The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  "Did you ever tell the prisoner where the axe was kept?"

  "No."

  "Did the members of the crew know?"

  "I believe so. Yes."

  "Was the fact that Burns carried the key to the captain's cabin a matter of general knowledge?"

  "No. The crew knew that Burns and I carried the keys; they did not know which one each carried, unless -"

  "Go on, please."

  "If any one had seen Burns take Mrs. Johns forward and show her the axe, he would have known."

  "Who were on deck at that time?"

  "All the crew were on deck, the forecastle being closed. In the crow's-nest was McNamara; Jones was at the wheel."

  "From the crow's-nest could the lookout have seen Burns and Mrs. Johns going forward?"

  "No. The two houses were connected by an awning."

  "What could the helmsman see?"

  "Nothing forward of the after house."

  The prosecution closed its case with me. The defense, having virtually conducted its case by cross-examination of the witnesses already called, contented itself with- producing a few character witnesses, and "rested." Goldstein made an eloquent plea of "no case," and asked the judge so to instruct the jury.

  This was refused, and the case went to the jury on the seventh day - a surprisingly short trial, considering the magnitude of the crimes.

  The jury disagreed. But, while they wrangled, McWhirter and I were already on the right track. At the very hour that the jurymen were being discharged and steps taken for a retrial, we had the murderer locked in my room in a cheap lodging-house off Chestnut Street.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  FREE AGAIN

  With the submission of the case to the jury, the witnesses were given their freedom. McWhirter had taken a room for me for a day or two to give me time to look about; and, his own leave of absence from his hospital being for ten days, we had some time together.

  My situation was better than it had been in the summer. I had my strength again, although the long confinement had told on me. But my position was precarious enough. I had my pay from the Ella, and nothing else. And McWhirter, with a monthly stipend from his hospital of twenty-five dollars, was not much better off.

  My first evening of freedom we spent at the theater. We bought the best seats in the house, and we dressed for the occasion - being in the position of having nothing to wear between shabby everyday wear and evening clothes.

  "It is by way of celebration," Mac said, as he put a dab of shoe-blacking over a hole in his sock; "you having been restored to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That's the game, Leslie - the pursuit of happiness."

  I was busy with a dress tie that I had washed and dried by pasting it on a mirror, an old trick of mine when funds ran low. I was trying to enter into Mac's festive humor, but I had not reacted yet from the horrors of the past few months.

  "Happiness!" I said scornfully. "Do you call this happiness?"

  He put up the blacking, and, coming to me, stood eyeing me in the mirror as I arranged my necktie.

  "Don't be bitter," he said. "Happiness was my word. The Good Man was good to you when he made you. That ought to be a source of satisfaction. And as for the girl -"

  "What girl?"

  "If she could only see you now. Why in thunder didn't you take those clothes on board? I wanted you to. Couldn't a captain wear a dress suit on special occasions?"

  "Mac," I said gravely, "if you will think a moment, you will remember that the only special occasions on the Ella, after I took charge, were funerals. Have you sat through seven days of horrors without realizing that?"

  Mac had once gone to Europe on a liner, and, having exhausted his funds, returned on a cattle-boat.

  "All the captains I ever knew," he said largely, "were a fussy lot - dressed to kill, and navigating the boat from the head of a dinner-table. But I suppose you know. I was only regretting that she hadn't seen you the way you're looking now. That's all. I suppose I may regret, without hurting your feelings!"

  He dropped all mention of Elsa after that, for a long time. But I saw him looking at me, at intervals, during the evening, and sighing. He was still regretting!

  We enjoyed the theater, after all, with the pent-up enthusiasm of long months of work and strain. We laughed at the puerile fun, encored the prettiest of the girls, and swaggered in the lobby between acts, with cigarettes. There we ran across the one man I knew in Philadelphia, and had supper after the play with three or four fellows who, on hearing my story, persisted in believing that I had sailed on the Ella as a lark or to follow a girl. My simple statement that I had done it out of necessity met with roars of laughter and finally I let it go at that.

