by Frances
Captain Smythe-Hornsby was charmed. He hoped they were enjoying our little get-together.
Mrs. Macklin had very bright black eyes. She pointed them at the captain.
“There could,” she said, in a high voice with a crack in it, “be more to drink.”
She had something there, Pam North thought—not tact, certainly, but something. The stewards were doing all they could. That was evident. But there would always be more to drink at a party large as this. Waiters who seemed to be approaching were waylaid, wandered into bypaths. Or, quite simply, ran out of cocktails. But one did not—unless one were an Old Respectable or, apparently, a Mrs. Macklin—come to such parties as this to drink. One—
“Terribly sorry, you know,” Captain Smythe-Hornsby said and then, in the tone of command, “Steward!” Instantly there was not merely a steward; there were stewards. Mrs. Macklin was supplied; so were the Norths and Dorian. Pale Hilda Macklin reached, or seemed to reach, toward the tray, but she withdrew her hand before the gesture was defined. “Nothing for me, thank you,” she said, in a neat, pale voice.
“You may if you like,” Mrs. Macklin said.
“Of course,” Miss Macklin said. “Of course, mother.” But she shook her head and did not reach toward the tray.
“Then,” Mrs. Macklin said, “I would appreciate your getting me a wrap. Or perhaps the knitted stole.”
“Of course,” the younger woman said, in the same pale voice, and went off through the crowded room, walking straight and stiff. Pam watched her oddly rigid progress, and watched with sympathy. To be so domineered over by a mother so much more formidable. From small things one could perceive their lives, Pam thought, doing so—the washed-out young woman, all her pale life at beck and call; afraid to take a drink, to rouge lips; squeezed dry by the imperious hands of a selfish mother; transfixed, as bird by snake, on the cold arrows of black eyes. And she can’t, Pam thought, indignation growing, be older than the late twenties. No wonder the poor thing was straight up and down as a broom-handle, and with similar allure. How could she be expected to burgeon? How—
Having thus filled in the picture, Pam was surprised—was almost aggrieved—to see that, when she was near a door leading out of the lounge, Miss Macklin was intercepted. At least, she seemed to be intercepted, and by a man—by a man evidently young, darkly good-looking (almost Spanish, really) wearing a light sports jacket with noticeably wide shoulders, showing white teeth in a smile. Or—was she intercepted? Certainly it seemed that the man moved up to her, moved for a moment beside her. But it was less certain that Miss Macklin responded. Perhaps there was a slight motion of her head, but Pam could not be sure. And almost at once the young man moved aside and away, and Miss Macklin went on through the door which led her into a foyer with corridors running forward on either side of the ship.
If there had actually been a meeting, Pam thought, it had been oddly surreptitious. Lovers parted by circumstance, meeting for the briefest of words, of glances? Pam tried to think so. She remembered Hilda’s pale face, her unrelenting straightness of outline under the meaningless linen suit, and abandoned the effort to think so. As Juliet, Miss Hilda Macklin simply wouldn’t do.
“No, this will be the first time,” Pam North said, catching a polite question by the tail when it was all but past her. “I’m sure we’ll love Havana.”
“Fascinating place,” Captain Smythe-Hornsby told her. “Fine place to buy—” He was interrupted; Miss Springer had caught another, and brought him proudly. “I know you’ll want to meet—” Miss Springer said, and offered Respected Captain Folsom—J. R. Folsom—still contained in red tunic and, it seemed to Pam somewhat unfortunately, wearing his cap. Captain Smythe-Hornsby did not, perhaps a little carefully did not, notice the cap. Or perhaps he thought cap-wearing in an enclosed place, while drinking cocktails, merely another curious American habit. He noticed the rest of the respected captain cordially.
It was then that Pam discovered she had at some stage—probably during her preoccupation with poor Hilda Macklin—been deserted by her husband and her devoted, green-eyed friend, Mrs. William Weigand. Of all things, Pam thought, and vanished from Captain Smythe-Hornsby’s circle, leaving not even a smile behind. She found them. She found Bill with them—Bill and a tall, heavily handsome man who was—oh yes. A private eye. And who still did not accord with anything Pam knew of private eyes, admittedly almost nothing.
