I hope he hasn’t come to any harm.”
Poly said, “I’m not hungry.”
Charles answered, “Neither am I. But the captain’s right. We have to try to eat.”
Passengers and officers ate in strained near-silence. All fragments of conversation sounded unusually loud, though voices were kept low. When Dr. Wordsworth asked, “Pass the salt, please,” in a quiet voice, everybody jumped.
Miss Leonis sat in Simon’s place. Cousin Forsyth’s chair had been taken away. She ate a little because she knew that she had to, but she did not talk. She was silent not only because she was exhausted, and worried beyond belief about Simon, but because she bore the burden of Quentin Phair’s journal, and she did not want to talk until she knew who it was she should talk to. The O’Keefes, she knew, were as anxious about Simon as she was. She had spent an afternoon with Mrs. O’Keefe and the younger children. She trusted the O’Keefes. It might be that she should talk to Dr. O’Keefe. She would wait and see. The two professors and the Smiths she sensed to be preoccupied with problems of their own which might include the disappearance of Simon and the English canon, but went beyond them. The old Greek organist she felt to be a friend; he obviously cared about Simon, and it was he who had sent for the Englishman. He was attentive to her in a quiet, unobtrusive way, not talking, but seeing that her teacup was filled, that she had salt and pepper, butter.
At the other table Charles whispered, “Where is Aunt Leonis going to sleep?”
Poly answered, “Geraldo says they’ve booked rooms for her and for Uncle Father at the Hotel del Lago in Port of Dragons. Charles, where are they? Simon and Uncle Father?”
“I wish I knew.”
Jan came into the dining room and whispered to the captain, whose somber face relaxed slightly. He spoke to the assembled company. “Vermeer and Hurtado are both here. May I ask you, please, to stay in the dining room after dinner, just for a short while, until I know their wishes?” He bowed and left, speaking in a low voice to Jan, who closed the glass doors between dining room and salon, thereby cutting off the breeze. The passengers waited in tense silence, which Mr. Theo broke.
“If this Comandante Hurtado is a friend of Tom Tallis’s he’ll find Tom and Simon in short order.”
Miss Leonis looked at him gratefully.
Geraldo hovered, refilling their water glasses. “Perhaps I should bring coffee?” he suggested.
“It’s too hot,” Dr. Wordsworth said.
Then Jan reappeared. His expression seemed to have set into a heavy mask of apprehension. Now that he was not smiling, Charles remembered that Jan’s usual expression was a pleasant smile.
“Captain van Leyden would like to see you all on the promenade deck. It is cooler than the salon. We will serve coffee there, Geraldo.”
“Yes, sir.”
The colored lights around the awning on the promenade deck were lit, giving it a carnival appearance in macabre contrast to the mood of the assembly. On shore, small lights blinked on in the huts, moving in the wind and trembling like Christmas-tree lights up the mountainside. A single, very bright star pulsed in the blue-green sky. The dock was brightly lit with bulbs on cords stretched from warehouse to warehouse, and from telephone and light poles. Under one of the light poles was an ancient Hispano-Suiza, highly polished, parked beside a large black limousine.
The captain and two men rose to greet the passengers. They had been sitting at one of the small tables on which stood a bottle of Dutch gin and three small glasses.
Van Leyden made the introductions. The consul, Henryk Vermeer, was a heavy, straw-haired, bulldog of a man in crisp white shorts, crested blazer, and solar topee. Charles heard his father whisper to Mr. Theo, “He looks more like an Englishman in India than a Dutchman in Venezuela.”
Mr. Theo whispered back, “Did you see the Hispano-Suiza? Bet it’s his.”
The comandante from Caracas, Alejandro Hurtado, was tall for a Latin, a dark man in dark clothes, with a dark, sharp jaw which would be purply-black almost immediately after he had shaved.
Vermeer shook hands all round, beaming affably, as though this was a purely social occasion. Hurtado revealed no expression whatsoever, but he looked at each passenger intently when he was introduced, as though memorizing name and face.
