by Frances
Pam had the dress on its hanger, was herself half in the wardrobe and shielded partly by the open door, when she heard the sound of the catch being released on the door from passageway into stateroom.
He was coming back!
Pam looked for a weapon. She stooped and grabbed an evening slipper—a slipper with a high, leather heel. It would be better than nothing, Pam thought, and stood ready, shielding herself behind the wardrobe door, holding the shoe as a weapon.
Surprise, Pam thought—that’s my only chance. The man’s strong—he’s proved that. He—
He came through the door into the stateroom. Pam, holding the slipper high, had leaped before she looked—had leaped and could not stop herself.
Jerry threw up a quick hand, caught the slipper before it caught his head. With the other arm he caught the quick, naked body of his wife.
“You,” Jerry said, “are certainly impetuous today.” He kicked the stateroom door closed behind him. “But,” Jerry said, “why the shoe?”
The Norths’ stateroom had been searched. So had the adjacent stateroom of the Weigands. The search apparently had, in both cases, been quick, as if some object of considerable size had been sought—some object which could not be concealed under, for example, a stack of Jerry’s handkerchiefs. But in both rooms lingerie had been tumbled; in both shirts had been turned over and, in the case of Bill Weigand’s, the laundry cardboard had been removed from all but one.
The searcher had gone first through the Weigands’ room, Bill thought. There there had been no interruption; there drawers had been opened and closed again, although there had been no real effort to hide the fact—except from a first casual glance—that a search had been made. Pam had, evidently, interrupted the search of her room. Trapped, the intruder had been forced to drop what he was doing and take refuge. The action was one of a badly rattled man; that it had worked to his advantage was, from his point of view, merely preposterously good luck.
The hands had been a man’s hands, with a man’s strength behind them. Of that, Pam North was certain. Beyond that, she could not really go.
“They looked enormous,” she told Bill. “Great, hideous, groping things. But of course I was—I was rather surprised. Here I am all—all ready for a bath and and—this comes out of the dark. But actually, I suppose, they were just ordinary hands.”
She could not really describe them further. If there had been a ring on one of the hands, or on both—if there had been a wrist watch on one or an identification bracelet on the other—well, such things would be helpful to know about. But Pam did not know.
“He turned me around,” Pam said. “He—it felt as if he threw me. Of course, all he did was push.” She paused. “Why only that?” she asked. “When he slugged the poor baby?”
“Chivalry,” Dorian suggested. “He could see you—weren’t a man.”
“He certainly could,” Pam said, and felt that it would be an appropriate moment to blush prettily. She waited momentarily and did not feel a proper blush. I don’t blush as well as I used to, Pam thought, and sighed momentarily over lessened innocence. “He was after the things,” she said then, more practically.
There could be no doubt he was after the “things,” which was to say the effects of the late J. Orville Marsh. It had been somewhat naïve of him to think that they would have been left lying in either stateroom. They were in the purser’s safe. It could only be assumed that, among the “things,” there was at least one important enough to make worth while the taking of any chance, however remote.
“He took long ones,” Jerry said.
Bill said, “Right,” to that, and then added that the chances were not quite so long as superficially appeared. With a ship to roam, with sun to sit in, few people spend much time in staterooms, which are for the changing of clothes, the sleeping away of nights.
“Also,” Bill said, “he’d probably seen us all out and around—you swimming, Pam; Jerry walking the deck; Dorian sketching on the sun deck.”
“And you?” Dorian said.
“Talking to people,” Bill said. “The surgeon’s pretty sure young Pinkham’s begun to come around—the kid’s begun to babble a bit. The stewardess who found Marsh didn’t see anybody behaving strangely in passageways. There’s no name on the passenger list which means anything in particular to me—except Barron’s. Riggs and Adjutant Jones bear Folsom out about the sword. Nobody heard the gun case being opened after midnight, although it’s under—or approximately under—the windows of several staterooms. In other words—”
He was interrupted. The public-address system soothingly requested “the following to communicate with the purser—Captain and Mrs. William Weigand, Mr. and Mrs. Aaron Furstenberg; Mr. Jules Barron, Mr. Hammond Jones; Mr. J. R. Folsom.” The public-address system thanked the ship as a whole and clicked.
