The whole superstructure had been planed off, leaving a flat surface not more than ten feet above water level. An awning on metal stanchions roofed it, leaving the sides open to the breeze. Under this were ranged rows of folding wooden chairs packed tightly together with an aisle running down the middle of them. The bow, which was the stage, was curtained off. There were no footlights, but the same rickety platform back at the stern that lodged the sky-writing searchlight also held a couple of spots with gelatin slides. These were trained out across the heads of the audience, giving people red or green necks if they sat up too high.
A scramble for seats began and Dulcy, who was very dexterous in crowds, shot ahead and got two on the aisle before Whitey had disentangled himself from everyone else’s arms and legs.
“How you getting along with yourself?” she wanted to know when he joined her.
“I’m up in the fourteens now,” he muttered tensely. “I’m going to need an adding machine pretty soon.”
Jazz blared out, the curtain rolled out of the way, and a long line of little ladies without much clothing pranced out onto the stage. They began to imitate people who have eaten green apples and have a pain in the stomach. It may have been that thought more than anything else, but Whitey suddenly gave up the struggle.
“‘Scuse me, be right back,” he said in a strangled voice, and bolted up the aisle, hand soldered to his mouth. A bartender on duty at that end mercifully caught him by the arm and guided him down a short, steep companion way to the lower level. At the bottom of it he found a short elbow of passageway, an open porthole—and peace.
The footsteps of the dancers on the planks over his head sounded like thunder down here. Just as he was about to duck in again he saw something out of the comer of his eye. From where he was, by turning his head sidewise, he could look along the whole hull. The row of lighted portholes was like a succession of orange circles, diminishing in perspective toward the bow.
A hand was sticking out of the one next in line. It stood out white against the black hull. It was slowly moving, drooping downward as it lengthened. The forearm showed up, and told him it was a woman’s. As the elbow cleared the porthole the whole limb sagged bonelessly, like a white vine growing out of the side of the ship, and dangled there against the hull.
Meanwhile a second hand showed up, obviously the mate of the first. Then between them came a head of wavy red hair, hanging downward like the arms, so that the face was hidden. The slowness of the whole thing held Whitey there pop-eyed.
“What’s she fixing to do, crawl halfway out to get a breath of air?” he muttered.
But when people want a breath of air they lift their heads. Her nose was practically scraping the rusty side of the hull. From the first glimpse of her fingertips she had been slowly emerging, like a human snail from its shell; now she stopped and went into reverse, began to disappear backwards. He guessed the reason at once: the porthole wasn’t wide enough to let her shoulders through. Then suddenly he saw something that made his hair stand up. She was a freak! A third hand had showed up. It trailed down the nearest arm, got a grip on it at the elbow, and began to pull it in again after it. It was a heavier hand than the woman’s; darker, rougher.
He got it at once, after the first momentary optical illusion had passed. It was a man’s hand, pulling her back inside again. Her head disappeared, then her upper arms. Last of all went her two hands, crossed at the wrists and inanimate as severed chicken-claws. Then the porthole was empty, just an orange circle. He decided he wanted to see what was going on in there. If she’d fainted, he knew better ways of bringing her to than ramming her in and out of the porthole like a laundry bag.
Somebody else had beaten him to the door when he rounded the comer of the passageway. A very nautical-looking lady stood there, knocking peremptorily. She wore a white yachting cap atop frizzed gray hair, a jacket with brass buttons, and tennis shoes. Her only concession to femininity was her skirt. A cigarette dangled from her lower lip.
“C’mon, Toots,” she was saying in a raspy voice. “You’re holding up my show. I’m gonna dock you for this. Y’shoulda been on long ago! Quit stalling and open up this door!” She saluted Whitey with a terse “Upstairs! No customers allowed down here!” Then went back to rattling the doorknob again.
“Upstairs yourself. I’m homicide squad, St. Louis,” grunted Whitey, crowding her aside. “Dig me up a passkey, or I’ll bust down this door.”
“I’m in the red enough,” rasped the nautical lady. “If you want to get in that bad, go through the chorus dressing room at the end. There’s a door between that won’t cost as much to repair.”
Whitey ran. The dressing room, luckily, was empty. The chorines were all onstage just then. One shoulder cracked the communicating door like a match box, it was that flimsy.
The girl was seated at her dressing table. She was alone in the room; the third hand and whoever it had belonged to had vanished. She was motionless, slumped before the mirror with her head on her arms. She had on even less than the girls upstairs, and that held Whitey for a minute.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Hey, you!” Then he went over to her and noticed that the top of the dressing table was all messed up with rouge.
Only it wasn’t rouge. He lifted her head and for a moment had a horrible impression that it had come off in his hands. A yawning red mouth opened, lower down than the real one. Her throat had been gashed from ear to ear. At her feet was the jagged sliver of glass that had done it, with the rag that had protected the wielder’s hand still folded around the upper half of it.
That let suicide out then and there. Who cares about cutting their hand if they’re going to cut their own throat anyway? The glass had come from the porthole—the casing stood inward, just an empty hoop bolted to the frame. Under it the floor was iced with fragments, and with them lay the heavy curling iron that had smashed the glass.
