"But—"
"Out!"
"Sorry, old chap. I'll send the doctor to you."
"You do and I'll throw scrambled eggs at him. I want to be alone."
Motioning Max before him, the purser turned out the lights, went out into the alleyway, and closed the door behind them.
"He's always like that," the purser confided, with an air of apology, as they went up the passage. "Cruikshank and I used to have a great time kidding him."
"You mean he usually sees people in gas-masks opening the door and looking in at him?"
There was a pause in the breezy, deserted passage.
The purser frowned.
"Oh, he was probably trying to get back at me. Do you ever read detective stories?"
"Frequently."
The purser chuckled. "I was kidding him about it on the other trip. I said: Suppose you wanted to poison somebody? Well, do it aboard a liner. Wait until your victim starts to get seasick. Then feed him poison. He'll get worse and worse, while the doctor only smiles and prescribes a dry biscuit; so nobody can prevent it, and he's dead before anyone knows there's something wrong with him. Mr. Kenworthy turned green when I told him that."
The ingenuity of this made Max blink. Abruptly Griswold checked himself. He seemed to realize that he was talking to the brother of the Edwardic's commander. His chuckle turned into a cough.
"But I don't want you to think ..." he began hastily.
"No, no."
"And I was forgetting. What does the old man want with me? Where is he?"
All the easy-going air was wiped off his face as Max explained.
"Right!" he said, with curt efficiency. "I've got an ink-roll for finger-prints in my office. We'll take the prints oh place-cards. The photographer's got just the apparatus for this, too. Tell the old man we'll be with him in five minutes. Excuse me."
And he clattered off down the stairs towards his office.
Max was left standing in the open space of B Deck before the staircase. The Edwardic's "shop"—opposite the head of these stairs—glowed yellow with concealed lights behind its glass sides, though it had been closed long ago. Behind it was the barber's, also closed. Max stood and stared at rows or souvenir desk-lighters, dolls, paper-knives, and ornaments tumbled together in the windows. Like Kenworthy, he was not amused when someone unexpectedly touched him on the shoulder from behind.
"Good evening," observed Dr. Reginald Archer. "Interested in the shop? Thinking of some lady?"
"Yes."
"I hope I didn't startle you?"
"No."
Dr. Archer had evidently come up the stairs. He was muffled up in a bathrobe of thick white towelling. His thinning hair fluffed up in damp spikes, and he scrubbed at it with a towel. His bare feet were thrust into slippers, but he conscientiously carried a life-jacket.
"Just been having a turn in the swimming-pool," explained the doctor. "Down on E Deck, you'll find it. Good Lord! It's a quarter to eleven! I've been down there over an hour."
"Have a good swim?"
"Splendid!" said the doctor. His face, scrubbed down to the sandy eyebrows, radiated sly good-nature. He continued to rub his head with the towel. "It was a bit rough at first, but the ship steadied. I feel a new man. Nothing like a bit of exercise. And nothing like a shower for getting one's self really clean, either. I shall sleep tonight."
(I wish / could. Looking at the open edges of the throat was the worst.)
"No more knife-throwings tonight?"
"Eh? Oh! No, I hope not." Dr. Archer paused, and peered round him. "Hullo! This is B Deck, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Then I've come up one too far. My cabin's on C. Idiotic thing to do. I'm very careless sometimes." He yawned hugely; and immediately apologized. "Ah, well. Time to turn in. Not a bad day. See you tomorrow. Good night."
"Good night."
Small night-noises crept out to take possession of the Edwardic. The rise and fall of her bows had become as drowsy as the motion of a cradle. The sea sang whisperingly; hardly a loose chair stirred. Max turned round, and walked aft along the starboard passage toward his own cabin.
Voices, low and indistinguishable, argued behind the closed door of B-37. A scared cabin-steward, and a still more scared stewardess, hung about near the two cabins and pretended not to be listening.
