Nine and Death Makes Ten

by Carter Dickson

  "Captain! Sir Henry!" it whispered softly, amid a sudden buzzing and at the end of a sharp click. Max thought he recognized the voice of the third officer. "Get ready. / think your man's on his way up."

  H.M. calmly pulled open the drawer of the table, took out the revolver, and weighed it in his palm.

  Commander Matthews got to his feet, stock and menacing. He had to clear his throat.

  "Just what in hell," he wanted to know, "is this?"

  H.M. was apologetic. "It's the murderer, son," he explained, pointing to the little pile of finger-print cards. "He's got to snaffle one of those cards, or he'll hang as sure as the Lord made little apples. He's in a corner and he's desperate. I sort of thought he might take a crack at it while everybody else was supposed to be at dinner or on the bridge, and I was supposed to be still crocked-up. If you want to see some action, duck into that bathroom, all three of you. Turn out the light and hook the door open an inch or so, to make sure it won't swing. Don't come out unless something happens."

  They obeyed.

  Max was in such a state of maniacal curiosity and perplexity that he feared even to breathe might make his shoes scrape on the tile floor of the bathroom. Cramped into that confined space, he and Frank and the purser steadied themselves close to the door. They turned out the light. With the door hooked open, they could see a segment of the cabin—in a narrow vertical opening—which included a part of H.M.'s berth.

  Who-o-o! went the fog-horn.

  Except for a bumpy jerkiness, and the very soft thump of the engines at dead slow, the ship hardly seemed to be moving at all. H.M., sliding the revolver under the bedclothes, lay back nearly at full-length on his pillows, folded his hands across his stomach, and closed his eyes.

  Silence.

  It lasted for fully three minutes, unbroken except for a soft slap-slap of water outside, the fog-horn, and a hundred imagined noises in Max's brain. Smoke misted the bright light of the cabin. H.M.'s stomach rose and fell slowly, as though in sleep.

  There was a soft tap at the door.

  H.M. did not move.

  The knock was repeated, more loudly. After still another pause, Max heard the squeak of hinges, and then a longer, slower squeaking, as the door to the passage was pushed open.

  It was closed with equal softness and stealth. Max could see H.M.'s nostrils distend and contract as though breathing in sleep. This lasted for thirty seconds more.

  "That'll do," said H.M., opening his eyes. His hand, which had slid under the bed-clothes, emerged snakily with the captain's revolver held steady. "Better get your hands up. Damn you, don't be an ass!"

  Whoever the newcomer might be, he was as fast as a rattlesnake. A wooden chair, with a red plush seat, was flung across the room full at H.M.'s face. The watchers saw it flash past their line of vision. They even saw the bullet-hole spring up in the red plush seat as the revolver exploded in H.M.'s hand. Thrown partly wild, the chair missed H.M.'s shoulder, struck the portable radio, and brought both down with a crash. As Commander Matthews, Griswold, and Max tumbled out into the cabin, H.M. fired again.

  The door to the passage slammed shut behind a retreating figure.

  Commander Matthews yanked it open in time for them all to see the trap close in.

  A man was standing in the longish, narrow, white-painted passage which ran broadside across the ship, and had a door leading to the outer deck at each end. The man was half doubled up, and had his hand pressed to one shoulder. He glanced first left, and then right: first to port, then to starboard. At each end of the passage, the black-out curtains stirred over the door: in each appeared a stocky A.B. with fingers crisped and shoulders set ready. They did not move or speak.

  The man cried out. He took a step, turned, cried out again, and stopped.

  "Got him," said H.M. softly. H.M., looking dizzy and rather white, crawled out of bed in his old-fashioned nightshirt, tumbled into slippers, and lumbered out.

  "I ought to have shot to kill," he added. "But, burn me ... at the last minute I couldn't face it."

  Max paid no attention. He wanted to rub his eyes at the vision of the man who stood, rocking and doubling up still more, right hand pressed to left shoulder. Fingers and sleeve were growing dark red—a much darker red, for instance, than the top of the man's army cap with the gold braid on it. His uniform was khaki, his brown boots were polished. His brown complexion and small dark mustache were turned away from them; the edge of the jaw shone.

  "H.M.," said Max, "that's Captain Benoit!"

  "Oh, no, it isn't," said H.M. quietly.

