“She’s a schooner,” Bob said, “sixty feet. I bought her in Key West about two years ago—the Thistlewood. She can go anywhere under sail, but she only has a small auxiliary.”
“I don’t want power,” Mr. Kingman said. “I don’t need to get anywhere at any time. You know navigation, of course.”
Bob Bolles nodded.
“And you have a crew?”
“A colored boy,” Bob answered. “We can take her anywhere you want. Have you any ideas, Mr. Kingman?”
Mr. Kingman leaned across the table.
“You know how things get in your mind,” he said. “Now, I have been reading about the old sugar islands, where planters lived, each alone in his kingdom. It’s all gone of course, but there must be remains of it. Perhaps you can help me, Mr. Bolles. Have you ever heard of a spot on the chart called Mercator Island?”
Bob Bolles had no intention of looking surprised. If they had the money and were good for it he could have taken them to the South Seas, if they wanted. Nevertheless, the question interested him. Mr. Kingman must have known it was unusual, for he had introduced it by that elaborate explanation. You never could tell, Bob thought, where a romantic streak may crop up in a human being.
“Mercator?” Bob said. “I wonder where you ever came across it. I know a bit about Caribbean literature, but I never knew that Mercator got into print.”
Mr. Kingman seemed pleased that he had asked him, anxious to explain.
“You’d have a hard time finding the volume, Skipper, even in the largest library,” he answered. “I stumbled on it at a book auction, a rather rare collector’s item.”
“He fills the apartment with books,” Mrs. Kingman said, but Mr. Kingman did not appear to hear her.
“The Caribbean Kingdom, by John Silverstone,” Mr. Kingman said, “and more particularly the estates on the Winderly Group. Octavo, original calf, published by John Cotswell, stationer, at his shop in Threadneedle Road, London, 1773.”
“That’s right,” Bob said, “the Winderly Group. Yes, I’ve heard they used to grow sugar on Mercator.”
“A queer old book,” Mr. Kingman went on, as though he had not heard. “There were five pages about the sugar establishment and the life on Mercator Island. That’s all I know, but I’d love to see it. Do you know it, Mr. Bolles?”
“I’ve never touched there,” Bob said, “but I’ve been by the Winderly Group. It’s about as lonely a piece of reef as you can hope to see. It’s off every conceivable sea lane. I don’t even know what flag it’s under. It isn’t very well charted. Mercator is about four miles long, volcanic with coral reefs outside it. I’ve heard the old planters were driven out in a slave insurrection. Have you ever heard about it, Henry?”
“Not much,” Henry answered. “The fishing boats might know.”
Henry’s voice was soft. For some reason it made them all silent for a moment.
“But I don’t want to know any more,” Mr. Kingman said. “It is exactly that sense of mystery that I want. Ulysses cleaving the wine-dark sea. Let’s be—be pushing off.”
“Mac, dear,” Mrs. Kingman said, “don’t be so impatient.”
“If you want to go,” Bob said, “it’s maybe four days’ sail with a fair wind—longer, if it’s stormy.”
Mr. Kingman had forgotten about the wine-dark sea and suddenly looked practical.
“All right,” he said. “That’s settled, if the terms are satisfactory, and I believe you’ve heard them. What accommodations have you? Not that we aren’t willing to rough it. There will be Mrs. Kingman and me and—and my valet. His name is Oscar.”
“When I married Mac,” Mrs. Kingman said, “I really had to marry Oscar too.”
Bob Bolles looked at them doubtfully.
“I don’t know how you’ll fit in,” he said. “There are two bunks in the main cabin and one berth in the owner’s stateroom. Tom and I can sleep up forward, but we’ll all have to eat together.”
“Splendid,” Mr. Kingman said. “Oscar and I can take the cabin. You take the stateroom, Helen. Let’s—let’s shake a leg. I’d like to leave this afternoon.”
“It’s a pretty tall order,” Bob said. “I’ll have to take on supplies.”
Henry cleared his throat.
“I think I can get supplies aboard for you,” Henry said, “if you will be willing to leave it to me.”
