Puzzle of the Silver Persian

by Stuart Palmer

  Peter Noel smiled reminiscently. “That was my narrowest escape,” he said.

  “But what happened to the other card?” Leslie Reverson insisted.

  “I ate it in the ham sandwich,” Peter Noel told them. Loulu Hammond let go her breath in a long sigh, and forgot to feel of the smooth place on her finger where for nearly ten years she had worn a rather fine diamond—until today.

  “We ought to have a drink on that one,” suggested the Honorable Emily. She had a dislike of signing bills. “Leslie, run and get my handbag off the berth in my room. Careful, now, and don’t let Tobermory slip out of the door.”

  Young Reverson was back in a moment, bearing the handbag. With him was Tom Hammond.

  “Any of you people care to get in on the pool this afternoon?” Hammond wanted to know.

  The Honorable Emily shook her head, and Candida Noring said, “I’ve never guessed the ship’s run yet within fifty miles.”

  “This isn’t the ship’s run,” Hammond told her. “The Major won that hours ago. This is a private pool that Andy Todd is doing. The stewards, the sailors, everybody is in it. You see, there’s a land bird of some kind fluttering around the deck, and the ship’s cat is stalking it. Person who guesses the time within fifteen minutes of the kill gets the pool.”

  Loulu Hammond stood up and faced her husband. “Are you in on this?”

  “Yes, for a dollar. Why not?”

  “I rather think I hate you,” she told him. She started out of the smoking room, but the Honorable Emily was before her.

  They came out to the rail and forced their way through a small crowd of passengers who were staring down at the well deck, where a lean black tomcat was pretending not to notice a plump, bewildered bird which fluttered aimlessly above his head. Again and again it came to rest on a winch bar or a bit of rigging, and ever and again the black torn sidled closer.

  “Rotters!” The Honorable Emily gave tongue. “Catch that bird, somebody! Oh, cruel, cruel!” She was startled entirely out of her usual phlegm. “Poor little sea gull!”

  Loulu Hammond stared at the fluttering creature. “Why—why, it’s a robin!” she cried, much as she might have said, “It’s Uncle John!”

  Dr. Waite was at the rail, and he turned toward the women. “Not much use to try and save it,” he said. “Happens every trip. Lots of land birds are driven out to sea by storms, and they fly until they’re exhausted or they see a ship. They come and roost around the deck until the tomcat gets ’em, as he always does. We used to take ’em in sometimes and try to save ’em, but they always die. They’re too tired to care about living when they once get on the ship.”

  “Well, I’m going to save this one!” announced the Honorable Emily. Amid the protests of the bettors and the high tenor objections of Andy Todd, she set off down the steep iron ladder intent upon upsetting the law of the survival of the fittest. Loulu Hammond started to go with her and then thought better of it.

  For half an hour the intrepid lady pursued the tired robin without once getting within reach. The black tomcat withdrew and watched from a discreet distance.

  Finally the Honorable Emily saw the robin flutter forward into the foremast rigging and had to give it up. Darkness was approaching—and, anyhow, the “pool” had been effectively stopped.

  Andy Todd had to return their dollars to the twenty or so men who had signed up for it. “Damn the S.P.C.A., anyhow,” said Andy Todd.

  Tom Hammond took his refunded dollar and went forward to dress for dinner. He was forced to give it up to his scapegrace son in order to have peace in which to don his dinner clothes. Tonight, for the first time in their married life, Loulu had not put the studs in his shirt.

  She came into the stateroom, already dressed in a soft black velvet gown that made her look, Tom thought, like a Medici virgin. If there were any such. The silence which had marked most of their moments alone together during the past five days still stood, like a pane of plate glass, between them.

  Tom threw away a collar and whirled on her. “Loulu!” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Loulu, I don’t know what’s got into you.”

  “Don’t you?” asked Loulu Hammond. She chose a string of Técla pearls.

  “Loulu, if you think that I and that round-heeled Fraser girl—I mean, if you want to know where I was the night that you all played peekaboo on deck, why don’t you ask me?”

  “I’m not interested,” she said softly.

