by Peggy Gaddis
“A cheat and a swindler,” marveled the captain.
“She was very clever and very elusive,” Major Lesley went on painfully. “Once or twice the law caught up with her. But she never came to trial; there was always something in the case that her swindled employers preferred not to have known — ”
“Blackmail?” demanded the captain sternly.
Major Lesley nodded unwillingly.
“It would seem so, sir,” he agreed, and kept his eyes carefully away from Nora, huddled close in MacEwen’s arms. “So you see, when she saw me aboard the ship, she jumped to the conclusion that I was pursuing her relentlessly, that I meant to turn her over to the authorities.”
He glanced about the faces along the length of the table, and there was more than a hint of apology in his manner and in his voice.
“I suppose I should have.” There was only a trace of defensiveness in his voice. “It was probably my duty, only — well, I was so tired of being a man-hunter. I’d never liked hunting down some hapless wretch, though I knew it had to be done. But once I’d retired and had set out to fulfill a boyhood dream aboard the Highland Queen — well, I just hadn’t the heart to bring her down. I tried to tell her so; I thought I had convinced her that she was safe.”
“That,” snapped Mr. Hennessy, speaking for the first time and in a tone of stern censure, “is the most outrageous thing I’ve ever heard of. How dared you neglect your duty — ”
“But I told you, I’ve retired,” Major Lesley pleaded.
“Not from the human race, I hope.” Mr. Hennessy was deeply indignant. “And a woman like that is — was — a menace to all decent people.”
He broke off so sharply that Claire knew his wife had kicked him beneath the table, and he glanced at her, then followed the direction of her eyes to Nora, and flushed.
“I’m sorry — ” he began, and then, his brows drawn together in an angry frown, “Or am I? What about the girl, Major?”
Nora lifted a white, terrified face, and Major Lesley said swiftly, “Nora was never implicated in any of her mother’s illegal activities.”
“Oh, but that’s nonsense!” snorted Hennessy. “She must have known what was going on. How could she help it?”
“I didn’t, Mr. Hennessy, truly,” said Nora, steadying her voice with an effort. “I suppose that makes me sound an awful fool. But I didn’t know until we boarded the Highland Queen. Oh, I always wondered why we rarely stayed more than six months in a place. I was always making friends, getting good grades in school, and then I’d come home some afternoon and Mother would be packing. And she’d say so gaily, ‘Hurry up and pack, baby — we’re off to new places. This one bores me.’ And off we’d go.”
They were all watching her, listening to her, and there was pity in their eyes. Even Mr. Hennessy looked a little ashamed of himself.
“If you knew nothing of what she was up to, where did you think the money came from that put you in a fashionable school and no doubt gave you good-looking clothes, probably a car,” he wanted to know.
“Oh, Mother told me my father had left it to us, that he had been wealthy and that she liked to travel, but that she wanted me to have an education — ” She broke off and looked piteously about the table. “I know I must have been a fool to have accepted all that. But how was I to know? I just thought she was bored and wanted to live somewhere else, until this time. I wanted so much to graduate with my class. I’d only been in it a few months, but I’d worked very hard and I’d looked forward to all the graduation parties and proms and things. So when she said we were leaving, just two months before graduation, I said I wouldn’t go, and then she had to tell me. And I was terrified, and then when she saw Major Lesley and was so sure she had seen him before — ” She spread her hands in a little gesture of hopelessness.
“I have a very good memory for faces,” said the Major with due modesty. “Mrs. Barclay had managed to evade newspaper photographers on the one or two occasions when she had been apprehended. But I happened to be present one afternoon when she was arraigned. I’ve never forgotten her. She was so very casual, so much the great lady, laughing up her sleeve at the court, and when the company she had victimized dropped the charges against her, for reasons no one but the head of the company, I imagine, will ever know, she swept from the courtroom like an empress. No, I never forgot her. I knew I’d seen her somewhere. I’m a little surprised that she should have remembered me, though on her way out of the courtroom, she ran to avoid a newspaper photographer and stumbled into me. We collided, and she almost went down. I steadied her, and so she got a good long look at my face. And I got a good look at her face. And when we met aboard the Queen, we both remembered.”
He glanced around the table, shrinking a little from the wide-eyed gaze of the other passengers. There was a small, taut silence, and then the captain sighed heavily and passed his hand over his balding head as he peered sharply at the Major, who met his eyes diffidently.
“And that’s why you believe she jumped overboard some time last night,” he said heavily, and his tone made it a statement rather than a question.
“I can’t see what else could have happened, Captain, do you?” the Major asked painfully.
“I’m sure it must have,” said Nora. And now she had withdrawn herself from MacEwen’s embrace and was facing them all with a young, very touching dignity. “And I’m terribly sorry for all the trouble she and I have caused. Please, Captain, may I be excused?”
It was like a well-mannered, carefully brought up child who wishes to leave the table before its elders, and the captain cleared his throat before he could answer. When he did his voice was gruff, yet somehow gentle as though he, too, had been deeply touched.
“Of course, child, of course.”
She got to her feet and turned toward the doorway, and instantly MacEwen was on his feet, following her, leaving a silence behind them that no one seemed in any hurry to break.
