“I’m coming to that,” Greene told him. “Just now—by the way, what time is it?”
Jennison took from his pocket a watch on the end of a slender chain. “It’s a quarter past nine.”
“Ah, yes. Is that the watch you usually carry?”
“It is.”
“Ever wear a wristwatch?”
Jennison hesitated. “Occasionally.”
“Only occasionally.” The prosecutor rose and came round his desk. “Let me see your left wrist, please.”
Jennison held out his arm. It was tanned a deep brown, but on the wrist was etched in white the outline of a watch and its encircling strap.
Greene smiled. “Yes, you have worn a wristwatch—and you’ve worn it pretty constantly, from the look of things.” He took a small object from his pocket and held it in front of Jennison. “This watch, perhaps?” Jennison regarded it stonily. “Ever see it before?” Greene asked. “No? Well, suppose we try it on, anyhow.” He put the watch in position and fastened it. “I can’t help noting, Harry,” he continued, “that it fits rather neatly over that white outline on your wrist And the prong of the buckle falls naturally into the most worn of the holes on the strap.”
“What of that?” asked Jennison.
“Oh, coincidence, probably. You have abnormally large wrists, however. Surf-boarding, swimming, eh? But that’s something else I’ll speak of later.” He turned to Miss Minerva. “Will you please come over here, Miss Winterslip.”
She came, and as she reached his side, the prosecutor suddenly bent over and switched off the light on his desk. Save for a faint glimmer through a transom, the room was in darkness. Miss Minerva was conscious of dim huddled figures, a circle of white faces, a tense silence. The prosecutor was lifting something slowly toward her startled eyes. A watch, worn on a human wrist—a watch with an illuminated dial on which the figure two was almost obliterated.
“Look at that and tell me,” came the prosecutor’s voice. “You have seen it before?”
“I have,” she answered firmly.
“Where?”
“In the dark in Dan Winterslip’s living-room just after midnight the thirtieth of June.”
Greene flashed on the light. “Thank you, Miss Winterslip.” He retired behind his desk and pressed a button. “You identify it by some distinguishing mark, I presume?”
“I do. The numeral two, which is pretty well obscured.”
Spencer appeared at the door. “Send the Spaniard in,” Greene ordered. “That is all for the present, Miss Winterslip.”
Cabrera entered, and his eyes were frightened as they looked at Jennison. At a nod from the prosecutor, Chan removed the wrist watch and handed it to the Spaniard.
“You know that watch, Jose?” Greene asked.
“I—I—yes,” answered the boy.
“Don’t be afraid,” Greene urged. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. I want you to repeat the story you told me this afternoon. You have no regular job. You’re a sort of confidential errand boy for Mr. Jennison here.”
“I was.”
“Yes—that’s all over now. You can speak out. On the morning of Wednesday, July second, you were in Mr. Jennison’s office. He gave you this wristwatch and told you to take it out and get it repaired. Something was the matter with it. It wasn’t running. You took it to a big jewelry store. What happened?”
“The man said it is very badly hurt. To fix it would cost more than a new watch. I go back and tell Mr. Jennison. He laugh and say it is mine as a gift.”
“Precisely.” Greene referred to a paper on his desk. “Late in the afternoon of Thursday, July third, you sold the watch. To whom?”
“To Lau Ho, Chinese jeweler in Maunakea Street. On Saturday evening maybe six o’clock Mr. Jennison telephone my home, much excited. Must have watch again, and will pay any price. I speed to Lau Ho’s store. Watch is sold once more, now to unknown Japanese. Late at night I see Mr. Jennison and he curse me with anger. Get the watch, he says. I have been hunting, but I could not find it.”
Greene turned to Jennison. “You were a little careless with that watch, Harry. But no doubt you figured you were pretty safe—you had your alibi. Then, too, when Hallet detailed the clues to you on Winterslip’s lanai the morning after the crime, he forgot to mention that some one had seen the watch. It was one of those happy accidents that are all we have to count on in this work. By Saturday night you realized your danger—just how you discovered it I don’t know—”
“I do,” John Quincy interrupted.
“What! What’s that?” said Greene.
