“Right.” He went into his room to lay out the decks on the bed.
From outside came the crash of a door. The Steak-Lovers were back from dinner. “Do anything you damned well please,” he was snarling when the door slammed. Then it slammed again, and I heard him stalk down the hall.
“What are you planning to do?” Twit-Twit said.
“Solve two murders. In fact, I think I already have. Now what remains to be done is to get a confession.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“I don’t think it will be. But it’s the only way I can figure to get the reaction we need.”
From the hall came yet another slam from next door. I listened to a woman’s heels punch the hall carpet as she moved quickly past, and then I opened our door a crack. Mrs. Steak-Lover was walking with angry quickness down the hall. Behind her, the door of their room was slightly ajar.
I whispered to Twit-Twit. “Do me a favor. Follow that dame and see what she’s up to. I’m going into their stateroom a moment. If she acts like she’s coming back right away, duck back and warn me. Get going.”
She didn’t pause to ask questions; she hurried down the hall. I fixed our door latch so I could get back in. No one was in sight. I went next door, stepped inside, and closed the door behind me.
The stateroom was in considerable disarray. Cosmetics were scattered on a dressing table, men’s and women’s shoes littered the floor, pants both male and female were draped on chairs, and the night stand next to one bed held a bourbon bottle and a used glass. A coffee table in front of the small sofa bore an open case of artists’ materials, carefully cleaned brushes, a full complement of casein paints, and a small canvas portraying an ogreish man’s face done in nauseating purples and ochres and signed, “Gladys.”
I went into the bathroom. There were two more bourbon bottles on the back of the toilet and some letters, suggesting where Steak-Lover did his reading. But the thing that caught my eye was a note, scrawled in lipstick, and stuck to the mirror over the wash basin. It read:
You will never make me do that again for you, you vile son of a bitch
I wondered what ‘that’ was, although I could guess. I glanced at the letters. They indicated that Steak-Lover’s name was Johnson, that he was a radio engineer for a broad-casting company in the Midwest, and that he had left undone something in connection with a studio hookup that he was supposed to have done before he left. “Give my best to your charming Gladys,” one letter concluded.
Suddenly I hated Steak-Lover, in a nasty, vindictive way. Perhaps it was the tension I had been under. Perhaps I am just a petty person.
Anyway, there was a pair of gaudy pajamas hanging on the bathroom door and, using his razor which lay on the wash stand, I carefully razored the legs almost completely from the seat, so they would fall apart when he put them on. I thought of the shoes in the other room. I neatly cut almost through all his shoelaces, so they would break when he pulled them tight.
I began to feel better. That is what frustration does; it turns men into beasts. And being a beast can be fun.
A motion at the door to the hall caught my eye. Someone was standing in it—Twit-Twit.
“Having fun?”
“You scared hell out of me. She coming?”
“No. She won’t be for quite a while, if I’m any judge.”
“Then stand there and watch out for her. I have a few more things to do.”
I’d seen some thumbtacks in the paint box. I took them, as well as hairpins from the dressing table, and spread them between the sheets in Steak-Lover’s bed. Into his bourbon bottle I poured a quantity of his antidandruff hair tonic.
Some suits and shirts hung in the closet. The vital button on a man’s shirt is the one that holds the collar together. With the razor blade I severed the threads of all of Steak-Lover’s vital shirt buttons to the point of near-breaking. With the handle of a paintbrush I pushed the toothpaste down into his toothpaste tube and squeezed shaving cream in.
“That’ll teach him not to brush after every meal,” I said.
Twit-Twit was alternately glancing down the hall and watching what I was doing with fascinated approval. She said, “Don’t overlook the bureau.”
“Right.”
In the bureau drawer there were several pairs of socks; I razored the toes from each and flushed the cut-off toes down the toilet so that he could not make his wife repair them. Spying his toothbrush, I dipped it in a bottle of underarm deodorant. His bottle of bay-rum after-shave lotion I emptied and refilled with bourbon, while Twit-Twit’s face filled with fiendish glee.