—I’m glad I have no secrets to hide from him, Poly thought as Hurtado bowed over her hand.—And I’m glad he looks a hard person to fool.
Gutiérrez was not there.
“Where is Simon?” Aunt Leonis demanded of Hurtado.
Simultaneously Mr. Theo asked, “Where is Tom Tallis?”
In the dimness of the jungle evening Canon Tallis rubbed his hand wearily over the painful lump on his bare pate. “Now, Simon, we had better prepare for the night. Are you a hand at camping?”
“No, sir. Camping wasn’t exactly Aunt Leonis’s thing.”
“Not exactly mine, either, but necessity is an excellent teacher.” The priest had taken off the dark jacket of his clerical suit and had rolled up his shirt sleeves. “The first thing to do is to collect enough dry wood for a fire, heat or no heat. It’s a good thing we’re shaded here; my unprotected head sunburns overeasily. First thing tomorrow I’m going to have to make some kind of head covering—my panama is somewhere in that hearse.”
“I can make a sort of hat for you, sir,” Simon said, “that’s something I know how to do, by weaving palm fronds together.”
“Good lad. I shall be much obliged. You do that, and I’ll try to get a fire going.”
“But why do we need a fire, sir, when it’s so horribly hot?”
The canon smiled. “Not for warmth, certainly, though we may be grateful for it during the night. If we can keep smoke going up through the trees it will be an indication of our whereabouts which could be spotted by a helicopter—Gutiérrez is not the only one with a whirlybird. I’m certain that Hurtado will have the jungle searched.”
By the time the canon had a small fire burning in the center of their clearing, Simon had woven him a passable head covering which he tried on at once.
“Yes, this will do admirably tomorrow.”
He should have looked ludicrous—his bald head covered by the green palm hat, his clerical collar formally about his throat, his arms scratched and bleeding in several places from his endeavors. But all Simon thought was,—I know why Poly loves him. He does make me feel that everything’s going to be all right.
In their little clearing it was already night. The canon squatted by the fire, carefully feeding it, “as I wish I could feed the two of us. Tomorrow we’ll have to look for nuts and berries, and maybe we can crack a coconut between a couple of stones. But we’ll have to be careful. I’m no expert on the edible roots of the Venezuelan jungle.”
“Maybe I can help there,” Simon said. “We have a lot of the same plants at home, sir, and Aunt Leonis and I eat a lot of wild stuff.”
“Good, then. The two of us make an intrepid pair. All shall be well. Now, what I would like us to do this evening, to quell the pangs of hunger, is to go over in detail everything you have already told me, and more. Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself. Remember that nothing you can tell me is trivial, no matter how unimportant it may seem. If I can get a clear picture of what went on at sea, possibly I’ll have an idea about my unexpected reception at the alleged airport, and why you and I have been dumped here like two babes in the wood. Whose mouth has to be kept closed by Gutiérrez, and why? Start with—no, let
’s go even further back. Start with the arrival of Cousin Forsyth at Pharaoh.”
On the promenade deck of the Orion the passengers sat in a stiff circle. Geraldo had brought out the coffee tray, and had been asked by the Dutch consul to serve cognac and liqueurs, and to make lemonade for Poly and Charles.
Miss Leonis, too, chose lemonade. “Where is that little policeman who met me?” She disposed of Gutiérrez by her tone of voice.
“Gutiérrez. I have taken over the case,” Hurtado said calmly.
“I’m so glad!” Mrs. Smith clasped her small hands together. “He was trying to question us in such a bullying way.”
Dr. Wordsworth said, “He appeared to be the kind of small-town policeman who immediately gets puffed up with the enormity of his own insignificance.”
“Murders and missing persons are hardly in his line.” Vermeer beamed. “A little smuggling here and there is more the kind of problem he comes up against. More cognac, my dear madame?” He gazed admiringly at Dr. Wordsworth’s dark good looks.
“Thank you, no.” She gave him a bright smile.