“Good,” Mr. Kingman said. “Now we’re getting action.”
“You haven’t asked for references,” Bob Bolles said.
Mr. Kingman laughed.
“Let’s not mind that,” he answered. “I’ve heard all about you and I’ve seen you. I think you’re all right and I hope you think we are. All I want is to get off and get going.” He pulled a pigskin wallet from the breast pocket of his coat. An American passport came out with it and he replaced the passport hastily. “Here’s forty pounds—on the line.”
“Thank you,” Bob said. “That’s thoughtful of you. I hope you will be comfortable, Mr. Kingman. I can meet you at four o’clock and take you aboard.”
“I shall bring them to the boat,” said Henry. “Just be ready there.”
“That’s fine,” Mr. Kingman said. “Everything is going to be hunky—hunky-dory.” He looked at Mrs. Kingman and laughed. “Sweet, didn’t I tell you we could do it? Didn’t I tell you we’d have fun? Oh—oh, boy, are we going to have fun!”
Bob Bolles turned to look at her. He was surprised to find that she was looking at him and not at Mr. Kingman. Her eyes were dark and watchfully questioning—but just for a moment, and then she smiled.
“Yes, dear,” she said. “I suppose I’d better get dungarees and sneakers and oilskins. We won’t have much time to get packed and I don’t know the shops.”
Mr. Kingman made an impatient gesture.
“Yes, I suppose you will—” he began. “There isn’t anything more, is there, Henry?”
“Perhaps Mr. Bolles could take Mrs. Kingman for a little shopping turn,” Henry said. “I only suggest it because—”
Henry’s voice was smooth and unctuous, but Mr. Kingman seemed to catch some message in it, for he looked at Henry and raised his eyebrows.
“Because what?” he asked.
“Just a little matter,” Henry said, “about supplies, arrangements and payments. There is no need for Mrs. Kingman to wait if she is in a hurry. If I might suggest, Mr. Bolles can help her with her purchases and leave her at the hotel.”
Mr. Kingman still seemed to hesitate.
“Is it necessary?” he asked.
“Just half an hour,” Henry said. “I think it would be better.” And he took a card from his pocket and handed it to Mr. Kingman. Bob Bolles remembered it. It was Mr. Durant’s card. It seemed to Bob when Mr. Kingman looked at it that he was making an effort to keep his face good-natured, to conceal some sort of surprise or annoyance, but Bob Bolles was not sure.
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Kingman, “I see. Yes, we’d better go over the details, and it might be as well to find Oscar, but I don’t like to have Helen wandering around alone—a strange town and all that.”
“There’s no need to worry,” Henry said, “not with Mr. Bolles.”
“All right,” Mr. Kingman said. “That will be—be okay.” He was smiling, but it seemed to Bob that his eyes had grown a trifle harder and his lips a trifle thinner. “If Mr. Bolles doesn’t mind, Helen, you might go out. Buy out the shops—buy anything.”
It seemed to Bob that Mrs. Kingman was looking at his shabby clothes and her dark eyes seemed to have the same questioning look.
“Someone from the hotel—” Bob began.
“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Kingman, but she seemed to have lost her enthusiasm. “It will be all right. Come ahead, Mr. Bolles.”
She stood up and they all stood up.
“See you later, Bolles,” Mr. Kingman said, and he looked down again at the card he was still holding.
CHAPTER III
When Bob stepped out on the street behind Mrs. King
man he saw Tom sitting on the curbstone, waiting for him.
“Tom,” Bob said, “get aboard and clean up. Put my stuff up forward. Here’s twenty pounds. Get fresh sheets and towels. Be ready to take on supplies at three o’clock.”
Tom looked blankly at the notes.
“It’s all right,” Bob said. “We’ve got a charter—” and he turned to Mrs. Kingman. “This is my boy Tom. He’ll be on the boat with us.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Kingman said. Her whole manner seemed stiff and constrained. “Well, we’d better go on to the shops.”