  “Well,” he plunged on, “I was shooting dice in the doctor’s office, with Waite and the Purser and the mate!”

  “I saw Gerald headed for the bar with a dollar bill a moment ago,” she interrupted. “Perhaps I’d better go and prevent him from killing himself on candy.” She closed the stateroom door behind her, leaving her young husband to mangle his collar in sulphurous silence.

  In the next stateroom Miss Hildegarde Withers was sadly surveying the wrinkles in her one evening gown of plum-colored crêpe de Chine. Someone beat a furious tattoo on her door, and the school teacher, still weak from her days in the grip of the sea, started violently.

  “Wha-what is it?”

  The door opened, and the Honorable Emily poked her head in. Her face was a mask of worry.

  “Have you seen him?” she demanded. “I’ve looked everywhere. I thought he might have slipped through your door and gone to sleep under the berth…”

  The two women had a nodding acquaintance due to the fact that their staterooms opened off the same short corridor. Miss Withers regained her composure. She had not seen much of her fellow passengers, but she was quick to understand.

  “Why,” she inquired, “do you imagine that your nephew would slip through my door and go to sleep under my berth?”

  “Not my nephew!” said the Honorable Emily impatiently. “Tobermory, my Persian cat. Is he here?”

  Both women looked under the berth. There was no Tobermory. “When I came back to my stateroom just now I found the door ajar and Toby gone,” went on the worried woman. “There are many nephews, but only one Tobermory. He’s traveled all the way to the World’s Fair with me, and now that we’re almost back home…” She bustled out of the place, deaf to Miss Withers’ sympathy.

  The school teacher shook her head and resumed dressing. Except for her short stay on deck in the noon sunshine today, this evening was her first appearance on board. She looked forward to the dinner, having had nothing but sketchy and unappreciated lunches on the voyage, which resulted usually in increased qualms and in crumbs on her bedclothes. But she wished it were not a gala dinner. Such things bored Hildegarde Withers, bored her to tears.

  However, no one was to be bored at the captain’s dinner that Friday night. The passengers entered the dining saloon to a welcoming din which rose from the table next the wall where the unlucky Mrs. Snoaks attempted to cope with the younger generation. Gerald Hammond, his fattish face alight with joy, blew interminably upon a particularly horrible tin horn, while with one hand he spun a discordant clacker, and with the other wielded a pin against the balloons in the hands of his milder companions. Yet there was nothing importunate about the demon Gerald. He let one chubby girl of four blow her balloon until it reached the proportions of a watermelon before he stabbed it and sent her into convulsions of tears.

  At the doctor’s table the group gathered slowly. Dr. Waite, in his best dress uniform, was the first, as always. The Honorable Emily, in a ludicrous pink taffeta gown, came next, adjusting her eyeglass and loudly bewailing the passing of Tobermory.

  “He’ll turn up!” the doctor assured her.

  But the Honorable Emily was not so sure. “Toby has been trying to get off the ship ever since we sailed,” she announced. “If I were superstitious, as of course I’m not, though I did have a Scotch grandmother…”

  Loulu Hammond, still the Medici virgin, sank into the chair which was held for her by two eager table stewards. She surveyed the brilliant table, laden with flowers, confetti, and favors. “How nice,”
she remarked.

  A moment later—hardly long enough to show that they had not come down together—Tom Hammond arrived, in splendid dinner clothes but with a tie which drooped sadly. He glared at the heap of balloons which lay in front of his plate.

  Leslie Reverson sauntered in, supremely unconscious of the fact that he wore the best-cut trousers in the place. He sank into his chair and his face brightened as he saw the balloons. “How frightfully gay!” said young Reverson. He blew one to moderate proportions and sent it sailing.

  Loulu Hammond caught his mood of mild amusement, and joined him in balloonatics. They hardly noticed the advent of Miss Hildegarde Withers, who stared curiously around the table as she was shown to her chair. Dr. Waite had the usual congratulations to impart. “Knew you’d live!” he boomed.

  Then came Andy Todd, in a dinner jacket which it would seem that he had inherited from a great-uncle. It was shiny in the lapels, narrow in the badly pressed trousers, and Loulu Hammond knew at one glance that the black butterfly bow which graced his high collar had come ready-made, with a rubber band, to hold it in place.