Finally I took his several fresh razor blades and, without removing them from their paper jackets, individually rubbed the edges against the mirror to dull them.
I looked around. It seemed I had done everything I could to make his world brighter. No matter what else happened, this day would not have been lived in vain.
One last inspiration occurred. I unscrewed half a dozen light bulbs from the wall fixtures and lamps, and tucked them between the mattress and springs of his bed, so when he lay down on it later he would be lulled to sleep by a pleasant series of artillery-like explosions.
I toweled off the objects on which I might have left fingerprints and asked Twit-Twit, “Where’d the wife go?”
“I thought you would never ask. She went for a walk. On the sun deck.”
“In this storm? She’ll get soaked and freeze to death.”
“I don’t think so. I followed her up. She met that funny little man who always wears white-mesh gloves. When I last peeked, they were striding the deck in rain and wind. His arm was very much about her. And her head was on his shoulder.”
Good for her. She was getting a little of her own out of life, in spite of her husband. I threw the towel on his pillow.
But the mention of her made me think of something else. Would he blame her for my undergraduate jokes?
I dipped a brush in the inkwell on the desk and printed on a sheet of the ship’s letter paper:
THE MONSTER WAS HERE
(SIGNED) THE MONSTER
I left it on a chair seat, in view of the door, and we got out and into our suite fast and without trouble.
“Now for the action,” I said.
Chapter 23
The Other Corpse
At 11:30 we had been playing poker exactly an hour, and I was a few dollars ahead, to my surprise. I had not been playing to win. Mesh-Gloves said, “We should have champagne.”
He did not ask if anyone wanted it or preferred something else. He summoned the steward, ordered two bottles of ’59 and seven glasses.
Cotton-Hair Pennypacker picked up his hand, looked at it, put it down, and said, “Well, in spite of everything, and that includes the weather, this has been a pleasant voyage.”
“I think it has been dull,” said Mesh-Gloves.
“Even with that girlfriend of yours?” said Steak-Lover. He didn’t quite smack his lips. “She’s cute.”
“You like her?” Mesh-Gloves asked.
“She’s a beautiful girl,” said Steak-Lover fervently.
“She bores me. Would you like her tonight? I will send her to you.”
There was a little silence after that.
Tom said, “Why don’t you bet her in place of twenty blue chips?” and the tension was broken.
But only momentarily, as far as I was concerned. What was going to happen in the next ten minutes was chancy, and could fail horribly. Meanwhile, we bet our hands, and I won a small pot with a pair of kings.
The first officer came into the smoking room, looked around anxiously, and then strolled carelessly toward our table. He leaned over my shoulder and whispered.
“The money was delivered. The man’s gloves, they shone. And there were little spots, also red. Of blood, the doctor thinks.”
“Merci,” I said aloud. “I will see the purser the first thing in the morning.”
He moved away from our table, but not very far, and pretended to watch the play at another table which was embroiled in chemin de fer.
Giorgione said, “Open for a dollar.”
Everybody met Giorgione’s opening bet. While I waited to draw to a four-card spade flush, I said, “The thing that has disturbed me on this trip is the disappearance of Miss Moore.”
“I think it has disturbed everybody,” said Cotton-Hair. “Very, very much. Such a lovely girl.”
I looked around the table. Steak-Lover, swaying slightly (he must have been on his fifth whiskey), had been joined in his position as official kibitzer by the tall Indian, who was overseeing every hand that he could inspect.
“I got to know her a bit,” I said. “So I feel more than a little sorry for her.”
“You think she actually went over the side?” asked Widow’s-Peak. “I fold.”
I folded also. “I don’t think there’s any doubt, since the ship has been thoroughly searched twice. But more than that, she had considerable reason for killing herself. She was a very haunted person.”
“Haunted?” That was Giorgione.