“So you tore yourself away,” Jerry said, getting in first, and looking with meaning toward the handsome staff captain of the Carib Queen. “I’ll have to get me a uniform.”
“Do,” Pam said. “You’d be cute as an Old Respectable.”
With those formalities out of the way, she was introduced to Mr. J. Orville Marsh, whose dignity of speech proved to match his dignity of appearance. It seemed hardly possible.
“Are you really a private eye?” Pam North said, going to the point.
Marsh looked at Bill Weigand.
“Right,” Bill said. “I did.” Bill looked rested, now. He also looked somewhat amused.
“Yes,” Marsh said to Pam. “At least, I used to be. Retired last year.”
Pam was a little disappointed. It was bad luck to catch her first private eye just when it had closed.
“Do you call yourselves that, or is it like veterinarians?” Pam asked, then, and J. Orville Marsh looked gravely perplexed. He grasped the last word and repeated it, as one clinging to a final straw.
“Veterinarians?” he repeated. He blinked slightly. “Do we call ourselves veterinarians?”
“Private eyes,” Pam said. “Or is it just something in books? Or is it like vets?” She had made it clear; she waited. Evidently, it was not clear. “Veterinarians,” Pam said, “don’t like to be called vets. But they call one another vets, when they’re not thinking.”
“Oh,” Marsh said. “Yes, it is rather like that, Mrs. North. Of course, the books—” He sighed; he looked at Bill Weigand.
Bill continued to look mildly amused.
“Most of my work,” Marsh said, in the tone of one who has often said much the same thing, “was concerned with missing persons. A good deal of it was done by telephone—we merely called people up and—er, asked them about other people. When the occasion arose, we co-operated fully with the authorities.” He nodded toward Bill Weigand, indicating one of them. “I never carried a gun in my life,” he added, and then he smiled. But he had, Pam thought, a careful smile. “I’m afraid it’s a little disillusioning,” J. Orville Marsh said.
“Not even wire-tapping?” Pam asked.
Marsh looked at Weigand. He looked away again. “Only,” he said firmly, “in co-operation with the authorities. Always—”
But he stopped then, as if his interest had flagged suddenly. He looked away from them and around the room. He could, Pam thought, see more than most, being taller than most. She wondered what had distracted him, but, being by no means taller than most, she could not see.
Marsh, it appeared, followed movement with his eyes, his head moving too. Then, at a door leading out to the sun deck, Pam saw what he appeared to be looking at. But it was merely the departure of Mrs. Macklin, preceding her daughter. Mrs. Macklin wore a white knitted stole. It was true that they seemed to be in a hurry, but that did not really make them very interesting.
“Well, nice to have met you,” J. Orville Marsh said. “See you again.” He went, with that. He did not, however, go in the direction the Macklins had gone. He went through a door leading forward into the ship.
“I,” Jerry North said, “know a better ’ole. One we can sit in.”
He led them to it—the smoking room forward, where they could sit in comfortable seats, and be brought drinks made to order. There were some Old Respectables there, to be sure, and twice the officer of the day marched through, his sword dangling. (Magumber had been relieved of duty; the new OD was balder.) After a time four of the Old Respectables began to sing, but the loud-speaker spoke through the first verse, offering
dinner to second sitters.
The only really jarring note came as they left. At a small table near the door, Mrs. Macklin was sitting, her red hair, which had been before neat if improbable, dangling low in disorder. Mrs. Macklin was alone. She appeared to be quite drunk. She was a spectacle to dampen gaiety, and she did.
2
The morning sparkled and, although they had overnight steamed only a part of the way down the Atlantic coast, it was already very warm. But sunny October days are seldom cold, particularly if one slips southward, carefree, in a small bright ship. The thought that there is, for some days, nothing one can conceivably do about anything is in itself warming. And the swimming pool had been filled. The water in it sparkled under the sun.
Bill Weigand could not, Pam thought, approaching, be said to sparkle. He seemed, indeed, to be asleep in one of the four deck chairs, labeled “North” and “Weigand,” two by two. The apprehension of Killer McShane had, evidently, been a tiring business. Pam, wearing a bathing suit under a terry-cloth robe, carrying a bottle of sun-tan oil, approached more or less on tiptoe. But Bill twitched, indicating he might stand up if anything so absurd were insisted upon, and he said, “Hello.” He even turned his head to look at Pam, who perched on the next deck chair and considered the exertion of applying oil to moderately browned legs—and so forth. The bathing suit left a good deal of and so forth, and Jerry liked it very much. Pam decided to rest for a time, before applying oil. After all, she had walked from their cabin, amidships. There was no need to rush things.