“On Saturday afternoon,” John Quincy told him, “I played golf with Mr. Jennison. On our way back to town, we talked over the clues in this case, and I happened to mention the wristwatch. I can see now it was the first he had heard of it. He was to dine with us at the beach, but he asked to be put down at his office to sign a few letters. I waited below. It must have been then that he called up this young man in an effort to locate the watch.”
“Great stuff,” said Greene enthusiastically. “That finishes the watch, Jennison. I’m surprised you wore it, but you probably knew that it would be vital to you to keep track of the time, and you figured, rightly, that it would not be immediately affected by the salt water—”
“What the devil are you talking about?” demanded Jennison.
Again Greene pressed a button on his desk. Spencer appeared at once. “Take this Spaniard,” the prosecutor directed, “and bring in Hepworth and the quartermaster.” He turned again to Jennison. “I’ll show you what I’m talking about in just a minute. On the night of June thirtieth you were a passenger on the President Tyler, which was lying by until dawn out near the channel entrance?”
“I was.”
“No passengers were landed from that ship until the following morning?”
“That’s a matter of record.”
“Very well.” The second officer of the President Tyler came in, followed by a big hulking sailorman John Quincy recognized as the quartermaster of that vessel. He was interested to note a ring on the man’s right hand, and his mind went back to that encounter in the San Francisco attic.
“Mr. Hepworth,” the prosecutor began, “on the night of June thirtieth your ship reached this port too late to dock. You anchored off Waikiki. On such an occasion, who is on deck—say, from midnight on?”
“The second officer,” Hepworth told him. “In this case, myself. Also the quartermaster.”
“The accommodation ladder is let down the night before?”
“Usually, yes. It was let down that night.”
“Who is stationed near it?”
“The quartermaster.”
“Ah, yes. You were in charge then on the night of June thirtieth. Did you notice anything unusual on that occasion?”
Hepworth nodded. “I did. The quartermaster appeared to be under the influence of liquor. At three o’clock I found him dozing near the accommodation ladder. I roused him. When I came back from checking up the anchor bearings before turning in at dawn—about four-thirty—he was dead to the world. I put him in his cabin, and the following morning I of course reported him.”
“You noticed nothing else out of the ordinary?”
“Nothing, sir,” Hepworth replied.
“Thank you very much. Now, you—” Greene turned to the quartermaster. “You were drunk on duty the night of June thirtieth. Where did you get the booze?” The man hesitated. “Before you say anything, let me give you a bit of advice. The truth, my man. You’re in pretty bad already. I’m not making any promises, but if you talk straight here it may help you in that other matter. If you lie, it will go that much harder with you.”
“I ain’t going to lie,” promised the quartermaster.
“All right. Where did you get your liquor?”
The man nodded toward Jennison. “He gave it to me.”
“He did, eh? Tell me all about it.”
“I met him on deck just after midnight—we was still
moving. I knew him before—him and me—”
“In the opium game, both of you. I understand that. You met him on deck—”
“I did, and he says, you’re on watch to-night, eh, and I says I am. So he slips me a little bottle an’ says, this will help you pass the time. I ain’t a drinking man, so help me I ain’t, an’ I took just a nip, but there was something in that whiskey, I’ll swear to it. My head was all funny like, an’ the next I knew I was waked up in my cabin with the bad news I was wanted above.”
“What became of that bottle?”
“I dropped it overboard on my way to see the captain. I didn’t want nobody to find it.”
“Did you see anything the night of June thirtieth? Anything peculiar?”
“I seen plenty, sir—but it was that drink. Nothing you would want to hear about.”
“All right.” The prosecutor turned to Jennison. “Well, Harry—you drugged him, didn’t you? Why? Because you were going ashore, eh? Because you knew he’d be on duty at that ladder when you returned, and you didn’t want him to see you. So you dropped something into that whiskey—”
“Guess work,” cut in Jennison, still unruffled. “I used to have some respect for you as a lawyer, but it’s all gone now. If this is the best you can offer—”
“But it isn’t,” said Greene pleasantly. Again he pushed the button. “I’ve something much better, Harry, if you’ll only wait.” He turned to Hepworth. “There’s a steward on your ship named Bowker,” he began, and John Quincy thought that Jennison stiffened. “How has he been behaving lately?”