“Cocktails with the captain,” Bill said. He looked at Pam. “All he has room for at one time,” Bill said.
“Humh,” Pam said. “And after all the trouble I’ve gone to. Getting half killed. To say nothing of the risk to—”
“My head,” Jerry finished for her, somewhat hurriedly.
6
The radiogram from Sergeant Stein, who had made considerable progress under circumstances which were adverse, confirmed, amplified and in some instances supplied new information. The value of the new information—and for that matter of the confirmations, the amplifications—was uncertain. Presumably, Bill Weigand thought, reading Stein’s message, time would tell. Not that it always did.
Mr. and Mrs. Carl Buckley, the young couple at the captain’s table—why at the captain’s table? Memo to enquire—were from Emporia, Kansas. They had spent Thursday night at the Hotel Statler in New York. In Emporia, Mr. Buckley, and his father, operated The New York Haberdashery. Probably, this would eventually be filed under “Useless Information.” A good many things were.
Mrs. Macklin—Mrs. Olivia Macklin—lived in New York at a residential hotel, but had lived there only for a little over two weeks. She had registered as from St. Petersburg, Florida. She had, when engaging her room—not one of the more expensive, but by most standards expensive enough—indicated her intention of staying through the winter. But on the previous Wednesday, she had reported a change in plans, and had checked out Friday morning—at 10:17—in time to go aboard the Carib Queen. Her daughter had not stayed with her at the hotel. The hotel had no knowledge whatever of a Miss Hilda Macklin.
Mr. and Mrs. Aaron Furstenberg occupied a large apartment in a large building on Central Park West. He had retired as a designer of jewelry three years ago; as a designer he had for many years been associated with a Fifth Avenue firm. For some years thereafter he had had his own shop on an upper floor of a building in East Fifty-seventh Street. “Very high class,” Stein reported. The Furstenbergs were childless. He was around seventy; she a few years younger. They traveled a good deal.
The message added, in regard to Jules Barron, some amplification of Stein’s telephoned report. Barron was a ballroom dancer, by no means a famous one. He had had no recent engagements. He was frequently seen elegantly—or at least smoothly—escorting women who tended to be older, and certainly richer, than he. The suspicion that he had other activities had been aroused only on the one occasion, and nothing had come of that. He was believed to have been born Finnegan, in Hoboken, although he was Latin in appearance. He had at one time been an instructor in one of a chain of dancing schools.
J. R. Folsom, elected Captain of the Ancient and Respectable Riflemen—an organization centering in Worcester, Massachusetts, and precisely what Folsom had said it was—was treasurer of the Worcester Paper Box Company, which had been founded by his father—R. J. Folsom. He was, as far as a quick check—and one made at night, and early Sunday morning—revealed, esteemed in the community. He was a director of the Community Chest. He was a member of the Clover Club, which was in Worcester.
Walter D. Riggs, insurance and real estate, and Hammond Jones (Buick
s) also were members of the Clover Club. They were esteemed in the community. Mr. Jones had been vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Riggs was prominent in Rotary. They, like Folsom, were married, lived in substantial houses, and had begotten children.
And as to Marsh—
Marsh came last. There was quite a good deal of information about J. Orville Marsh, some of it merely confirming what, about Marsh, Bill Weigand already knew. Marsh was duly licensed; he had always kept his nose clean. For years he had done no divorce work. He had several times co-operated with the police, once when he had not needed to. He had never, before, got in the way—which is all that a police department can expect from a licensed private detective. There was no indication that he was in the jewelry recovery racket; he had not, of course, ever been concerned in a murder case. And, whatever he had said, he was not retired.
This had taken a little finding out. He had a small office in a good office building, with only his name on the door. There were several filing cases in it, all locked. Through the contents of the cases, two men were going slowly, carefully. They had so far found nothing to alter the official view of Marsh’s activities, or nothing which seemed immediately pertinent to Marsh’s death. (But what was pertinent and what was not could only be guessed at. From his distance, from the stateroom on the Carib Queen where Bill waited for Dorian to finish dressing, Bill could not even guess.)