“Dorian’s changing,” Bill said, in a sleepy voice. “Yours?”
“Walking,” Pam said. “Around and around. So many laps to so much, you know. He’ll probably be by any minute.” She paused. She looked at the sparkling pool, and put on sunglasses. Bill already wore them—sunglasses and polo shirt and Bermuda shorts. He looked entirely unlike a captain of detectives, assigned to Homicide, Manhattan West. But then, he never did, particularly. “Do you suppose he’s going to go athletic on me? After all this time?”
“‘You will find yourself invigorated by sea air,’” Bill said, in the tone of one who quotes. “Probably it will wear off.”
Gerald North, not looking particularly like a book publisher, rounded into sight, doing a steady three and a half knots. He wore a sports shirt about which Pam was a little doubtful, and slacks—the kind of slacks one could wash out and hang up, and wear unpressed when dry. Jerry was slightly flushed, but almost ostentatiously bright of eye. He lifted a hand to sluggards and rounded out of sight.
“It doesn’t seem to be,” Pam said, beginning to rub in oil. “Is he really retired?”
Bill boarded her train of thought with the ease of one who has had long practice. He said that he didn’t know; that he had not heard of it. But that there was no reason he should have heard. If J. Orville Marsh said he was retired, probably he was retired.
“Not coming the innocent on us?” Pam asked, remembering that the Carib Queen was, after all, of British registry. “Lurking? Planning to pounce on malefactors?”
J. Orville was not, Bill told her, of the pouncing type. He was—or had been—what he said: a specialist in the seeking out of missing persons. Now and then, he made discreet investigations on the instructions of, for example, corporations which had grown doubtful of highly placed employees, but preferred not to go out on limbs about it. If it became a matter for the authorities, J. Orville made the correct contacts.
“A completely clean slate?” Pam said, in a voice a little tinged with disappointment. She began to oil her right leg, having finished with the left. Bill nodded, but without lifting his head. “Why not the Missing Persons Bureau?” Pam asked. She found that, already, she was getting sleepy. But she had come for an invigorating dip.
“Because sometimes people want to keep things in families,” Bill told her. “When we move in, officially, a good many people get involved. Necessarily. And sometimes there’s no legal justification for searching people out and—” It appeared that the subject tired him. Or that he felt it finished. McShane must, Pam thought, have been extremely hard to come up with.
There were at first only a dozen or so around the pool, and only two in it—a blond young woman with a blond young boy. But more came. Mrs. Macklin came. Mrs. Macklin wore a wide straw hat. She wore sunglasses, and a green wrap. She stood and looked at chairs, and at the sun, and at the other people, and at chairs again. Hilda Macklin came after her, carrying things—a large bag, towels, several magazines and a thermos bottle.
“Here,” Mrs. Macklin said and selected a chair on the edge of the North-Weigand reservation. “This will have to do.”
Her voice was high; there was still a crack in it. In the sunlight, her skin seemed to fit more tightly than ever on her bones. Hilda Macklin unloaded on the chair next the one Mrs. Macklin indicated. Hilda wore a loose robe over, presumably, a bathing suit—at any rate, slim legs were visible below the robe. She bent and looked at the tag on the chair.
“I’m afraid,” she said, in a low and colorless voice, “that this one belongs to someone. A Mr.—Folsom.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Mrs. Macklin said. “There are plenty of chairs, as anyone can see.” She sat in Mr.—in Respected Captain—Folsom’s chair. She slightly parted the green wrap. Under it she wore a pink sports dress, very short on elderly white legs; quarreling in color with the red hair, all but a little of which was concealed by the wide hat.
Pam North oiled her left arm and shoulder.
“Well,” Mrs. Macklin said, in the same high voice, “go if you’re going.”