Max thought: I am rather tired. The purser and the photographer are on their way. I have done all I can do for the moment. I will just go into the peace and quiet and cleanness of my own cabin for a few minutes, and sit down, and close my eyes. Frank can spare me for those few minutes, anyway.
He opened the door. Despite his own untidiness, all things
W«re placed in order by a phantom steward whom you never saw at work. His berth, its linen fresh and crisp, had been turned down for the night. A dim light burned over the wash-stand. He sat down on the edge of the berth, unslinging his life-jacket from his shoulder and propping up his cane against the wardrobe. He put his hands to his aching head. The berth looked very inviting. It would do no harm if he merely stretched out for a minute or two, to relax. He stretched out. In thirty seconds he was asleep.
7
"You're a fine one, you are!" said a voice.
He was roused to wakefulness by a hand shaking his shoulder. He sat bolt upright, the mists dispelling. He was conscious of a sense of refreshment and well-being such as he would not have believed possible.
The lights were full on, though, with a perpetually blacked-out room, that might have meant any time at all. Lathrop stood at his bedside, glowering at him.
"Here," continued Lathrop. "As a matter of form, write your John Hancock across the top of this card. Then we'll use this ink-roller, and get your left and right thumb-prints on the card. Your brother wanted to let you sleep; but, if I have to lose sleep over this thing, I'm going to see that somebody else does too."
"What time is it?"
"Two o'clock in the morning."
"Two o'clock? That's better! I was afraid I'd slept—"
"That's better, is it?" inquired Lathrop, whose bitterness was not without justification. "We've just finished across the way. Argue, argue, argue; yammer, yammer, yammer. You ought to be glad you missed it. No offense intended; but of all the pig-headed people I ever did see, your brother and his ship's surgeon take the cake."
"Have you been taking finger-prints?"
"I don't know. The purser and the third officer went out three hours ago, with another roller—they bagged the best one. We haven't seen 'em since. They've probably turned in long ago. Their orders were that if they found any passenger still up, to get his prints; but, if he'd gone to sleep, to let it wait until morning. The big job will be the crew. The excuse is that the captain's just had Admiralty orders to fingerprint everybody before landing in England. With all the red tape there already is, they ought to swallow that one easy."
Max sat up on the edge of the berth.
His head felt cool, and his nerves were steady; it was as though he had come out from under a drug or a fever.
"The skipper, the doctor, and I," pursued Lathrop, deftly taking the impressions of left and right thumbs after Max had signed the card, "have been detecting. And debating. And measuring. And taking each other's finger-prints. Hours of it."
"Look. I ought to apologize."
"For what?"
"For going to sleep, or passing out, or whatever you want to call it. I don't know why it happened. I'd hate to hear what a psychiatrist might say about it."
Lathrop gave him a keen glance from under dark eyebrows that contrasted with white hair. Numbering the card, he put it away in an envelope and put the envelope in his pocket. He screwed on the cap of his fountain-pen, put the ink-roller on its tray, and sat down in a wicker chair.
"What's wrong?" he asked quietly. "Couldn't you take it?"
"I've had," said Max, "some pretty tough assignments in my time. I tested that Robertson submarine-escape apparatus in two hundred feet of water: the
thing that was supposed to be defective. I was the last man who talked to Greaser Steinmetz before the Feds shot him. It seems funny now. Ever since that fire—"
Lathrop nodded.
"Yes. What is it you're really afraid of?"
"Fire. And things blowing up. It was a chemical factory fire, you understand."
"Fire, and things blowing up," repeated Lathrop, with his eye on the carpet.
"Forget it!" he added with sudden briskness, and slapped the arms of the chair and got up. "What we all need, young fellow, is a good night's sleep. I've got a sweet job ahead of me tomorrow: going over seven or eight hundred sets of finger-prints. But it's better than some things. I'd hate to stand in the shoes of the man who left that corpse next door. Lord pity his dreams tonight! Well, 111 be seeing you."
The Edwardic shouldered on.