  It was after one when we got back to the lodging-house, being escorted there in a racing car by a riotous crowd that stood outside the door, as I fumbled for my key, and screeched in unison: "Leslie! Leslie! Leslie! Sic 'em!" before they drove away.

  The light in the dingy lodging-house parlor was burning full, but the hall was dark. I stopped inside and lighted a cigarette.

  "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Mac!" I said. "I've got the first two, and the other can be had - for the pursuit."

  Mac did not reply: he was staring into the parlor. Elsa Lee was standing by a table, looking at me.

  She was very nervous, and tried to explain her presence in a breath - with the result that she broke down utterly and had to stop. Mac, his jovial face rather startled, was making for the stairs; but I sternly brought him back and presented him. Whereon, being utterly confounded, he made the tactful remark that he would have to go and put out the milk-bottles: it was almost morning!

  She had been waiting since ten o'clock, she said. A taxicab, with her maid, was at the door. They were going back to New York in the morning, and things were terribly wrong.

  "Wrong? You need not mind Mr. McWhirter. He is as anxious as I am to be helpful."

  "There are detectives watching Marshall; we saw one to-day at the hotel. If the jury disagrees - and the lawyers think they will - they will arrest him."

  I thought it probable. There was nothing I could say. McWhirter made an effort to reassure her.

  "It wouldn't be a hanging matter, anyhow," he said. "There's a lot against him, but hardly a jury in the country would hang a man for something he did, if he could prove he was delirious the next day." She paled at this dubious comfort, but it struck her sense of humor, too, for she threw me a fleeting smile.

  "I was to ask you to do something," she said. "None of us can, for we are being watched. I was probably followed here. The Ella is still in the river, with only a watchman on board. We want you to go there to-night, if you can."

  "To the Ella?"

  She was feeling in her pocketbook, and now she held out to me an envelope addressed in a sprawling hand to Mr. Turner at his hotel.

  "Am I to open it?"

  "Please."

  I unfolded a sheet of ruled note-paper of the most ordinary variety. It had been opened and laid flat, and on it, in black ink, was a crude drawing of the deck of the Ella, as one would look down on it from aloft. Here and there were small crosses in red ink, and, overlying it all from bow to stern, a red axe. Around the border, not written, but printed in childish letters, were the words: "NOT YET. HA, HA." In a corner was a drawing of a gallows, or what passes in the everyday mind for a gallows, and in the opposite corner an open book.

  "You see," she said, "it was mailed downtown late this afternoon. The hotel got it at seven o'clock. Marshall wanted to get a detective, but I thought of you. I knew - you knew the boat, and then - you had said -"

  "Anything in all the world that I can do to help you, I will do," I said, looking at her. And the thing that I could not keep out of my eyes made her drop hers.

  "Sweet little document!" said McWhirter, looking over my shoulder. "Sent by some one with a nice disposition. What do the crosses mark?"

  "The location of the bodies when found," I explained
- "these three. This looks like the place where Burns lay unconscious. That one near the rail I don't know about, nor this by the mainmast."

  "We thought they might mark places, clues, perhaps, that had been overlooked. The whole - the whole document is a taunt, isn't it? The scaffold, and the axe, and 'not yet'; a piece of bravado!"

  "Right you are," said McWhirter admiringly. "A little escape of glee from somebody who's laughing too soon. One-thirty - it will soon be the proper hour for something to happen on the Ella, won't it? If that was sent by some member of the crew -and it looks like it; they are loose to-day - the quicker we follow it up, the better, if there's anything to follow."

  "We thought if you would go early in the morning, before any of them make an excuse to go back on board -"

  "We will go right away; but, please - don't build too much on this. It's a good possibility, that's all. Will the watchman let us on board?"

  "We thought of that. Here is a note to him from Marshall, and - will you do us one more kindness?"

  "I will."

  "Then - if you should find anything, bring it to us; to the police; later, if you must, but to us first."

  "When?"

  "In the morning. We will not leave until we hear from you."