Captain Rodolfson got to his feet at last and looked the length of the table and said stiffly, “So that’s it, I suppose, until whatever authorities the line wishes to send aboard at our next port of call. You’ll hold yourself in readiness, Major, for whatever questions they wish to ask; they will probably wish to question all of you again.”
Chapter Eighteen
Claire came upon MacEwen just outside Vera’s cabin, and he was scowling blackly. As he saw her, he came swiftly to meet her, his scowl lifting slightly.
“Look, here, Claire, you’ve got to make her see reason,” he burst out swiftly. “She has some crazy idea that because her mother was — well, not quite what she seemed, I should have nothing more to do with her. As if it made any difference to me what her mother was. It’s Nora I love and want to marry.”
“Oh, Mac, you must give her a little time to pull herself together after this horrible shock,” Claire pointed out.
“Well, sure, I’ll give her all the time in the world, only I want to help her! She needs me, and I want to be with her, see her through. I don’t think she realizes what this investigation is going to mean. She’s going to be right in the center of it, and it could be pretty rough. She mustn’t go through it alone. She’s got to let me look after her, stand up for her — ”
“Oh, Mac, that’s good of you!” said Claire, and felt tears in her throat.
MacEwen glared at her as though she had offered him some deadly insult.
“Good, nothing,” he exploded. “I love her! Can’t you get that through your thick head?”
He broke off, colored, and said brusquely, “Sorry, I didn’t mean that, of course — that you have a thick head. It’s just that it burns me up that you don’t realize that I love her, that I want to marry her and take care of her for the rest of her life!”
“That’s wonderful, Mac, and I’ll talk to her,” Claire promised him.
“Just get her to let me talk to her, that’s all I’m asking you,” he growled, and strode off down the corridor.
Claire watch
ed him go, and told herself that in spite of all the ugly disclosures, in spite of all the revelations about her mother, Nora was a very lucky girl. Then she turned and rapped softly at the locked door.
“Nora, darling, it’s Claire,” she said through the locked panel.
There was silence for a moment, and then the key turned in the lock, the door swung open and Nora stood there, head up, her face swollen with tears, but with a courage that Claire found quite touching.
“It’s no use, Claire,” she said, her voice husky with tears. “I won’t let Mac get involved in all this mess. I am never going to see him again.”
“Well, does that mean that I can’t come in and talk with you, Nora?” asked Claire gently, smiling.
Nora stepped back and turned her face away.
“I’m surprised anybody would want to so much as speak to me now,” she said huskily, and turned swiftly, head high. “It was all true, you know, what that little Major Lesley said. She was — she did — oh, it’s all so horrible.”
She burst into tears, and Claire drew her close and held her until the fury of the wild sobbing lessened. And then Nora lifted her head once more, and there was fear and a touch of panic in her eyes.
“What will they do to me, Claire?” she asked uneasily.
Claire hesitated, and then she answered honestly, “I don’t know, honey. But you told them at the table you knew nothing about what was going on.”
“I didn’t, Claire, truly I didn’t!” Nora said earnestly. “There always seemed to be plenty of money to live any way we liked. And she said my father had left it to us. I suppose I was all kinds of a fool to have been so stupid!”
“She didn’t want you to suspect, Nora,” Claire said quietly. “She was very clever, Major Lesley said; and she told me once that all she had wanted in life was to see you supplied with everything you could possibly want.”
Nora nodded slowly. “And everything she did was for me,” she finished Claire’s thought, and once more the tears came. “She was so happy when we were able to get this passage. She’d been telling me that as soon as I graduated, she was going to take me on a long cruise and we’d see all sorts of fabulous places. So when she told me that we were leaving immediately and that she had managed to buy a passage that had been canceled at the last minute, but we had to go then — oh, Claire, Claire, I wish I hadn’t fought her then. I wanted so to stay and graduate — ”
Claire held her and made small, soothing murmurs and let her pour out the whole story. Her grief and her shame were deep, and Claire knew that to talk them out was good therapy. When at last Nora lay exhausted on her bed, Claire bent above her and drew the thin cover over her.
“You rest now, darling, and after dinner, you must let Mac tell you what he has in mind,” she began.
“Oh, no, no, Claire! Mac mustn’t get involved! He mustn’t! I won’t let him,” Nora protested wildly.
“I’m afraid you haven’t much to do about that,” Claire reminded her wryly. “He’s already involved, by his own wish, and you’re going to have your hands full. You see, he’s determined to marry you.”
“After I come out of prison? He’s going to wait for me? Now isn’t that just dandy!” Nora’s sneer was distinctly wobbly.
“You don’t know yet whether you’ll go to prison, you silly child,” Claire scolded her gently. “Personally, I strongly doubt that you will, unless they can prove that you were a willing accomplice, and I’m quite sure they can’t”
Nora looked up from the bed at her, a dawning hope in her eyes.
“Do you really believe that, Claire?” she asked with a husky eagerness.
“That you won’t go to prison?”
“That I wasn’t a willing accomplice?”
