The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  At three bells the cook brought coffee, and some of the men took it. I tried to swallow, but it choked me.

  Burns had served as second mate on a sailing vessel, and thought he could take us back, at least into more traveled waters. We decided to head back to New York. I got the code book from the captain's cabin, and we agreed to run up the flag, union down, if any other vessel came in sight. I got the code word for "Mutiny - need assistance," and I asked the mate if he would signal if a vessel came near enough. But he turned sullen and refused to answer.

  I find it hard to recap calmly the events of that morning: the three still and shrouded figures, prone on deck; the crew, bareheaded, standing around, eyeing each other stealthily, with panic ready to leap free and grip each of them by the throat; the grim determination, the reason for which I did not yet know, to put the first mate in irons; and, over all, the clear sunrise of an August morning on the ocean, rails and decks gleaming, an odor of coffee in the air, the joyous lift and splash of the bowsprit as the Ella, headed back on her course, seemed to make for home like a nag for the stable.

  Surely none of these men, some weeping, all grieving, could be the fiend who had committed the crimes. One by one, I looked in their faces - at Burns, youngest member of the crew, a blue-eyed, sandy-haired Scot; at Clarke and Adams and Charlie Jones, old in the service of the Turner line; at McNamara, a shrewd little Irishman; at Oleson the Swede. And, in spite of myself, I could not help comparing them with the heavy-shouldered, sodden-faced man below in his cabin, the owner of the ship.

  One explanation came to me, and I leaped at it -- the possibility of a stowaway hidden in the hold, some maniacal fugitive who had found in the little cargo boat's empty hull ample room to hide. The men, too, seized at the idea. One and all volunteered for what might prove to be a dangerous service.

  I chose Charlie Jones and Clarke as being most familiar with the ship, and we went down into the hold. Clarke carried a lantern. Charlie Jones held Singleton's broken revolver. I carried a belaying pin. But, although we searched every foot of space, we found nothing. The formaldehyde with which Turner had fumigated the ship clung here tenaciously, and, mixed with the odors of bilge water and the indescribable heavy smells left by tropical cargoes, made me dizzy and ill.

  We were stumbling along, Clarke with the lantern, I next, and Charlie Jones behind, on our way to the ladder again, when I received a stunning blow on the back of the head. I turned dizzy, expecting nothing less than sudden death, when it developed that Jones, having stumbled over a loose plank, had fallen forward, the revolver in his outstretched hand striking my head.

  He picked himself up sheepishly, and we went on. But so unnerved was I by this fresh shock that it was a moment or two before I could essay the ladder.

  Burns was waiting at the hatchway, peering down. Beside him on the deck lay a bloodstained axe.

  Elsa Lee, on hearing the story of Henrietta Sloane, had gone to the maids' cabin, and had found it where it had been flung into the berth of the stewardess.

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE STEWARDESS'S STORY

  But, after all, the story of Henrietta Sloane only added to the mystery. She told it to me, sitting propped in a chair in Mrs. Johns's room, her face white, her lips dry and twitching. The crew were making such breakfast as they could on deck, and Mr. Turner was still in a stupor in his room across the main cabin. The four women, drawn together in their distress, were huddled in the center of the room, touching hands now and then, as if finding comfort in contact, and reassurance.

  "I went to bed early," said the stewardess; "about ten o'clock, I think. Karen had not come down; I wakened when the watch changed. It was hot, and the window from our room to the deck was open. There is a curtain over it, to keep the helmsman from looking in - it is close to the wheel. The bell, striking every half-hour, does not waken me any more, although it did at first. It is just outside the window. But I heard the watch change. I heard eight bells struck, and the lookout man on the forecastle head call, 'All's well.'

  "I sat up and turned on the lights. Karen had not come down, and I was alarmed. She had been - had been flirting a little with one of the sailors, and I had warned her that it would not do. She'd be found out and get into trouble.