  She held out her hand, first to McWhirter, then to me. I kept it a little longer than I should have, perhaps, and she did not take it away.

  "It is such a comfort," she said, "to have you with us and not against us! For Marshall didn't do it, Leslie - I mean - it is hard for me to think of you as Dr. Leslie! He didn't do it. At first, we thought he might have, and he was delirious and could not reassure us. He swears he did not. I think, just at first, he was afraid he had done it; but he did not. I believe that, and you must."

  I believed her - I believed anything she said. I think that if she had chosen to say that I had wielded the murderer's axe on the Ella, I should have gone to the gallows rather than gainsay her. From that night, I was the devil's advocate, if you like. I was determined to save Marshall Turner.

  She wished us to take her taxicab, dropping her at her hotel; and, reckless now of everything but being with her, I would have done so. But McWhirter's discreet cough reminded me of the street-car level of our finances, and I made the excuse of putting on more suitable clothing.

  I stood in the street, bareheaded, watching her taxicab as it rattled down the street. McWhirter touched me on the arm.

  "Wake up!" he said. "We have work to do, my friend."

  We went upstairs together, cautiously, not to rouse the house. At the top, Mac turned and patted me on the elbow, my shoulder being a foot or so above him.

  "Good boy!" he said. "And if that shirtfront and tie didn't knock into eternal oblivion the deck-washing on the Ella, I'll eat them!"

  CHAPTER XXIV

  THE THING

  I deserve no credit for the solution of the Ella's mystery. I have a certain quality of force, perhaps, and I am not lacking in physical courage; but I have no finesse of intellect. McWhirter, a foot shorter than I, round of face, jovial and stocky, has as much subtlety in his little finger as I have in my six feet and a fraction of body.

  All the way to the river, therefore, he was poring over the drawing. He named the paper at once.

  "Ought to know it," he said, in reply to my surprise. "Sold enough paper at the drugstore to qualify as a stationery engineer." He writhed as was his habit over his jokes, and then fell to work at the drawing again. "A book," he said, "and an axe, and a gibbet or gallows. B-a-g - that makes 'bag.' Doesn't go far, does it? Humorous duck, isn't he? Any one who can write 'ha! ha!' under a gallows has real humor. G-a-b, b-a-g!"

  The Ella still lay in the Delaware, half a mile or so from her original moorings. She carried the usual riding-lights - a white one in the bow, another at the stern, and the two vertical red lights which showed her not under command. In reply to repeated signals, we were unable to rouse the watchman. I had brought an electric flash with me, and by its aid we found a rope ladder over the side, with a small boat at its foot.

  Although the boat indicated the presence of the watchman on board, we made our way to the deck without challenge. Here McWhirter suggested that the situation might be disagreeable, were the man to waken and get at us with a gun.

  We stood by the top of the ladder, therefore, and made another effort to rouse him. "Hey, watchman!" I called. And McWhirter, in a deep bass, sang lustily: "Watchman, what of the night?" Neither of us made, any perceptible impression on the silence and gloom of the Ella.

  McWhirter grew less gay. The deserted decks of the ship, her tragic history, her isolation, the darkness, which my small flash seemed only to intensify, all had their effect on him.

  "It's got my goat," he admitted. "It smells like a tomb."

  "Don't be an ass."

  "Turn the light over the side, and see if we fastened that boat. We don't want to be left here indefinitely."

  "That's folly, Mac," I said, but I obeyed him. "The watchman's boat is there, so we -"

  But he caught me suddenly by the arm and shook me.

  "My God!" he said. "What is that over there?"

  It was a moment before my eyes, after the flashlight, could discern anything in the darkness. Mac was pointing forward. When I could see, Mac was ready to laugh at himself.

  "I told you the place had my goat!" he said sheepishly. "I thought I saw something duck around the corner of that building; but I think it was a ray from a searchlight on one of those boats."

  "The watchman, probably," I said quietly. But my heart beat a little faster. "The watchman taking a look at us and gone for his gun."