She had probably thrown it at her murderer in the struggle and unwittingly furnished him with a weapon. Or else broken the porthole purposely in a vain attempt to top the blare of the show and attract the attention of those above. The slow-motion pantomime he had seen, Whitey realized, must have been an unsuccessful attempt to get rid of her body. And the line of escape was fairly obvious—the same side-door he had come through, locked by the murderer on his way out. But of all the quick getaways! He must have just missed the killer by the skin of his teeth. But what counted was that the murderer was still on board, and had to stay there until the tug came back—unless he jumped for it and swam the Mississippi River.
II
Whitey threw something over the dead girl, raced out the way he had come, and continued along the passage to the upper end, careening crazily from side to side in his hurry. He whizzed up the stairs there and found himself in the wings—or what passed as such, since the showboat used no scenery. The chorus was still dancing—less than ten minutes had gone by since he’d left his seat. Between them and the backdrop, instead of in front as in a regular theater, was the band. The stage manager materialized from between two folds in the curtain and Whitey flashed his badge.
“Who’s missing out there?” he asked.
“Carrots, leading lady. She’s gonna get hell for it, too.”
“She has already,” snapped Whitey. “Then that’s the whole show, outside of her? What do they do, dance all evening?”
“The comedian and his stooge spell them. That’s them, those two standing across from us in the other wing.”
“How long have they been there?”
“From the time the curtain went up. I seen ‘em myself. They always do that. It’s cooler up here.”
“Save it till later!” said Whitey, and dived down the stairs again, along the passage, and up at the other end. He made it as quickly as he would have by jumping out on the stage and running through the audience, which might have started a panic on the overcrowded boat. He ran up the short vertical ladder to the crow’s-nest containing the searchlight and the bored-lo
oking sailor who manipulated it. Just at present, however, he was letting it shoot skyward while he followed the performers with a colored spot.
“Never mind them,” ordered Whitey breathlessly, “train that other thing down on the water, close in as you can get it, and keep it going from side to side, so that you’ll throw the light on anyone who slips overboard and starts swimming ashore—”
“I take orders from—” the sailor tried to say.
“From me from now on,” barked Whitey, “or else I’ll knock you ofifa here and do it myself!” He waited just long enough to see the big metal hood give a half-revolution and splash a big patch of water to daylight, then slowly wheel around to the other side. Every ripple on the surface stood out in the fierce glare.
“Will it go all the way around?” Whitey asked.
“Just halfway,” sweated the sailor, “and then back again.”
“That’ll do it,” said Whitey. “Train one of those colored ones backwards, into the arc the big one doesn’t cover, and leave it that way—that’ll give us the whole circle. And keep the other one on the go. The minute you spot anything that doesn’t belong out there—I don’t care what it is—lemme know, if you value your tattooed hide.”
“I ain’t got so much as a—” the sailor tried to contradict, but Whitey was already on his way down again. When he hit the below-deck passageway again, the lady captain was still parked outside the locked door. She had quit trying the knob and was deftly rolling herself a cigarette instead. She promptly dropped it at the sight of him.
“Where’d you come from?” she gawked. “I’ve been waiting all this time for you to get in the side way.”
“I’ve been in and out again,” he told her. “Follow me. You don’t look like the kind that throws faints, and I want to talk to you.” They went through the still empty chorus dressing room and beyond. The lady captain glimpsed the prone figure under the mirror and immediately went into an employer’s rage.
“You holder-outer! You letterdowner!” she bellowed. “What d’ye mean by gumming up my opening number? Who d’ye think you are, Ethel Merman?”
“Close what’s left of that door and shut up,” said Whitey sourly. “She’s dead.”
The lady captain was not, to put it mildly, the nervous type. She went over, tossed aside the towel, and spaded one hand under the girl’s flabby arm. “Yep,” she snapped, “cold as yesterday’s headline.” She came away stroking her chin like a man. “Have to get that gal from Tony’s to take her place. Get her five bucks cheaper, too,” she commented.
“Have a murder like this every night?” Whitey said bitingly. “No? Then why not show a little surprise?”
“Boo! I’m surprised!” she came right back at him. “What d’ye want me to do, turn handsprings? All I know is, this throws a hitch into my show. Look at that door! And look at that porthole! They put them in for nothing, you know; don’t cost a cent!”
“I’ve come across some tough cases in my time,” he let her know. “I’d offer you a cigar, only I haven’t got the kind that blows up in your face. Now let’s get going. Who was she?”
“Carrots Kirby, twenty-four, fifty a week for showing her vaccination mark.”
“Run around with anybody?”
“Anybody,” she agreed.
“Big help, aren’t you?” he glared. “Any way of getting word ashore that we have a murder case aboard?”
“Nope,” she said calmly. “Have to wait until the tug comes back at twelve.”
“What’s the idea? Why doesn’t it stand by?”
“That would cost do-re-mi,” she stated. “I’d have to hire it for the whole evening. This way I just charter it for the two trips, coming and going.”