Tom laid down three sevens, and scooped up a fair pot.
“Her mother had told her that she would drown if she ever tried to cross the ocean,” I said, “and Merrilee believed that her mother had extrasensory perception.”
Giorgione was dealing. “Stud, nothing wild.”
I picked up my hand, saw a king, and said, “Open for a dollar.”
Steak-Lover was leaning over my chair. “You must be nutty,” he said.
I had never seen Cotton-Hair angry before. “If you’re going to watch the game, Mr. Johnson,” he snapped, “you’ll have to eliminate all comment.”
We played the hand out, and I drew nothing. Widow’s-Peak won with a pair of tens. Then I caught Tom’s eye, flexed my shoulders, and rubbed my left eye. That was our signal.
Tom was dealer. As he scooped up the cards, he dropped one, and had to bend down under the table to pick it up; and when he came up again I knew the decks had been switched.
“Five-card draw, deuces wild,” he said, and distributed the cards. It was a little hard not to grin at the hand he dealt me. It was a full house, sevens on treys. Giorgione opened, and I wondered what Tom had given him. Everybody stayed except Widow’s-Peak. Everyone took three cards except myself and Cotton-Hair, who took only one, as I knew he would. Giorgione checked, and Cotton-Hair bet five dollars. Mesh-Gloves bumped him five, and so did I. Tom and Giorgione both went along and Cotton-Hair said, “Up twenty.” Mesh-Gloves folded, and I said, “Up another twenty.” Tom looked unhappy but threw in eight blue chips and said, “I’m game—for the time being.”
Cotton-Hair looked at me and said, “I’ll see you, but that’s all.”
I laid down my hand. “Full house.”
“Wins,” said Cotton-Hair. “But just look at this, gentlemen. I almost made history.”
He laid down his hand, which consisted, as I knew it would, of a four-card royal flush in hearts, with only the queen of clubs replacing the queen of hearts. Mesh-Gloves made a whistling sound of sympathy. “And it’s really only a straight,” he said.
“Right, but how close,” said Cotton-Hair. “I’m sure I’ll never come that close again in my lifetime!”
I looked at Tom. “Where is the queen of hearts?” I asked.
“That’s a good question,” said Tom. “Where is she?” He looked through the remainder of the deck and said, “She’s not here.”
“Where’s the queen of hearts?” I asked again. “Who has her?”
No one replied, but Cotton-Hair began sorting through the discards. There was no queen of hearts.
“What happened to the queen of hearts?” Giorgione demanded.
“What the hell kind of a deck is that?” said Steak-Lover. “There’s no queen of hearts?”
I said, “It’s almost symbolic, isn’t it? The queen of hearts is missing, and the queen of a great many movie-goers’ hearts is also missing.”
The table became quiet.
I saw Betsy’s nose pressed white against the window across the room. I got up, stretched, and rubbed my left eye. Then I talked fast.
“Wasn’t it odd that Mr. Pennypacker should come so close to a royal flush by not drawing the queen of hearts, when the queen of hearts is missing from the deck, and also a girl who is the queen of hearts in another way also has vanished from the deck of the ship? What I really mean is—” I was rattling on, saying anything to hold their attention for ten seconds.
Where was she? Tom looked nervous. I suppose that I did, too. Betsy was gone from the window.
I had to keep the talk going. “Another thing that is a puzzle. That hand was a real puzzle.”
“It was a kind of Rorschach test,” said Cotton-Hair. “I had a four-card royal flush from the start, and needed the queen of hearts. Instead, I drew the queen of clubs.”
“Rorschach test is right,” I said. “How long have you been teaching psychology, anyway?”
“I got my doctorate at thirty-one,” he said. “Thirty-three years ago last June.”
Then he looked at me, and saw I was looking at him. Something happened inside of him.
“But what the hell became of the queen of hearts?” Steak-Lover demanded.
By then it did not matter.