  “Well!” said Andy Todd. He seemed extremely well satisfied with himself, for some reason or other. All his chagrin at the collapse of his pool on the hunted robin was gone, and he was internally bubbling.

  Miss Withers looked at him curiously. “There’s a young man who is up to something!” she instantly decided.

  At the other tables soup was being served, and the constant pop of bursting balloons was heard. “Shall we wait for Miss Noring, or start?” inquired the doctor. “All here but her.”

  “How about her friend Miss Fraser?” inquired Loulu calmly. “Surely she will be with us tonight?”

  Everyone looked at everyone else. Miss Withers realized that there was a secret here, or at least something which was a secret from her.

  “Will the poor girl come, do you think?” asked the Honorable Emily. No one answered her, for all were wondering. People at other tables were craning their necks to see. Candida Noring had been right. There was nothing for people on shipboard to do but gossip—and guess. Andy Todd’s peekaboo party on deck the second night of the trip had got around.

  Tom Hammond looked extremely casual as he placed a paper helmet on his sleek blond head. “Why shouldn’t she come?” he inquired. “The sea is calm as dishwater.”

  A woman pushed her way between the tables, almost brushing the wide shoulders of Captain Everett as she came. The captain was holding forth among his group of elderly somebodies on the dullness of seafaring and the joys, which he anticipated, of a duck farm on Long Island.

  The woman was Candida Noring, her tanned face strangely pale. Perhaps that was because for the first time tonight she wore lipstick, and a sleeveless dress of characterless beige.

  “You haven’t been waiting for me?” she said, as she sat down next the doctor. That told them what they wanted to know. Rosemary Fraser was not coming down to dinner, not even to the captain’s dinner.

  The soup was served, and a dry white wine was poured into the tall goblets in front of each place. Andy Todd was strangely restless…

  “We may as well open our gifts,” said the doctor. He took up the tissue-wrapped package which lay across his bread-and-butter plate. Swiftly he tore off the string—it was the “prop” cigarette box which he received as a gift every trip, and Dr. Waite had little interest in it. “Come on, everybody… see what the Shipping Board has brought you for Christmas!”

  Andy Todd was second in opening his present. It was another cigarette case, of japanned metal with a painted bridge on it. Miss Withers and the other women found powder boxes similarly decorated.

  “How perfectly perfect,” said the Honorable Emily. She was still worrying about Tobermory. Then she saw the slim figure of a girl approaching and forgot Tobermory completely.

  Rosemary Fraser, in shimmering white silk, came like a wraith to join them. She smiled in answer to the doctor’s greeting, and then stared at Candida, her eyes wide and hunted, as if to say, “You told me to!”

  There was a long pause, punctuated by the sharp collapse of a balloon which Leslie Reverson had blown too full.

  “Well!” said Andy Todd uncertainly. He drained his wine and coughed. There was the soft splashing of soup, and then Rosemary Fraser followed his example and downed her glass. She did not cough. A table steward filled it again, and again she drained it.

  Rosemary, avoiding her soup, stared at the package in front of her. “Favors,” sang out Candida cheerily. “Open it, Rosemary!”

  Rosemary fumbled with the string, and Andy Todd leaned to offer his pocket knife. But she did not accept the offer. She untied the strings—more strings and knots than any other package had—and came at last to the round powder box.

  She smiled, vaguely, and lifted the lid. Inside was a further package, and everyone leaned forward to see.

  Rosemary, all unknowing, opened this—and found a single Yale key. Attached to the key was a card… Rosemary was dizzy from the wine, dizzy and afraid.

  She picked up the card and read it aloud, though she did not know that her lips moved. “Use this and save repair bills,” she recited. “With our compliments the key to—to the blanket locker—”

  They were all watching her. Eyes, pairs upon pairs of eyes, were watching Rosemary. She knew that she must say something, anything, so that the eyes would turn away, so that she could faint without being noticed.