Marsh’s secretary, and his only employee, lived in Brooklyn. She was thin and gray and fifty-five, and had been Marsh’s secretary for twenty years. Told Marsh was dead, her eyes had gone blank, as if she had been struck. But she had steadied herself quickly. She had then been precise and careful—so precise, so careful, that much patience was required of Stein, who had done this one himself, and Detective O’Grady, working with him. Bill Weigand could read this between the lines. She had been insistent on the confidential aspect of Marsh’s trade; on her obligation to preserve that confidence. So, it was by no means certain that she had told them all she knew, or all that might prove pertinent.
Stein had radioed at considerable length concerning Marsh’s secretary, who was named, rather unexpectedly, Miss Perky. It had been, Bill gathered, some years since the name had been descriptive, if it once had been. It was evident that Miss Perky had interested Stein. He would see her again. Meanwhile—it could be assumed that Marsh was not retired.
One current case, Miss Perky admitted to, although Stein thought she had told as little as she could manage. Marsh had been, when he went aboard the Carib Queen—“but that was merely a vacation”—engaged in a search for a Mrs. Winifred Ferris. Mrs. Ferris was—even this came grudgingly—“middle aged.” Pressed to be more specific, Miss Perky had failed to be. She had never met the woman. How could she have met her, since she was missing? She had never seen a photograph of Mrs. Ferris. That sort of thing was not her job. Who had retained Marsh to search for her?
She had considered that, sitting in her small, plainly neat, apartment in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. She had, finally, decided that that fact was not, in itself, confidential. She had said she “understood” Mrs. Ferris’s children had engaged Mr. Marsh. She did not, she said, know the names of the children. She did not, she said, know where the children lived. Stein had pointed out, with increasing firmness, that her responsibility now—whatever it had been in the past—was to co-operate with the police.
She had insisted she did not know—that there had been no correspondence relative to Mrs. Ferris, that Mr. Marsh kept confidential matters confidential, even from her. But she would, finally, say this much:
On the previous Wednesday, Marsh had made a trip to Boston. She had got his parlor car reservation. She had gathered that it was in regard to the Ferris matter, since Marsh had said it was business, and since—she thought, could not be sure—the Ferris matter was the only one in which he had been, currently, engaged. Leaving the office to catch a midday train to Boston on Wednesday, Marsh had told her that she would not, probably, see him again until he returned from the cruise. He had, she thought, planned to catch the midnight train from Boston Thursday night, pick up what he wanted from his hotel, and go, then, to the ship.
She had debated with herself again, and had finally decided that it was not confidential that Mr. Marsh had made up his mind to go on the cruise only the previous Tuesday. Telephoning to make a reservation at so late a date, she had at first been told that it would be impossible. But later the travel agency had called back to say that, if Mr. Marsh would take a double stateroom—at one and a half times the two in a room rate—he could be accommodated. He had agreed to that, Stein thought rather to Miss Perky’s surprise.
Stein had found five subscribers named Ferris in the Worcester telephone book. They were being checked out to discover whether any had a mother missing.
The secretary of the Clover Club had reported, resignedly, that half the members indecipherably signed their names. Show him the signature, and he would identify it. Bill Weigand sighed. He looked out the porthole, with some resentment, at the shining blue water which so implacably separated him from things that needed doing. The Clover Club had some two hundred members. One of the things which might turn out to need doing was to enquire of each whether he had employed one J. Orville Marsh, private detective. And the members might reasonably feel it was nobody’s business but their own.
Dorian reported herself ready for cocktails with the captain. She looked it, in a white piqué dress, fitting closely down to the waist, flaring below it, with high-heeled blue linen slippers on slender feet. They went by the purser’s bureau on their way to the captain’s quarters, although the bureau was not on the way. They were the first in Captain Cunningham’s office-sitting room, which was according to plan. Bill Weigand had time for a brief conference with the captain, which was also as planned. Another steward, older than Cholly, supplied cocktails, poured Captain Cunningham a glass of sherry.