Merrilee had come through the far door, and was walking to our table. As people caught sight of her, they stared, and I still have the memory of some woman uttering a shrill scream. I can’t blame her.
I had told Merrilee merely to wet her hair and come to our table. The idea had been that she would seem to be a visitation from a watery grave. But I hadn’t taken sufficiently into account that she was an actress.
Now she was playing it to the hilt. Her evening dress was dripping wet. Her face and bare arms were festooned with green seaweed. She walked toward us without seeing anything, like an eyeless ghost. Her face was paper-white.
It was so startling that for a second I forgot the lines I had assigned us. Then I leaped to my feet, and said, “Holy Christ, she’s come back from the dead.”
Tom cried out, “It’s her ghost!”
She came slowly to the poker table, looking at everyone around it. She said nothing. I had time for only a glimpse of Cotton-Hair Pennypacker’s face, but it was enough. It said everything—except one thing.
He leaped to his feet, hissed words that sounded like, “This is insane!” and reached inside his jacket. He pulled out a thin, blue-steel automatic. He pointed it first at Merrilee and then fanned it around the table.
No one moved. The gun looked efficient.
“You can take us with you, if you want to,” I said. “But you can’t escape. You can’t.”
We stared at each other.
“You won’t take all of us,” said Tom. “That gun doesn’t hold that many bullets.”
“And besides,” I said, “the safety catch is on.”
Pennypacker looked down at the gun, and I cannot tell you whether the ship lurched first, or whether I upset the table against him first and then was helped by the rolling sea. But the single gunshot went into the ceiling (I had not seen any safety catch), and he fell over on his back with the heavy table on top of him, and I grabbed the pistol while Tom grabbed his throat.
“There’s the murderer,” I told the first officer. “You’d better search him. He may have something else on him besides that gun.”
Everyone in the room was on his feet, except Pennypacker. Merrilee was looking dazed. Betsy and Twit-Twit were beside her. The first officer and two solemn stewards got Pennypacker up and led him out. He was laughing to himself, his white head rolling.
I breathed deeply.
“For the love of God, take that make-up off,” I told Merrilee. “You even scared me—how did you get the seaweed?”
“That’s watercress,” said Betsy. “From the kitchen.”
“That was my idea,” said Twit-Twit. “Not bad, eh?”
“And the wet dress?”
Merrilee smiled a chalk-faced smile. “After all, I spent two years at the Actors Studio.”
Chapter 24
An Injured Knee
“It was a unique problem,” I said, “because we knew so much from the start and yet ran into a steel wall as soon as we tried to learn more.”
The four of us, plus Merrilee and Widow’s-Peak Pennypacker, were sitting in the suite sipping coffee—laced, in some cases, with brandy.
“We knew who was behind all this—Roger Kane—and what he wanted. The real problem was, who was the human apparatus aboard ship that Kane was using to accomplish his purpose?
“The first clue came early, though it wasn’t immediately recognizable—the cablegram Richie, or Cotton-Hair, Pennypacker received at lunch the day we sailed. It mentioned a certain Beth and a child weighing seven pounds, eight ounces. At about the same time, this Mr. Pennypacker here received a cablegram saying Boeing stock would go to 78. Merrilee was in suite B-78.
“Either cable might be innocent and genuine, and simply a coincidence. But two of them together simply couldn’t be. They clearly were code messages, signed by different faked names, but containing the same information. And that in turn had further implications. Both Pennypackers were working on the same project. Both were getting instructions from New York. But at least one of them did not know of the other’s participation, or else a single cablegram to one would have been sufficient for both.
“Once a cable from my office had identified the correct Reginald Pennypacker, a glance at Who’s Who revealed no Richard Pennypacker, professor of business administration at Grinnell, but did describe a retired West Coast professor of psychology with that name. And his special subjects—like sadism and contrived deception—were highly suggestive.
The Traces of Merrilee Page 18