  "The only way to reach our cabin was through the chart-room, and when I opened the door an inch or two, I saw why Karen had not come down. Mr. Turner and Mr. Singleton were sitting there. They were -" She hesitated.

  "Please go on," said Mrs. Turner. "They were drinking?"

  "Yes, Mrs. Turner. And Mr. Vail was there, too. He was saying that the captain would come down and there would be more trouble. I shut the door and stood just inside, listening. Mr. Singleton said he hoped the captain would come - that he and Mr. Turner only wanted a chance to get at him."

  Miss Lee leaned forward and searched the stewardess's face with strained eyes.

  "You are sure that he mentioned Mr. Turner in that?"

  "That was exactly what he said, Miss Lee. The captain came down just then, and ordered Mr. Singleton on deck. I think he went, for I did not hear his voice again. I thought, from the sounds, that Mr. Vail and the captain were trying to get Mr. Turner to his room."

  Mrs. Johns had been sitting back, her eyes shut, holding a bottle of salts to her nose. Now she looked up.

  "My dear woman," she said, "are you trying to tell us that we slept through all that?"

  "If you did not hear it, you must have slept," the stewardess persisted obstinately. "The door into the main cabin was closed. Karen came down just after. She was frightened. She said the first mate was on deck, in a terrible humor; and that Charlie Jones, who was at the wheel, had appealed to Burns not to leave him there - that trouble was coming. That must have been at half-past twelve. The bell struck as she put out the light. We both went to sleep then, until Mrs. Turner's ringing for Karen roused us."

  "But I did not ring for Karen."

  The woman stared at Mrs. Turner.

  "But the bell rang, Mrs. Turner. Karen got up at once and, turning on the light, looked at the clock. 'What do you think of that?' she said. 'Ten minutes to three, and I'd just got to sleep!' I growled about the light, and she put it out, after she had thrown on a wrapper. The room was dark when she opened the door. There was a little light in the chart-room, from the binnacle lantern. The door at the top of the companionway was always closed at night; the light came through the window near the wheel."

  She had kept up very well to this point, telling her story calmly and keeping her voice down. But when she reached the actual killing of the Danish maid, she went to pieces. She took to shivering violently, and her pulse, under my fingers, was small and rapid. I mixed some aromatic spirits with water and gave it to her, and we waited until she could go on.

  For the first time, then, I realized that I was clad only in shirt and trousers, with a handkerchief around my head where the accident in the hold had left me with a nasty cut. My bare feet were thrust into down-at-the-heel slippers. I saw Miss Lee's eyes on me, and colored.

  "I had forgotten," I said uncomfortably. "I'll have time to find my coat while she is recovering. I have been so occupied -"

  "Don't be a fool," Mrs. Johns said brusquely. "No one cares how you look. We only thank Heaven you are alive to look after us. Do you know what we have been doing, locked in down here? We have been -"

  "Please, Adele!" said Elsa Lee. And Mrs. Johns, shrugging her shoulders, went back to her salts.

  The rest of the story we got slowly. Briefly, it was this. Karen, having made her protest at being called at such an hour, had put on a wrapper and pinned up her hair. The light was on. The stewardess said she heard a curious chopping sound in the main cabin, followed by a fall, and called Karen's attention to it. The maid, impatient and drowsy, had said it was probably Mr. Turner falling over something, and that she hoped she would not meet him. Once or twice, when he had been drinking, he had made overtures to her, and she detested him.

  The sound outsid
e ceased. It was about five minutes since the bell had rung, and Karen yawned and sat down on the bed. "I'll let her ring again," she said. "If she gets in the habit of this sort of thing, I'm going to leave." The stewardess asked her to put out the light and let her sleep, and Karen did so. The two women were in darkness, and the stewardess dozed, for a minute only. She was awakened by Karen touching her on the shoulder and whispering close to her ear.

  "That beast is out there," she said. "I peered out, and I think he is sitting on the companion steps. You listen, and if he tries to stop me I'll call you."