Cabin B-37 was now empty, for they had removed the body. Max glanced into a blood-spattered shell before he doted his door after Lathrop. He yawned, undressed slowly, and put on his dressing-gown. What he wanted was a warm shower to induce real sleep. So he opened the door of his private bathroom—and came face to face with Miss Valerie Chatford.
He stopped dead, and they stared at each other.
She was sitting on the rim of the bathtub, facing him. She did not appear so aloof now. Perhaps this was caused by the fact that she looked physically exhausted. Her cramped Angers unclenched from the rim of the tub; she got to her feet as though her legs were cramped too. She was wearing a gray evening-gown with a string of pearls round her neck. Her white fur wrap and her life-jacket lay in a heap on the floor. Gray eyes, of the same color as the dress but with a more luminous quality like the pearls, regarded him in defiant anger.
Distantly, he heard his own voice speak.
"How long have you been in there?"
"Since ten o'clock."
"Since—"
"How else could I get out?" she cried pettishly, and massaged her wrists. "Without being caught, anyway? There was always somebody in front of your cabin door."
"You have been sitting in my bathroom for four hours?"
"Yes. And now will you please, please stand aside and let me out of this horrible place?"
It is an unchivalrous fact to record, but Max roared with laughter. She looked so fierily disdainful that he could not help it. Also, the stiffness of her legs compelled her to waddle a little when she walked. He picked up her coat and life-jacket as she passed him, her chin in the air.
"But what did you want in my bathroom? Couldn't you have—?"
"Kindly don't be disgusting."
"I was going to say," continued Max, twisting the knife, "couldn't you have walked out whenever you liked?"
"No."
"I am sorry. You look tired, all right. May I offer you—er— a more comfortable seat?"
"Thanks. I will stay a moment, if I may."
He had to admire the casual coolness with which she took advantage of this. She even grew less disdainful. When he saw her close at hand, Max admitted that perhaps "washed-out" was not quite the right word to describe her complexion. It was of that quality which is called milky and yet seems ethereal. The short curls, in shining brown hair brushed back from her forehead, made her look even younger than her twenty-two or three years. She was distinctly pretty; with any sort of animation, she might even have been attractive.
Miss Chatford spoke unexpectedly.
"The captain of a ship is all-powerful at sea, isn't he?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"The captain can do anything he likes. I mean, even if he ordered somebody to be keel-hauled, or whatever else it is they do, they'd have to do it?"
"I think you're confusing Captain Matthews of the Edwardic with Captain Bligh of the Bounty. But go on."
"And they tell me," said Miss Chatford, "that you're the captain's brother."
Max thought: Young lady, you are being almost conciliating. You want to get something out of me. And it is a source of satisfaction to reflect that, whatever it is you want, you won't get it.
Besides, the vision of old Frank ordering somebody to be keel-hauled could not be viewed without gravity-removing results.
"Who told you that?"
"Mr.—Mr. Lathrop, I think it was. The man who was talking to you in here a few minutes ago. So you must have a lot of influence with him, mustn't you?"
"With Lathrop?"
"Please don't misunderstand me," said Miss Chatford. "With your brother."
"About as much as I have with the Lord Chancellor."
"Don't fence," said Miss Chatford suddenly. "I know that Mrs. Whatshername was murdered in the cabin opposite. I know you discovered her body. I know you sent for the captain, and he came down, and you found a bottle of ink in her handbag." "How do you know that?"
Miss Chatford hesitated.
"I was watching. And listening. As a matter of fact, I came down here to see Mrs. Zia Bey myself. At about ten minutes to ten. But I heard her talking to some man in her cabin, so I slipped in here to wait until he went. After a little while, he did go."
"You saw the murderer leave?"
"No, I didn't see him. I had the door closed. But I heard him. After a minute I opened this door to look out—and you came along. I saw you open her door, and look in, and I saw. what you saw.