“You mean you haven’t any small boats on this thing? You’re crowded to the rails! What would you do if anything happened?”
“This isn’t a sea-going boat. We’re all lighted up from head to stem, if it’s a collision you’re thinking about. We’ve got fire-extinguishers, if that’s what y’mean. And my bartender doubles as a bouncer, in case of a riot.”
“With water all around, where does he bounce them to?” Whitey demanded.
“He don’t bounce ‘em to anywhere,” she stated elegantly. “He just bounces ‘em on the button, and they stay quiet.”
“Just a sissy enterprise from start to finish. How long were you in front of that door?”
“Just got there ahead of you.”
“How do I know that?” Whitey challenged.
“You don’t,” she agreed, “but you can check up on it with the bartender. I was watching the show from in back when I saw Carrots missed her cue. As a matter of fact, I saw you stumble by. Only came down after you did, while you were at the porthole.”
Your luck is, Whitey thought grimly, that it was a man’s hand I saw hauling her in. He said, “If you were standing in back watching, then who was missing from the show—outside of her?”
“Nobody,” she snapped. “I only have the chorus, the two comics, her and the stage manager working for me. The stage manager was on that side, signaling me from the curtain to go page her. The two comics were on the other side, kibitzing with the girls like they always do. I could see both of ‘em. Every girl was in place, not one missing.”
“Who else y’got on your payroll?”
“Just Shorty behind the light up there. Butch the bartender, and an electrician down in the power room in case anj^hing goes wrong with the lights. We generate our own power, y’know.”
“How about the audience? Anyone leave their seats before I did?”
“Not a blessed soul. They never start wandering back for refills until the show’s past the halfway mark, anyway.”
“Well, did anyone go to their seats after everyone else was seated, then?” Whitey demanded.
“Nope, they all sat down at once. You saw the scramble for seats that went on yourself.”
“Well, if I’m going to take your word for it,” he remarked, “I’ll end up by believing a swordfish took a leap in the window and did it to her. All I know is she’s been turned into a tomato surprise and whoever did it is still on board.”
There was a tap at the shattered door and the bartender’s homely face peered through the split panel. “Shorty just picked up something with the big light—” he began. Whitey nearly flattened him going by, and was up on the platform in no time flat.
“It went down,” the sailor apologized. “Only your orders was, anything that didn’t belong out there, to tip you off—”
“What the hell was it?”
“Something silver, looked like a big oil or gasoline can. Musta been dropped over the side. It was so close to us I couldn’t get the light square down on it, but I caught the reflection. It made me nervous,” he admitted. “If anything like that spreads around us, all somebody’s gotta do is toss a butt overboard, and—”
“How’d it go down, straight?”
“No, sort of sideways and slow.”
“Then it was empty.”
Shorty sighed. “Gee, that’s good.”
“Bad, you mean! Whatever was in it is still with us, probably spread around nice and lovely … How do I get to this power room, where this electrician is?”
“It’s under the stairs that lead up to the stage,” explained the sailor. “You’ve gotta look close or you’ll miss seeing the door.”
Down went Whitey again. He had the rather chilling suspicion that the murderer, failing to get rid of the body through the porthole, intended to try a little wholesale arson to cover up the traces of the crime.
And yet the murderer himself was on board, would be trapped with the rest if he did such a thing. What the murderer didn’t know, since the show was still going full blast and no alarm had been raised as yet, was that the crime had already been unearthed, and that there was a detective on board. He intended taking his time, probably, and then swimming for it—with a good head-start. Whitey detoured into the audience for a moment to single out
Dulcy and hustle her to the rear.
“What’s the idea, making me give up a perfectly good seat?” she said.
“I want you back here where you won’t get trampled on in case anything happens,” Whitey said. “Now don’t get nervous, but just stand here where I can find you in a hurry—”
“Well, aren’t you the cheerful little ray of sunshine!”
“Tell me about the part of the show that I missed. Did you notice anyone who came on later than the others?”
“No,” she said, then added, “Anyone at all?”
“Anyone at all. I don’t care who!”
“None of the performers did, but the bandmaster keeps wandering off and on all the time, I’ve noticed. I mean he just introduces each new turn and then strolls off again and lets the other five do the playing—”
“I could kiss you!” Whitey said fervently. “None of the others mentioned that. I suppose they thought I meant only the performers. I muffed it myself when I was in the wings before, forgot about him.”
“What do you mean? Who’s ‘he’? What’s the band leader done?” Dulcy wanted to know.
III
The music was playing no longer. The two comedians had just come on, but the five musicians were sitting in full view. Only their leader was missing. When Whitey got down to the passageway below it was choked with chorus girls, all trying to get into their dressing room at once and do a quick change. They not only slowed him down, they resented his presence in their half-clad midst and began to squeal and claw at him.
“Get out of here! Go back where you belong!” Whitey emerged, protecting his bent head with both arms, and a dance-shoe came flying after him and glanced harmlessly off his skull. They banged their door after them resentfully and the corridor was suddenly quiet.
Darkness at dawn : early suspense classics Page 32