  The stewardess was wide awake by that time. She thought perhaps the bell, instead of coming from Mrs. Turner's room, had come from the room adjoining Turner's, where Vail slept, and which had been originally designed for Mrs. Turner. She suggested turning on the light again and looking at the bell register; but Karen objected.

  The stewardess sat up in her bed, which was the one under the small window opening on the deck aft. She could not see through the door directly, but a faint light came through the doorway as Karen opened the door.

  The girl stood there, looking out. Then suddenly she threw up her hands and screamed, and the next moment there was a blow struck. She staggered back a step or two, and fell into the room. The stewardess saw a white figure in the doorway as the girl fell. Almost instantly something whizzed by her, striking the end of a pillow and bruising her arm. She must have fainted. When she recovered, faint daylight was coming into the room, and the body of the Danish girl was lying as it had fallen.

  She tried to get up, and fainted again.

  That was her story, and it did not tell us much that we needed to know. She showed me her right arm, which was badly bruised and discolored at the shoulder.

  "What do you mean by a white figure?"

  "It looked white: it seemed to shine,"

  "When I went to call you, Mrs. Sloane, the door to your room was closed."

  "I saw it closed!" she said positively. "I had forgotten that, but now I remember. The axe fell beside me, and I tried to scream, but I could not. I saw the door closed, very slowly and without a sound. Then I fainted."

  The thing was quite possible. Owing to the small size of the cabin, and to the fact that it must accommodate two bunks, the door opened out into the chart-room. Probably the woman had fainted before I broke the lock of my door and fell into the main cabin. But a white figure!

  "Karen exclaimed," Miss Lee said slowly, "that some one was sitting on the companion steps?"

  "Yes, miss."

  "And she thought that it was Mr. Turner?"

  "Yes." The stewardess looked quickly at Mrs. Turner, and averted her eyes. "It may have been all talk, miss, about his - about his bothering her. She was a great one to fancy that men were following her about."

  Miss Lee got up and came to the door where I was standing.

  "Surely we need not be prisoners any longer!" she said in an undertone. "It is daylight. If I stay here I shall go crazy."

  "The murderer is still on the ship," I protested. "And just now the deck is - hardly a place for women. Wait until this afternoon, Miss Lee. By that time I shall have arranged for a guard for you. Although God knows, with every man under suspicion, where we will find any to trust."

  "You will arrange a guard!"

  "The men have asked me to take charge."

  "But - I don't understand. The first mate -"

  " - is a prisoner of the crew."

  "They accuse him!"

  "They have to accuse some one. There's a sort of hysteria among the men, and they've fixed on Singleton. They won't hurt him, I'll see to that, - and it makes for order."

  She considered for a moment. I had time then to see the havoc the night had wrought in Tier. She was pale, with deep hollows around her eyes. Her hands shook and her mouth drooped wearily. But, although her face was lined with grief, it was not the passionate sorrow of a loving girl. She had not loved Vail, I said to myself. She had not loved Vail! My heart beat faster.

  "Will you allow me to leave this room for five minutes?"

  "If I may go with you, and if you will come back without protest."

  "You are arbitrary!" she said resentfully. "I only wish to speak to Mr. Turner."

  "Then - if I may wait at the door."

  "I shall not go, under those conditions."

  "Miss Lee," I said desperately, "surely you must realize the state of affairs. We must trust no one - no one. Every shadowy corner, every closed door, may hold death in its most terrible form."

  "You are right, of course. Will you wait outside? I can dress and be ready in five minutes."

  I went into the main cabin, now bright with the morning sun, which streamed down the forward companionway. The door to Vail's room across was open, and Williams, working in nervous haste, was putting it in order. Walking up and down, his shrewd eyes keenly alert, Charlie Jones was on guard, revolver in hand. He came over to me at once.