"I tried to get away when you sent the steward for the captain. But, just as I slipped out, there was the stewardess coming along the passage. So I had to come back in here again. And there's been no chance to get away all this time, because of all the people. I even had to stay in that bathroom while you slept, because they were still there."
Max stood and studied her.
"You knew Mrs. Zia Bey?"
"No. I never spoke to her in my life."
"Then why did you want to see her? And have you any idea who did kill her? And why should she be carrying a bottle of ink in her handbag?"
"She wasn't carrying a bottle of ink in her handbag," returned Valerie Chatford, after a slight pause.
"I beg your pardon: she was. We found it."
"You will persist in misunderstanding me! I mean, she wasn't carrying it originally. She was carrying a big thick envelope stuffed with letters or papers or something; that's what made the handbag bulge. Whoever killed her took away the envelope, and put a bottle of ink into the handbag instead."
"But why in blazes should he do that?"
"I don't know. But I'm sure that's what must have happened. There's where I want you to help me."
"Help you?"
"Yes. You see, what she had in that handbag wasn't everything. She left a big envelope with the purser as well. You know what I mean, don't you? If you have any valuables, you put them into an envelope the purser gives you, and seal it up and write your name across it; and he puts it in his safe until the end of the trip. I'm sure she left an envelope with the purser on the first day out."
"Well?"
"Well, if the captain says so—and the captain's word is law, isn't it?—you can get that envelope from the purser. And you can give it to me."
Again there was a silence.
The calm cheek of this request was so staggering as to inspire a kind of admiration. Max did not say anything for a time. He shaded his eyes against the overhead light, and studied her again.
"And of course," he suggested, "without saying anything about your part in it?"
"Yes."
"Or mentioning what you were doing here tonight?"
"That's it."
"Or, in fact, even asking for any explanation from you at all?"
"I can't explain! I can't explain anything. But you do understand? You will trust me, won't you?"
Max said:
"Candidly, I will not. I have come across this sort of thing in books and films; but, by all the gods, I never imagined it could happen in real life. Do you seriously imagine that you, or any other woman outside a story, can get away with that? Do you think you can tell what you choose to tell, and keep back what doe
sn't suit your purpose; and then look like a martyr and say you're sure some poor goop will trust you? They ruddy well won't. / won't. It's too late to wake everybody up tonight. But tomorrow morning this information will be passed on to Frank. Then you can talk to him. It's out of my province."
The long, drowsy swish of water rolled and curled past the ship's side, falling back in a hiss of recoiling waves. It was intensified in the hush of early morning, where every light seemed to take on a harder brightness.
Valerie Chatford sat back in her chair. She had long eyelashes, whose shadows moved on her cheeks as the eyelids winked up and down. The breast of her gray gown rose and fell with rapid breathing. As usual, she hardly seemed to open her lips when she spoke.
"So you're going to tell the captain?"
"Naturally."
"If you do, you know, I shall simply deny it."
"Very well."
"I shall say I was never here at all."
"You've got to make up your own mind about that."
"Why," she asked, "have you made up your mind to be such a beast to me? Please don't deny it. When I saw you sitting half drunk in the Long Gallery tonight, with that trollop in your lap—"
"Miss Chatford, it's getting late. Anyway, why bother to talk about her like that? I liked her very much. She was worth ten of—"
"Of me?"
"Of anybody else aboard this ship."
"I daresay you would think so. I've noticed you're only gallant to the sort of women you think you have no need to be gallant to," said Valerie. She got up. She put on her white fur wrap, and slung the cords of the life-jacket across her arm. "And, anyway," she added from the door, "if / were a full-grown man, I should be ashamed to admit I was afraid of fire. I heard you talking to Mr. Lathrop, you know. Go-ood night, Mr. Max Matthews."
With that poisoned thrust she left him; and, though she stepped across the sill calmly enough, she spoiled the effect of it by slamming the door with a crash which must have been audible on A Deck. When Max turned in to bed, he addressed angry speeches to her even in sleep.
Nine and Death Makes Ten Page 6