  She spoke, and her words were stark, horrible—“How—how convenient!” said Rosemary Fraser. She had meant it to be flippant, casual. And yet…

  Andy Todd laughed first, his tenor guffaws ringing through the room. Dr. Waite was next, a shrill cackle. And then, from sheer nervousness, the table roared.

  Leslie Reverson actually neighed into his napkin, coughing and gasping until his aunt, herself convulsed with paroxysms of hysterical laughter, had to thump on his narrow shoulders. Tom Hammond snorted, and then shook silently, Loulu Hammond told herself that she must not, would not, laugh, and heard her own clear soprano ringing out above the laughter of the others.

  Only two at the doctor’s table did not laugh—for Rosemary Fraser herself was laughing. There was madness in her laughter, but no one sensed that. Candida Noring bit her lips until the blood ran salty under her tongue. Miss Hildegarde Withers, who was perhaps the one adult on board who did not know of the ship’s pet scandal, merely looked puzzled. But there was enough laughter without Miss Withers’ and Candida’s.

  Loulu Hammond, who had been seething with repressed emotions for five days, fairly shrieked now. All the time her mind was saying, “I shall not laugh. I shall not!” Her long finger nails cut into her palms…

  Captain Everett stopped talking about his duck farm and smiled toward the further table. “The young people certainly do have high times together,” he observed paternally. “That’s the best thing about traveling on a small boat, the passengers get to know each other so well…”

  He stopped short as a young woman brushed past his wide shoulders again, clutching in her hand a cheap japanned powder box and a key.

  “These young folks!” he smiled. “They have all the fun!”

  Through the open portholes of the American Diplomat came a yowling cacophony which rose shudderingly in a horrible crescendo and then died away. “The tomcat must be having trouble with his robin,” observed Captain Everett genially.

  Somehow, the laughter cut itself short. Leslie Reverson sent vari-colored balloons flying in every direction, and Tom Hammond began to talk very loudly about the collapse of the American dollar in the foreign exchange, about London hotels, about anything…

  The others joined him, chiming in too quickly but with good intentions. Only Miss Withers and Candida Noring were silent. Before the dessert was served, both had left the table, Miss Withers to seek the deck and the fresh air which she had lacked for so many days, and Candida to go to her cabin mate.

  She found the door locked, and her insistent
knocks brought no reply. Finally Candida went out on the promenade deck, and came where she could see in through the porthole. She pushed aside the drawn curtain and saw that the light was on.

  Rosemary Fraser, instead of sobbing brokenly on her berth, was sitting on the settee and calmly writing in a leather-bound book

  “Rosemary! Let me in!”

  But Rosemary kept on writing.

  “Rosemary!”

  The girl in white finally looked up. She stared full into the frightened, tanned face of Candida Noring. Her red lips opened and unbelievable sounds came forth.

  “Damn you to hell—oh, damn you, go away!” Her voice was low and soft, but it rang through Candida’s ears for long afterward. She tiptoed softly away.

  The Honorable Emily passed Candida in the passage, but they did not speak. She came on toward her own stateroom, shaking her head. “These Americans!” said the Honorable Emily. Then—“Poor girl!”

  She closed the stateroom door and rapidly changed her uncomfortable taffeta for a flannel robe. “I loathe practical jokes,” said the Honorable Emily finally.

  There was a faint scratching at the door, and she sprang, with a sudden access of joy, to open it. There stood Tobermory, his silky silver fur torn and bedraggled, and with the lust of battle still shining in his amber eyes. He entered quietly, carrying in his mouth a bundle of feathers.

  “Toby!” cried the Honorable Emily.

  Tobermory, startled, let go the feathers, which immediately resolved themselves into a fat robin. The robin swung to his feet, and spread his wings. Tobermory struck him down with a swift paw and looked up at his mistress.

  “Mine!” he said, in unmistakable cat language. But Tobermory was manifestly uncertain what to do with his prize.

  His mind was swiftly made up for him. Tobermory was grasped firmly by the slack of his neck and tossed into the berth. The Honorable Emily picked up the frightened, hunted robin, and held it against her cheek.

  “Poor, poor Dickie-bird,” she crooned. The robin, completely a pessimist by this time, did not even dare to flutter. He would as soon be eaten by a large creature as a small one.