  "Turner is moving, in there," he said, jerking his thumb toward the forward cabin. "What are you going to do? Let a drunken sot like that give us orders, and bang us with a belaying pin when we don't please him?"

  "He is the owner. But one thing we can do, Jones. We can keep him from more liquor. Williams!"

  He came out, more dead than alive.

  "Williams," I said sternly, "I give you an hour to get rid of every ounce of liquor on the Ella. Remember, not a bottle is to be saved."

  "But Mistah Turner -"

  "I'll answer to Mr. Turner. Get it overboard before he gets around. And, Williams!"

  "Well?" - sullenly.

  "I'm going around after you, and if I find so much as a pint, I'll put you in that room you have just left, and lock you in."

  He turned even grayer, and went into the storeroom.

  A day later, and the crew would probably have resented what they saw that morning. But that day they only looked up apathetically from their gruesome work of sewing into bags of canvas the sheeted bodies on the deck, while a gray-faced Negro in a white coat flung over the rail cases of fine wines, baskets and boxes full of bottles, dozen after dozen of brandies and liquors, all sinking beyond salvage in the blue Atlantic.

  CHAPTER IX

  PRISONERS

  MY first thought had been for the women, and, unluckily, to save them a shock I had all evidences of the crime cleared away as quickly as possible. Stains that might have been of invaluable service in determining the murderer were washed away almost before they were dry. I realized this now, too late. But the axe remained, and I felt that its handle probably contained a record for more skillful eyes than mine to read, prints that under the microscope would reveal the murderer's identity as clearly as a photograph.

  I sent for Burns, who reported that he had locked the axe in the captain's cabin. He gave me the key, which I fastened to a string and hung around my neck under my shirt. He also reported that, as I had suggested, the crew had gone, two at a time, into the forecastle, and had brought up what they needed to stay on deck. The forecastle had been closed and locked in the presence of the crew, and the key given to Burns, who fastened it to his watch-chain. The two hatchways leading to the hold had been fastened down also, and Oleson, who was ship's carpenter, had nailed them fast.

  The crew had been instructed to stay aft of the wheel, except when on watch. Thus the helmsman need not be alone. As I have said, the door at the top of the companion steps, near the wheel, was closed and locked, and entrance to the after house was to be gained only by the forward companion. It was the intention of Burns and myself to keep watch here, amidships.

  Burns had probably suffered more than any of us. Whatever his relation to the Hansen woman had been, he had been with her only three hours before her death, and she was wearing a ring of his, a silver rope tied in a sailor's knot, when she died. And Burns had been fond of Captain Richardson, in a crew where respect rather than affection toward the chief officer was the rule.

  When Burns gave me the key to the c
aptain's room Charlie Jones had reached the other end of the long cabin, and was staring through into the chartroom. It was a time to trust no one, and I assured myself that Jones was not looking before I thrust it into my shirt.

  "They're - all ready, Leslie," Burns said, his face working. "What are we going to do with them?"

  "We'll have to take them back."

  "But we can't do that. It's a two weeks' matter, and in this weather -"

  "We will take them back, Burns," I said shortly, and he assented mechanically: -

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  Just how it was to be done was a difficult thing to decide. Miss Lee had not appeared yet, and the three of us, Jones, Burns, and I, talked it over. Jones suggested that we put them in one of the life boats, and nail over it a canvas and tarpaulin cover.

  "It ain't my own idea," he said modestly. "I seen it done once, on the Argentina. It worked all right for a while, and after a week or so we lowered the jolly-boat and towed it astern."

  I shuddered; but the idea was a good one, and I asked Burns to go up and get the boat ready.

  "We must let the women up this afternoon," I said, "and, if it is possible, try to keep them from learning where the bodies are. We can rope off a part of the deck for them, and ask them not to leave it."

  Miss Lee came out then, and Burns went on deck.

  The girl was looking better. The exertion of dressing had brought back her color, and her lips, although firmly set, were not drawn. She stood just outside the door and drew a deep breath.