  I thought rapidly. If Mac had seen anything, I did not believe it was the watchman. But there should be a watchman on board - in the forward house, probably. I gave Mac my revolver and put the light in my pocket. I might want both hands that night. I saw better without the flash, and, guided partly by the bow light, partly by my knowledge of the yacht, I led the way across the deck. The forward house was closed and locked, and no knocking produced any indication of life. The after house we found not only locked, but barred across with strips of wood nailed into place. The forecastle was likewise closed. It was a dead ship.

  No figure reappearing to alarm him, Mac took the drawing out of his pocket and focused the flashlight on it.

  "This cross by the mainmast," he said "that would be where?"

  "Right behind you, there."

  He walked to the mast, and examined carefully around its base. There was nothing there, and even now I do not know to what that cross alluded, unless poor Schwartz -!

  "Then this other one - forward, you call it, don't you? Suppose we locate that."

  All expectation of the watchman having now died, we went forward on the port side to the approximate location of the cross. This being in the neighborhood where Mac had thought he saw something move, we approached with extreme caution. But nothing more ominous was discovered than the port lifeboat, nothing more ghostly heard than the occasional creak with which it rocked in its davits.

  The lifeboat seemed to be indicated by the cross. It swung almost shoulder-high on McWhirter. We looked under and around it, with a growing feeling that we had misread the significance of the crosses, or that the sinister record extended to a time before the "she devil" of the Turner line was dressed in white and turned into a lady.

  I was feeling underneath the boat, with a sense of absurdity that McWhirter put into words. "I only hope," he said, "that the watchman does not wake up now and see us. He'd be justified in filling us with lead, or putting us in straitjackets."

  But I had discovered something.

  "Mac," I said, "some one has been at this boat within the last few minutes."

  "Why?"

  "Take your revolver and watch the deck. One of the barecas - "

  "What's that?"

  "One of the water-barrels has been upset, and the plug is out. It is leaking into the boat. It is leaking fast, and there's only a gallon or s
o in the bottom! Give me the light."

  The contents of the boat revealed the truth of what I had said. The boat was in confusion. Its cover had been thrown back, and tins of biscuit, bailers, boathooks and extra rowlocks were jumbled together in confusion. The barecas lay on its side, and its plug had been either knocked or drawn out.

  McWhirter was for turning to inspect the boat; but I ordered him sternly to watch the deck. He was inclined to laugh at my caution, which he claimed was a quality in me he had not suspected. He lounged against the rail near me, and, in spite of his chaff, kept a keen enough lookout.

  The barecas of water were lashed amidships. In the bow and stern were small air-tight compartments, and in the stern was also a small locker from which the biscuit tins had been taken. I was about to abandon my search, when I saw something gleaming in the locker, and reached in and drew it out. It appeared to be an ordinary white sheet, but its presence there was curious. I turned the light on it. It was covered with dark-brown stains.

  Even now the memory of that sheet turns me ill. I shook it out, and Mac, at my exclamation, came to me. It was not a sheet at all, that is, not a whole one. It was a circular piece of white cloth, on which, in black, were curious marks - a six-pointed star predominating. There were others - a crescent, a crude attempt to draw what might be either a dog or a lamb, and a cross. From edge to edge it was smeared with blood.

  Of what followed just after, both McWhirter and I are vague. There seemed to be, simultaneously, a yell of fury from the rigging overhead, and the crash of a falling body on the deck near us. Then we were closing with a kicking, biting, screaming thing, that bore me to the ground, extinguishing the little electric flash, and that, rising suddenly from under me, had McWhirter in the air, and almost overboard before I caught him. So dazed were we by the onslaught that the thing - whatever it was - could have escaped, and left us none the wiser. But, although it eluded us in the darkness, it did not leave. It was there, whimpering to itself, searching for something - the sheet. As I steadied Mac, it passed me. I caught at it. Immediately the struggle began all over again. But this time we had the advantage, and kept it. After a battle that seemed to last all night, and that was actually fought all over that part of the deck, we held the creature subdued, and Mac, getting a hand free, struck a match.