They began walking to the center of the town. It had been a long while since Bob had walked beside a girl as pretty as Mrs. Kingman and a girl of his own class. He found it hard to think of anything to say to her. He found himself making a few tentative remarks about the streets and buildings and about the best stores, but she only answered curtly.
“I suppose you’ll get your commission in each place,” she said finally. “That’s customary, isn’t it?”
Bob felt his face flush scarlet.
“I hadn’t thought of it,” he said. “I’ve never taken out a party in my boat before.”
“I just wanted to find out,” she said. “In there in that saloon, in that place, I couldn’t make you out. So you don’t take out parties regularly? What do you do?”
“Nothing,” Bob said.
“Nothing?” she repeated. “You’re an American, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Bob answered.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t understand you. What are you doing here in a boat doing nothing?”
“Trying to get away from myself,” Bob said. “Haven’t you ever wanted to do that?”
She looked at him. Her eyes were dark. She looked aloof and beautiful.
“I don’t know whether I like you or not,” she said.
“You’ll know before we get back,” Bob answered.
“I don’t know whether I trust you or not,” she said.
Bob Bolles laughed.
“Do you always talk this way to everyone you pick up?” he asked, and she looked back at him without smiling.
“No, I don’t, as a matter of fact,” she said. “It’s because you puzzle me. You look like someone who ought to be different from what you are, but I’m not sure.”
“I haven’t asked any questions about you,” Bob said. “There won’t be any occasion for you to have to trust me. Here’s where you can get some oilskins and dungarees.”
Just as they turned into the shop he saw her watching him again.
“I didn’t mean to be disagreeable,” she said.
“Oh, that’s all right,” Bob answered, and he stood near the door of the large, cool shop, watching her make her purchases.
“I wonder what’s on her mind,” he said, beneath his breath. “Why the devil does she have to trust me?”
He had never been in the position of a paid employee on a boat who could be patronized and treated casually, but he could not get it out of his head that there was something unusually odd about her and about Mr. Kingman and Henry. They had been too artificial, too neat, too nervous, and even when Mrs. Kingman had been talking to him it seemed to him that she had been thinking about something else. She was worried about something. In spite of the easy artificiality of their talk, all of them had been worried.
“Oh, Mr. Bolles,” she called.
She was in the back of the shop, trying on an oilskin coat with a sou’wester on her head. “Is this all right?”
“Yes,” Bob said, “that’s fine.”
“I look queer in it, don’t I?”
“No,” Bob said. “You’re the sort of person—” and he stopped, because it was none of his business what sort of person she was.
“You’re the sort of person who looks well in anything,” Bob said, and then he found himself blushing.
“Well, that’s everything here,” Mrs. Kingman said. “I wonder if there’s any place where I could get some silk—some Japanese lounging pajamas, if it’s hot.”
Then Bob Bolles thought of Mr. Moto. The card was in his pocket and the Japanese store was only a few doors down the street.
“Why, yes, I know the very place,” he said.
He offered to carry her bundles for her, but instead she ordered them sent up to the hotel at once, and paid for them, as Americans so often did, in crisp new dollar bills at a ruinous exchange rate; but prices did not seem to bother her.
“I’ll be glad to get away from here,” she said when they were on the street again. “Will you?”
“Yes,” Bob said, “I’m always glad to be moving. What did you mean when you said a while ago that you couldn’t trust me?”
“Oh, that,” she said. “You mustn’t mind me. I say all sorts of things.”
No one had ever told him what to do when you took your employer’s wife shopping. He did not know whether he should walk behind her or beside her, but he did know from the way people looked at them that they made a peculiar pair. He was too down at the heel and too seedy to be walking with her. Something made him want to apologize for his appearance, but he did not see how it would help.
They passed Inspector Jameson just before they reached the Japanese shop. Bob saw the Inspector’s eyes protrude slightly, and he laughed.
“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s all right, Inspector.”
“Inspector?” Mrs. Kingman said. “Is he a policeman?”
“That’s right,” Bob said. “I guess you don’t know much about the authorities or you’d have spotted him. Why, Inspector Jameson ordered me off the island just this morning. I was in luck to meet you and Mr. Kingman.”