“Well, he got pretty drunk in Hong Kong,” Hepworth answered. “But that, of course, was the money.”
“What money?”
“It’s this way. The last time we sailed out of Honolulu harbor for the Orient, over two weeks ago, I was in the purser’s office. It was just as we were passing Diamond Head. Bowker came in, and he had a big fat envelope that he wanted to deposit in the purser’s safe. He said it contained a lot of money. The purser wouldn’t be responsible for it without seeing it, so Bowker slit the envelope—and there were ten one hundred dollar bills. The purser made another package of it and put it in the safe. He told me Bowker took out a couple of the bills when we reached Hong-kong.”
“Where would a man like Bowker get all that money?”
“I can’t imagine. He said he’d put over a business deal in Honolulu but—well, we knew Bowker.”
The door opened. Evidently Spencer guessed who was wanted this time, for he pushed Bowker into the room. The steward of the President Tyler was bedraggled and bleary.
“Hello, Bowker,” said the prosecutor. “Sober now, aren’t you?”
“I’ll tell the world I am,” replied Bowker. “They’ve walked me to San Francisco and back. Can—can I sit down?”
“Of course,” Greene smiled. “This afternoon, while you were still drunk, you told a story to Willie Chan, out at Okamoto’s auto stand on Kalakaua Avenue. Later on, early this evening, you repeated it to Captain Hallet and me. I’ll have to ask you to go over it again.”
Bowker glanced toward Jennison, then quickly looked away. “Always ready to oblige,” he answered.
“You’re a steward on the President Tyler,” Greene continued. “On your last trip over here from the mainland Mr. Jennison occupied one of your rooms—number 97. He was alone in it, I believe?”
“All alone. He paid extra for the privilege, I hear. Always traveled that way.”
“Room 97 was on the main deck, not far from the accommodation ladder?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Tell us what happened after you anchored off Waikiki the night of June thirtieth.”
Bowker adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses with the gesture of a man about to make an after-dinner speech. “Well, I was up pretty late that night. Mr. Winterslip here had loaned me some books—there was one I was particularly interested in. I wanted to finish it so I could give it to him to take ashore in the morning. It was nearly two o’clock when I finally got through it, and I was feeling stuffy, so I went on deck for a breath of air.”
“You stopped not far from the accommodation ladder?”
“Yes sir, I did.”
“Did you notice the quartermaster?”
“Yes—he was sound asleep in a deck chair. I went over and leaned on the rail, the ladder was just beneath me. I’d been standing there a few minutes when suddenly somebody came up out of the water and put his hands on the lowest rung. I drew back quickly and stood in a shadow.
“Well, pretty soon this man comes creeping up the ladder to the deck. He was barefooted, and all in black—black pants and shirt. I watched him. He went over and bent above the quartermaster, then started toward me down the deck. He was walking on tiptoe, but even then I didn’t get wise to the fact anything was wrong.
“I stepped out of the shadow. ‘Fine night for a swim, Mr. Jennison,’ I said. And I saw at once that I’d made a social error. He gave one jump in my direction and his hands closed on my throat. I thought my time had come.”
“He was wet, wasn’t he?” Greene asked.
“Dripping. He left a trail of water on the deck.”
“Did you notice a watch on his wrist?”
“Yes, but you can bet I didn’t make any study of it. I had other things to think about just then. I managed to sort of ooze out of his grip, and I told him to cut it out or I’d yell. ‘Look here,’ he says, ‘you and I can talk business, I guess. Come into my cabin.’
“But I wasn’t wanting any tête-a-tête with him in any cabin, I said I’d see him in the morning, and after I’d promised to say nothing to anybody, he let me go. I went to bed, pretty much puzzled.
“The next morning, when I went into his cabin, there he was all fresh and rosy and smiling. If I’d had so much as a whiff of booze the night before, I’d have thought I never saw what I did. I went in there thinking I might get a hundred dollars out of the affair, but the minute he spoke I began to smell important money. He said no one must know about his swim the night before. How much did I want? Well, I held my breath and said ten thousand dollars. And I nearly dropped dead when he answered I could have it.”