Hilda Macklin slipped out of the shapeless robe. Under it, she wore a bathing suit—an unexpectedly sleek bathing suit. And—well, for goodness’ sake! Pam thought. Who would have thought it? She looked at Hilda Macklin with generous surprise.
Hilda Macklin, peeled out of linen suit, of loose-hanging robe, was by no means the shape of a broomstick. She was slender, not thin. Nowhere did she lack anything it was appropriate for her to have—from slender high-arched feet upward. Hilda walked toward the deep end of the pool. Unencumbered, she moved with fluid grace—moved, Pam thought, almost as Dorian moved. She poised on the pool’s rim, her arms lifted, the position lifting small and perfect breasts. She dove, cutting cleanly into the sparkling water.
“Appearances deceive,” Bill Weigand said, softly, from the chair beside Pam’s. He was still lying relaxed, but it was quite evident he was not asleep.
“But,” Pam said, as softly, “why? Why hide them under a bushel?”
Bill had no answer. Jerry rounded into sight again. He wasn’t now, Pam thought, doing better than three knots. He flicked a hand, however, and rounded out of sight.
“Once more, and we get him to keep,” Pam told Bill Weigand, and then Dorian came along the deck—came with almost a cat’s matchless grace. She wore a green swim suit darker than her eyes, and a short white jacket. She sat next Pam. She oiled. When she was ready, she said, “Well?” and Pam went with her to the pool, and into it. They came out, in time, and toweled, and Hilda Macklin remained, darting like a fish among half a dozen others in the water. Jerry was sitting next to Bill. Questioned, he claimed two miles, not one.
There were now a good many people around the pool, and white-jacketed stewards began to move among them. Mrs. Macklin beckoned with decision; she was, in time, brought a drink deeply red, and downed it in two swallows. “Bloody Mary,” Pam said, “and I should think she’d need it.” They relaxed in the sun, and watched through dark glasses, and as the sun grew higher—and hotter—spoke less.
Respected Captain Folsom came and peered at Mrs. Macklin, in his chair. The respected captain wore pink slacks and a mottled shirt, and tennis shoes. And his uniform cap. Observed by Pam, he nodded to her, and then, when Jerry said, “Good morning, captain,” he came to stand above Jerry. He said it was a swell day. He hoped they were having a swell time.
“Where’s your officer of the day?” Jerry asked him, in lazy tones,
keeping things going. “Walking his post in a military manner?”
“Well,” Folsom said, “the fact is, one of the boys is up to tricks. Great little joke, one of the boys pulled. Hidden the sword.” He made a sound like laughter. “Swallowed it, maybe,” he said. “Some of the boys will swallow anything.”
“Why?” Pam asked. “What would be the point of it?”
“Bangs into things,” Folsom said. “I don’t deny that. But, damn it all—I’m sorry, ladies—darn it all, it’s an emblem. See what I mean?” He looked at them, and now there seemed to be anxiety in his ruddy face. “Part of the whole thing,” he explained. “Keeps up the standard of the whole thing. Just because it bangs into things—after all, nobody’s got the duty for more than an hour at a stretch.”
“You rotate?” Dorian said. “All of you?”
“All but me,” Folsom said. “And the adjutant. He locks things up at night. Counts and locks up. Can’t have weapons around loose.” He looked at them severely. “Those are real rifles,” he told them.
“Real sword, too?” Pam asked him, and there was only polite interest in her voice.
“Sure,” Folsom said, and then looked at them again, and it seemed—to Pam at any rate—that there was something almost wistful in his expression. “All right,” he said, “suppose it looks silly? We like it. We spend fifty weeks a year in offices and making contacts and what have you.” He looked particularly at Jerry North. “You get out with the boys,” he told Jerry. “Like anybody else.”
“Sure,” said Jerry, who had found that getting out with the boys was for the most part a tedious business, but who knew better than to admit, publicly, so un-American an attitude.
“Captain Folsom,” Pam said. “It isn’t silly at all. Nobody thinks it is. It’s just swe—I mean, sort of gay and jolly.”
“The wife thinks it’s silly,” Folsom said. “I keep telling her—”
But an Old Respectable, in full uniform—but sword-less—came to stand at attention before the respected captain, and to make an elaborate motion with his head. Folsom said, “Excuse me, folks,” and went away with the—diminished, unemblemed—officer of the day.