Folsom and Hammond Jones came. Folsom was not in uniform—he wore a dark, double-breasted business suit, and his plump, ruddy face was set in a serious pattern—gave the effect of being double-breasted, too. Mr. Jones was sparer, and in uniform—and still; indefinably, like Folsom. Captain Cunningham told them both it was good of them to come and when Folsom waited, as if for more, merely smiled pleasantly and asked what they would have to drink. Folsom had bourbon on the rocks; Jones, scotch and ginger ale. It was, Bill thought, a credit to British composure that Captain Cunningham did not wince at that, and that the steward said, merely, “Thank you, sir.”
The Furstenbergs came next, and met the others with dignity, as if, in their lengthening lives, they had met people of many kinds, and met all with tolerance. Furstenberg’s rather heavy face was moderated by a courteous half smile. He wore a dark suit of Italian silk, beautifully cut. He wore rimless glasses, to which a black ribbon was looped. His wife was, within the restraints of dignity, cheerful, in face and in manner. Bill made mental comparisons, and found it extremely unlikely that she could be the original of the photograph Marsh had carried. The lines of her face were upward lines; those in the photograph drooped sadly. The Furstenbergs asked for sherry.
Jules Barron was the last to come. He wore slacks of a yellowish hue, and sandals; he wore a jacket of soft brick red, slightly broad of shoulder, and a scarf, in lieu of necktie, to match the jacket. He was a handsome youngish man, black haired and—dashing. The word, with all its implications, came trotting to the mind.
But for all this, Jules Barron somewhat lacked assurance—seemed a little surprised to find himself there. That Folsom should show himself wary—should look from time to time at Bill Weigand, and away again quickly; at Captain Cunningham and as quickly away again—was to be expected. Captain Folsom suspected something was up, and had reason to. Folsom, understandably, might fear that he was about to be sneaked up on. But Mr. Barron had no obvious reason to feel uneasy.
It was possible, Bill thought, smiling rejection of another cocktail, that Barron merely d
id not see quite where he fitted in. Folsom and Jones were mature businessmen; the Furstenbergs even more mature and of a world which Jules Barron probably did not frequent. (It was difficult to imagine the Furstenbergs at a night club—as difficult as it was easy to imagine them at Carnegie Hall.) It was, faintly, difficult to imagine Barron out of a night club.
And it was likely also, Bill thought—while agreeing with Hammond Jones that great strides were being made by the automobile industry, and in particular by General Motors—that Barron missed suitable women. Admittedly, the small pre-luncheon cocktail party in the master’s quarters of the Carib Queen was not too well assorted. The expression of Jules Barron brightened as he looked on Dorian Weigand, as did the expressions of most men, but there was, clearly, only one of her, and that one, as evidently, attached. Mrs. Furstenberg brought out a good deal of charm in Jules Barron, but that, Bill assumed, was reflexive. Mr. Barron might, in short, reasonably wonder why he was there at all.
And the others, also, might feel that Captain Cunningham gave somewhat odd parties—that he was either an inexperienced or a careless host. But that was a chance that had had to be taken, if anything was to come of the party. It was probable that nothing was.
“As to this talk about too much horsepower,” Jones said, “that’s a lot of malarkey. Get in a jam on the road, and if you don’t have it, where are you? I’d like to have them answer that.”
Bill Weigand agreed he had a point. He continued to listen, to nod encouragement, as Mr. Jones progressed. He learned, not to his surprise, that the manufacturers put a lot of pressure on dealers and what part of the anatomy that sometimes gave a pain in. He listened, also, to the others—to the captain telling Mrs. Furstenberg that he was sure she would enjoy Havana; to Dorian’s few words as she listened, with an attention which only a husband could doubt, to Folsom’s description of his son’s wedding. Folsom showed pictures of it, now. And Folsom’s uneasiness had, apparently, diminished. Mrs. Furstenberg was being charmed by Mr. Barron, and taking it well.