  "I tell you it is! Ask Frank! Ask anybody!—But you said Benoit wasn't alive!"

  "He isn't alive, son," said H.M. somberly. "That's the whole story. He never was alive. Your friend Lathrop kept sayin' one thing, as a joke, that was as true as gospel: Benoit was a ghost. He never existed. In other words, one person aboard this ship was playing two men's parts until Benoit 'died' on Sunday, and ... grab him, boys!"

  The sailors closed in, while their captive squealed. Each took one of his arms. H.M. approached the wiry figure. He removed the cap with the red-and-gold top: to show not dark hair, but loose fair hair underneath. He ran his fingers along the chemist's sun-tan of the face. He touched the dark mustache, and had difficulty in detaching much of it from the upper lip, while the captive still squealed. But other features, other turns of lip and eye and jaw, emerged one by one to show a new face.

  They were looking into the bitter, retreating, spectacleless eyes of Jerome Kenworthy.

  20

  There will be, said the notice on the bulletin-board, a short religious service at eleven a.m. Disembarkation is expected to take place about two p.m. Will all passengers please obtain their landing-cards from the purser's office.

  "H.M.," said Max Matthews, "you're going to tell us all about it before this ship docks. If you don't, all these people"—he indicated an interested audience—"are going to tear you in pieces. Do you understand that?"

  "Ho ho," said H.M. modestly.

  On that bright, cold Sunday morning, with all the portholes open, H.M. sat by the fireplace in the smoking-room. His tipple was whisky-punch, an old favorite. Round him sat Max, Valerie, Hooper, Lathrop, Dr. Archer, the purser and the third officer.

  Griswold shook his head stolidly.

  "I still can't get over it," he declared. "Young Kenworthy! And I still don't understand what in blazes his game was. But I feel hard done by."

  Valerie opened fierce eyes.

  "You feel hard done by?" she cried. "I'm the one who should do that. I told you the perfect truth about those letters he wrote to Mrs. Zia Bey! And nobody would believe me. I actually saw him, dressed as Benoit, leaving the scene of the murder with the letters in his hand! And nobody would believe me. In all innocence I went out of my way to provide him with an alibi! And you all thought / was the perfect liar."

  Hooper pursed his lips doubtfully.

  "Ah," he admitted; "but I'm the one the chap put upon, look. I swore there were two persons on that dark deck on Sunday night, when all he did was shoot a dressed-up dummy and pitch it overboard. Eh?"

  Lathrop bridled.

  "He got me worse than any of you," Lathrop declared. "Because I practically solved the thing without knowing it. I kept on telling you 'Benoit' was a ghost. I said we hardly ever got a single glimpse of him, except at mealtimes, and then he sat at a table by himself. Even then we never saw him except by artificial light. I said (didn't I, now?) that it seemed funny for a French officer always to wear his cap indoors."

  The third officer, wrinkling his forehead, would not agree to this.

  "No, I'm the victim. There were only two occasions, sir," stated Cruikshank, "when all the passengers—every one— were supposed to be present: when the gas-masks were distributed, and at the boat-drill on Saturday morning. Those were the only times that flum-diddling might have been spotted. It wasn't terribly important, the first time, when both Miss Chatfield and Kenworthy didn't appear—I saw th
em later in their cabins and give them their gas-masks. Naturally, I wouldn't notice that 'Benoit' disappeared immediately we were through in the lounge. But, at the boat-drill, as soon as I insisted that Mr. Kenworthy had to be brought on deck seasick or no, the Frenchman shot away and disappeared; and I didn't stop him. He was wearing his gasmask, too, because that was the only time he had to face daylight instead of artificial lights."

  The purser raised his hand imperatively, and turned his George Robey eyebrows with sinister effect on them all.

  "Steady! After all," asserted Griswold, "I knew the fellow. I admit I only knew him on one crossing, months ago. Still, I thought I knew him. And yet I actually talked to him, as Benoit—or rather Cruikshank did, when we were getting his finger-prints—without spotting who he was. Do you know why I never spotted him?"

  "Well, why?" asked Cruikshank challengingly.

  "Because he spoke French," returned the purser. "I've just thought of it. That's the one perfect way of disguising your voice. It's a funny thing: when you hear somebody rattling away in another language, all voices sound alike to you. All identifying ideas go out of your head. Try it sometime. And it was a double safeguard for the fellow to pretend he knew no English, because it would give him an excuse for not talking to people. He—"

  "Hoy!" roared H.M.