Bowker turned to John Quincy. “I don’t know what you’ll think of me. I don’t know what Tim would think. I’m not a crook by nature. But I was fed up and choking over that steward job. I wanted a little newspaper of my own, and up to that minute I couldn’t see myself getting it. And you must remember that I didn’t know then what was in the air—murder. Later, when I did find out, I was scared to breathe. I didn’t know what they could do to me.” He turned to Greene. “That’s all fixed,” he said.
“I’ve promised you immunity,” the prosecutor answered. “I’ll keep my word. Go on—you agreed to accept the ten thousand?”
“I did. I went to his office at twelve. One of the conditions was that I could stay on the President Tyler until she got back to San Francisco, and after that I was never to show my face out this way again. It suited me. Mr. Jennison introduced me to this Cabrera, who was to chaperon me the rest of that day. I’ll say he did. When I went aboard the ship, he handed me a thousand dollars in an envelope.
“When I came back this time, I was to spend the day with Cabrera and get the other nine grand when I sailed. This morning when we tied up I saw the Spaniard on the dock, but by the time I’d landed he had disappeared. I met this Willie Chan and we had a large day. This fusel oil they sell out here loosened my tongue, but I’m not sorry. Of course, the rosy dream has faded, and it’s my flat feet on the deck from now to the end of time. But the shore isn’t so much any more, with all the bar-rooms under cover, and this sea life keeps a man out in the open air. As I say, I’m not sorry I talked. I can look any man in the eye again and tell him to go to—” He glanced at Miss Minerva. “Madam, I will not name the precise locality.”
Greene stood. “Well, Jennison, there’s my case. I’ve tipped it all off to you, but I wanted you to see for yourself how air-t
ight it is. There are two courses open to you—you can let this go to trial with a plea of not guilty. A long humiliating ordeal for you. Or you can confess here and now and throw yourself on the mercy of the court. If you’re the sensible man I think you are, that’s what you’ll do.”
Jennison did not answer, did not even look at the prosecutor. “It was a very neat idea,” Greene went on. “I’ll grant you that. Only one thing puzzles me—did it come as the inspiration of the moment or did you plan it all out in advance? You’ve been over to the mainland rather often of late—were you waiting your chance? Anyhow, it came, didn’t it—it came at last. And for a swimmer like you, child’s play. You didn’t need that ladder when you left the vessel—perhaps you went overboard while the President Tyler was still moving. A quick silent dive, a little way under water in case anyone was watching from the deck, and then a long but easy swim ashore. And there you were, on the beach at Waikiki. Not far away Dan Winterslip was asleep on his lanai, with not so much as a locked door between you. Dan Winterslip, who stood between you and what you wanted. A little struggle—a quick thrust of your knife. Come on, Jennison, don’t be a fool. It’s the best way out for you now. A full confession.”
Jennison leaped to his feet, his eyes flashing. “I’ll see you in hell first!” he cried.
“Very well—if you feel that way about it—” Greene turned his back upon him and began a low-toned conversation with Hallet. Jennison and Charlie Chan were together on one side of the desk. Chan took out a pencil and accidentally dropped it on the floor. He stooped to pick it up.
John Quincy saw that the butt of a pistol carried in Chan’s hip pocket protruded from under his coat. He saw Jennison spring forward and snatch the gun. With a cry John Quincy moved nearer, but Greene seized his arm and held him. Charlie Chan seemed unaccountably oblivious to what was going on.
Jennison put the muzzle of the pistol to his forehead and pulled the trigger. A sharp click—and that was all. The pistol fell from his hand.
“That’s it!” cried Greene triumphantly. “That’s my confession, and not a word spoken. I’ve witnesses, Jennison—they all saw you—you couldn’t stand the disgrace a man in your position—you tried to kill yourself. With an empty gun.” He went over and patted Chan on the shoulder. “A great idea, Charlie,” he said. “Chan thought of it,” he added to Jennison. “The Oriental mind, Harry. Rather subtle, isn’t it?”
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