Deftly, Hurtado led the conversation in what seemed a casual way, ably seconded by Vermeer. In a short time they had found out a good deal about the passengers. Hurtado began questioning Dr. Eisenstein about the Quiztano Indians. “It is interesting, is it not, that you should be planning to visit these people who seem, in some way, to be connected with the stolen portrait?”
“And therefore, possibly,” Vermeer said jovially, “with the murder.”
“I cannot understand it!” Dr. Eisenstein exclaimed. “Why would a Quiztano name be written on the back of Mr. Phair’s portrait?” She turned to Miss Leonis. “He bought the portrait from you, I believe?”
“Yes,” Miss Leonis said, “but I am afraid I can tell you nothing.”
“My dear madame,” Vermeer pursued, “nothing?”
“Nothing. I have undertaken this journey because I, too, need information.”
Hurtado noted the determined set of the old woman’s jaw, the bone showing clearly beneath the soft, finely wrinked skin.
Dr. Eisenstein continued, “And why didn’t Jan tell me that he’s part Quiztano, when he knows that the entire purpose of this trip for me is to visit the settlement on Dragonlake?”
“You did not ask him?” suggested Vermeer.
“But who could guess? He looks completely Dutch.”
“True, true,” Vermeer agreed amiably. “On a happier occasion you and I must chat, my dear doctor. I, too, am interested in the local Indians, and I have found Jan most helpful. Perhaps, later on, I can be of service to you.”
“Oh, thank you!” Dr. Eisenstein said. “There are so many things I would have liked to ask Jan.”
“It would have been so interesting for all of us,” Mrs. Smith said. “When we lived in—” She stopped herself in horror, putting her pudgy hand up to her mouth.
Vermeer asked with sociable interest, “When you lived where, Mrs. Smith?”
“Ver—Vermont. Burlington, Vermont.”
Hurtado said, “Your Spanish is excellent, Mrs. Smith, both yours and your husband’s. I congratulate you.”
“Thank you …” Mrs. Smith began to knit rapidly.
“Did you learn your Spanish in Vermont?”
Mr. Smith took off his spectacles and began to polish them. “We frequently visit our granddaughter and her family in Costa Rica.”
“You’ve never been to Venezuela before?” Hurtado asked.
“Certainly we have been to Venezuela.” Mr. Smith put on his spectacles. “When we come to South America we always spend a little time visiting and sightseeing in places other than Costa Rica—which is where we learned to speak Spanish. Although our grandson-in-law speaks excellent English.”
“Your grandson-in-law is Costa Rican?”
“Yes.”
“And yet your accent is that of Caracas,” Hurtado said.
Mrs. Smith burst into tears.
Vermeer sprang to his feet and held a large white linen handkerchief out to her. “My dear madame, please do not upset yourself so! What has happened?” He patted her clumsily on the shoulder.
“I can’t bear it!” Mrs. Smith sobbed. “I can’t bear being terrified of being found out like this!”
“Patty!” Mr. Smith tried to stop her.
“My dear madame,” Vermeer said, “found out about what? You have nothing to fear as long as you speak the truth.”
Hurtado held up a hand to stop Vermeer. He spoke in his quiet, unemphatic way to the weeping woman. “Would you like to speak to me alone?”
She shook her head. Her soft old face was streaming with tears. “I’d like everybody to hear. It’s better that way.”
“Patty, please—”
But she could not stop.
—Why doesn’t Hurtado take her away? Poly wondered, and then answered her own question.—She might not talk unless she does it right now, right here. But it’s horrible.
Charles reached out and took his sister’s hand and held it tightly.
Miss Leonis had thought that she was beyond embarrassment. But she was not. She looked at Mr. Theo, who was scowling ferociously at Hurtado.
“He’s an honorable man, my Odell.” The words flowed from Mrs. Smith like her tears. “A fine man. No one finer. But when we were young he had a problem, a gambling problem.”
Mr. Smith stood up, knocking over his chair, and moved away from them. Vermeer moved swiftly toward him, but Mr. Smith only went to the rail and looked out to sea. Vermeer said, “My good man, if this has nothing to do with the murder it will quickly be forgotten by us all.”