He wondered if she would be shocked, but instead it seemed to him that Mrs. Kingman looked relieved and in some way amused.
“Why should he do that?” she asked.
“Why?” Bob said. “Generally disorderly conduct.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Kingman, and she laughed. “Well, that’s all right then.”
“How do you mean, it’s all right?” Bob asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Mrs. Kingman said. “It just means you’re what you look like, and I’d rather have you that than something else.”
“What do you mean by something else?” Bob asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Mrs. Kingman said. “Is this the shop?”
They had stopped in front of the window with the Japanese embroidery and the curios. A little bell rang when they opened the door. It was a narrow box of a place with trinkets in a small glass counter and shelves behind it, loaded with textiles, and over it all was a stale smell of sandalwood and incense. A bony flat-faced Japanese opened the door in back, stared at them for a moment and said, “Excuse, please. Be right back,” and disappeared again. Bob pointed to the bolts of silk on the shelves.
“You may find something here,” he said. “I don’t know. There was a little man here who tried to sell me shirts this morning. I might buy some shirts myself now.”
Then the Japanese was back, smiling and speaking in a loud guttural voice.
“They have got the most awful voices,” Bob said to Mrs. Kingman.
“What you want, ah, please?” the Japanese was saying.
“Lounging pajamas, beach pajamas,” Bob said. “Missy wants them,” and he turned to Mrs. Kingman.
“Yes,” Mrs. Kingman said, “an embroidered coat and trousers, Chinese embroidery, like that one over there.”
The storekeeper gave a polite and happy hiss.
“If don’t fit we fix in ah one hour for missy,” he said. “Beautiful silk, lovely sewing. Everything very lovely.”
“Haven’t you got a man here,” Bob asked, “named—what’s his name?” And he drew the card from his inside pocket. “Oh, yes, Moto.”
Now that the door of the shop was closed, shutting out all the sounds from the street, his voice sounded unusually loud and all the shop seemed smaller. The bony shopkeeper glanced sideways from the shelves.
“Mr. Moto,” he said
, “oh, yes, Mr. Moto busy now. So sorry.”
Mrs. Kingman had been looking through a heap of embroidered Chinese jackets and now she lifted one up—blue silk richly embroidered with blues and black and white. She held it up in front of her.
“How does this look?” she asked, and it looked very well with her black hair and her dark eyes and her red lips.
“It looks fine,” Bob said, “but then I say—you can wear anything.”
“I wish there were a mirror,” Mrs. Kingman said. “It’s rather large, isn’t it? And the trousers are perfectly enormous.”
The shopkeeper hissed politely.
“We fix, we fix for missy in one hour,” he said. “If lady would like to go in back, very nice ladies’ dressing room upstairs—looking glass—everything for ladies.”
“All right,” Mrs. Kingman said. “I’d like to try it on. You don’t mind waiting, do you?”
The shopkeeper opened the door in back and called out something in Japanese and a slight, pale boy appeared.
“He show you,” the shopkeeper said. “Very nice ladies’ room, up one flight,” and Mrs. Kingman followed the boy through the black shadows of the doorway, and the shopkeeper closed the door carefully.
“You say you want shirts?” he said. “Very nice shirts,” and he began lifting them down from the shelves, talking in the same loud voice.
“All sewed right here. Everything here we make.”
“Yes,” Bob said, “I suppose there’s a whole nest of you working upstairs in back. Have you got a silk coat to fit me and some ties?”
“Oh, yes,” said the Japanese, “very nice coats, very nice ties.”
He was reaching for the rack of ties when a sound from behind the closed door made Bob Bolles look up.
“What’s that?” he asked, and the shopkeeper moved toward the rear door.
“Nothing,” the man said, “I hear nothing.”
“I thought—” Bob said, and then he listened and he heard it again. He was sure of it this time. Behind the closed door he heard a woman scream.
There was something so completely unexpected about it that he must have stood there frozen for a moment, and then he plunged toward the rear door. The shopkeeper stood in front of it.
“Please,” he said, “against orders to go up there.”
Last Laugh, Mr. Moto Page 3