“Well, of course I do, Nora,” Claire told her quite honestly. “You aren’t a good enough actress to have gotten away with it, even if you had wanted to, which I’m sure you wouldn’t. Now you rest and relax, and I’ll stop in to see you again before dinner.”
Claire wandered to where MacEwen stood leaning against the railing, morose and sullen.
“Oh, it’s you,” he greeted her in a tone that was definitely unfriendly. “Pull up a chair and set a spell, if you must.”
“The warm graciousness of your greeting overwhelms me,” Claire told him icily.
MacEwen straightened and eyed her carefully.
“You, too, huh?” he mused aloud.
“What do you mean, ‘you, too’?” she snapped.
“Just that you seem to be in the same mood I’m in, so shall we sheath our weapons and try to kill a few minutes with idle chatter?” he drawled, and added, “I take it you talked to Nora. She wouldn’t let me.”
Claire nodded. “I’m going to take her home with me for a visit with my parents — ” she began.
“Oh, no, you’re not!” MacEwen protested sharply. “I’m going to marry her and take her home with me — for keeps, whether she likes the idea or not.”
Claire studied him curiously.
“That poses an interesting problem,” she commented dryly. “What do you propose to do? Drag her by the hair, screaming and fighting, to the nearest minister and hold a gun on her while she says, ‘I do’?”
MacEwen’s jaw was set and hard.
“If I have to, I’ll do exactly that,” he said grimly. “She loves me, I love her, we’re both quite alone in the world without a family. So why shouldn’t we get married and start a family of our own?”
“No reason at all, as far as I can see, except that Nora feels she will disgrace you if she marries you.”
“Disgrace me? What sort of idiotic nonsense is that?” snorted MacEwen.
“She’s Vera Barclay’s daughter. This will make quite a display in the newspapers, I am afraid. A suicide at sea and the reason for it — ” Claire tried to point out.
“That doesn’t have to affect Nora. She won’t be Nora Barclay, she will be Mrs. MacEwen Russell, and any disgrace to be brought on the name will be my own affair,” MacEwen told her curtly.
Claire studied him for a moment, and suddenly she asked, “Just who are you, anyway, Mac?”
MacEwen grinned at her tautly.
“Don’t you mean what am I?” he mocked her.
“Well, frankly, I do mean just that. You’re not a writer, that much I know.”
“Oh, do you now?” His tone was mocking, derisive, but not offensively so. He sounded honestly curious.
“I should have said you haven’t done any writing aboard, or if you have it’s been in longhand.”
“And you don’t think writers ever write without a typewriter?”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
“Well, it so happens that I am a writer, but I’m on leave at the moment,” he told her as though he had tired of the mocking, derisive game. “I’ve just delivered a book to my publishers on which I’ve worked for four years. And I don’t want to see a typewriter for at least another year. I want to relax, forget writing, let my mind fill up with new impressions, new ideas, different backgrounds. If you’re worried about how I’ll support Nora, you needn’t. I’m quite solvent financially and can give her anything she wants, within reason. And with it, I can give her something far more than just financial security. I can give her the assurance that she will never again be slapped around or beaten.”
Claire asked quietly, “Do you really believe her mother abused her, Mac?”
“Don’t you?” His tone was dry, ugly.
Claire hesitated for a moment, and then she said thoughtfully, “I find it hard to believe, Mac.”
“Do you now?” His tone was mocking, and now there was a definite offensiveness in it. “Then why do you think Nora tried to do away with herself? You can’t deny that she did.”
“But Vera told me that she loved the girl, that everything she had ever done was for Nora.”
“Considering the way she cheated and swindled anybody who trusted her, right and left, if that funny little squirt of a Lesley i
s right, that is hardly a compliment to Nora, is it?”
“No, I suppose not,” Claire agreed reluctantly. “But she wanted nice things for Nora: a good education, clothes, all the things girls that age want.”
“There’s only one thing a decent, straightforward, honest girl like Nora wants, Claire. And that’s to be loved and cherished,” Mac said grimly. “And from me that’s exactly what she’s going to get. She’s the only girl I ever wanted to marry and I intend to.”
Claire said, “Well, hooray for you!”
Mac looked at her, and a faint, reluctant grin touched his stern mouth.
“Oh, you’ve been swell to Nora, and believe me, I’m grateful,” he told her with the air of one who wanted to be perfectly fair. “But I’m taking over from here on out.”
“I’m very glad, Mac, because she needs you.”
“Not half as much as I need her,” Mac said swiftly. “I’ve batted around on my own since I was knee-high to a tadpole. I suppose I must have had a father and mother somewhere. Most people do. But I never knew either of them. I was just me, Mac, the Lone Wolf! Well, now the Lone Wolf has found a mate, and nothing on earth, above it or beneath it, is going to take her away from me!”
And as though the fervor of emotion in his voice had embarrassed him, he stood up and strode away, hands jammed into his jacket pockets.
Chapter Nineteen
Dinner that night was a rather strained affair. Curt, taking his accustomed place, was a little late. As he seated himself, he glanced at the captain’s empty place and said courteously, “Captain asks to be forgiven for not being here. He is quite busy in his quarters with various formalities that must be attended to before we dock tomorrow.”