Mrs. Smith dabbed at her eyes. “He worked in a bank in Caracas. He had a fine position for a young man. We were doing well, I was teaching English, and we had a lovely little house in Macuto—that’s a suburb, a nice one. Then—he lost a lot of money and he—he borrowed from the bank.”
“Borrowed?” Hurtado asked.
“He told me—he told me what he had done. I made him go immediately to the president of the bank, and he paid it back, Odell did, with interest. He worked hard and he paid back every penny. He wasn’t asked to leave his job; the president of the bank was like a father to us, and everything was all right, and ever since that one time there’s been nothing, nothing, he’s never gambled again, ever, and he was vice-president of the bank in Burlington, they gave him an engraved silver tray when he retired, it was all behind us …”
Dr. Eisenstein, who was sitting nearest Mrs. Smith, tried to stop her. “Dear Mrs. Smith, why are you telling us all this? There’s no need.”
“There is, there is. We had forgotten it. It was past. But then there was that night at bridge—you can’t have forgotten that night.”
“No.”
“Maybe he suspected—”
“Who suspected?” Hurtado asked.
“Mr. Phair. Maybe he suspected about Odell, and was testing. I don’t know how he found out—how would he find out?”
“People like Mr. Forsyth Phair have a way of finding out things,” Dr. Wordsworth said, and was given a sharp nudge by Dr. Eisenstein.
“However he found out, he found out, and he went to Odell.”
“Mr. Phair went to your husband?” Hurtado prompted.
“Yes. He went to Odell.”
Mr. Smith turned from the rail and moved back into the light. “He threatened me. He said that if I did not pay him he would tell everybody what had happened, and he would spread the story in Costa Rica, and it would hurt our granddaughter—” He stopped. Then he said, very quietly, “I told him that as far as I was concerned he could jump overboard. I do not want the past reopened. I do not want our granddaughter to think less of me. I do not want anybody hurt. But I will not live under the constant threat of blackmail. I knew that if I were to give him money the demands would never stop. So I had a motive for murdering him. But I did not.”
“Of course you didn’t!” his wife cried. “You couldn’t have.”
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“Of course, of course,” Vermeer said, full of cordiality. “Do have a drink, Mr. Smith. We all wish you well.”
Hurtado looked at his watch. “This will be all for tonight. I am grateful to you, madame.” He bowed. “If you will all be equally forthright we will sift this matter through in no time. Miss Phair, it would be my pleasure to escort you to your hotel.”
She nodded acquiescence.
“I will see the rest of you after breakfast. Out here, or in the salon, whichever is cooler.”
“Señor comandante,” Dr. Wordsworth said, “may I suggest that the murder and the theft may not have been committed by one of the passengers?”
“My dear lady, I am quite aware of that. I shall be questioning the officers and crew after you have retired.” He spoke affably enough, but there was admonition behind his words. “Vermeer, come with me, please. I will return you to your small appliance which will surely not seat three of us.”
Miss Leonis moved numbly between the two men, who helped her down the gangplank. Hurtado seated her carefully in the limousine, saying, “The hotel, alas, is not air-conditioned, but I think you will find it reasonably cool.”
“Thank you. Heat does not bother me. My only concern is Simon.”
“He is my concern, too, madame. I will pick you up after breakfast, say ten o’clock. That will give you an opportunity for a good rest.”
“I am much obliged. I realize that what happened on deck tonight was probably a good thing—but—do you have any idea as to the whereabouts of my nephew and the English canon?”
“Believe me, Miss Phair, I’m as anxious to find them as you are. Tom Tallis is an old friend. And a highly competent man. If Simon is with him, he is in good hands.”
“Do you think they are together?”
“At this moment I see no reason to doubt it.”
Vermeer said, “We will try to find the supposed chauffeur who met Tallis. It should not be too difficult.”
Miss Leonis asked, “You think that someone impersonated the official chauffeur and then kidnapped Simon and Canon Tallis?”
Dragons in the Waters Page 18