  There was a dead silence after this blast H.M., gobbling whisky punch, glowered back at them with an injured and dignified air.

  "Do you want to hear about it, or don't, you?" he asked in outraged majesty.

  "Sorry, sir," apologized the purser hastily. "Yes, we do. Start where you left off when you were talking to the captain and Mr. Matthews and me the other night You said you got worried when you had a look at 'Benoit's' cabin; when you found he hadn't got a service respirator, and was wearing the wrong kind of uniform. Go on from there. You knew Benoit was a fake. But what made you decide he was a ghost?"

  "Mostly," answered H.M., "it was a shaving-brush."

  He was silent for a time, sniffling. He eyed the porcelain cat without favor.

  "Well," he said, "that came later. "On the Sunday night when he was supposed to be murdered, and I examined 'Benoit's' cabin, I didn't tumble to it. Even aside from, the uniform and the gas-mask, I was as bothered as blazes by all those little shifty twisty points you've just been mentioning.

  "Now our friend Cruikshank suggested that Benoit might be a member of French Intelligence, powerfully stimulated by a long harangue Benoit delivered about some woman being a traitor.' But that, obviously, was pure eyewash. All members of Intelligence on a service like that are drawn from men who have served, or are serving, as officers in the regular army. Anybody who'd been a French officer at any time wouldn't be wearin' such a weird uniform. But that prompted another startling thought: Would any real Frenchman be wearing such a uniform?

  "Remember, every Frenchman alive has got to do his military service as a young man. Lord love a duck, would it be possible for any feller to serve nine months in the ranks and later forget the number of pips he had to salute? If he ordered a captain's uniform from some tailor, would he have the tailor shove the stripes on the shoulder instead of round the sleeve? That was where I began to get a strange, burnin' sensation at the back of the skull.

  "It looked as though he mightn't be French at all. Cruikshank thinks he speaks English—though the feller won't let on. Why? Why won't he let on? Why is he so shy of bein' seen in public, or speaking to people? Why does he keep his hat on all the time?

  "Mind you, he was up to dirty work of some kind. He clearly staged that business with the inky, inky ink-pad in front of Cruikshank and Griswold. He looked 'guilty* when they went in; and gaped like a fish, as though his plans had gone wrong, when they went out. And later, while I'm sittin' and thinkin' and pitchin' quoits on the boat-deck, Valerie Chatford up and says she saw Benoit come out of Mrs. Zia Bey's cabin just after the murder....

  "I'd already decided that somebody was tryin' the dodge of reversed, or positive-and-negative, faked finger-prints on the scene of the crime. Who was it? Benoit? If so, why did he later try to take his own finger-prints on an obviously messy ink-pad—in front of the purser and the third officer, as though he wanted to produce another set of faked thumb-prints? I ask you, why? He first fakes his own prints in Mrs. Zia Bey's cabin. Then he gets all ready to fake 'em again, when they stop him and take the prints properly instead.

  "Why?

  "And then I remember the shaving-tackle.

  "It's awful sad, and I was awful dense. I handled both the razor and the shaving-brush in Benoit's cabin on Sunday night, but the old man was too full of other ideas to notice: though I did think it was a bit rummy that the feller should have a straight razor without either a razor-strop or a whet stone to sharpen it with.

  "Musin' dreamily, I went to the barber's late Wednesday afternoon. I'd met this fiend before. In fact, I'd been his shop, for an interrupted shave, only a very short time before! Benoit was 'murdered' on Sunday night. Whereupon the barber, with accents injured, informed me that when he started to shave me on Sunday night, I was the first customer he'd had. He added something about lather on the brush, ; and ...

  "Cor! That was when I remembered, with burnin* clearness, that the shaving-brush in Benoit's cabin had been bone-dry."

  H.M. paused.

  Max remembered very vividly H.M., in an absent-minded manner, fingering the dry brush in Benoit's cabin. And again he saw the plan take form.

  "You fellers," rumbled H.M., pointing sternly round the group. "You fellers who have only one shaving-brush, as most of us do. Is the brush ever quite dry? Don't it remain in all its glory, from day to day, just about half damp? Benoit's brush, obviously, hadn't been used for a week. Neither had his razor. He hadn't gone to the barber. Yet this spick-and-span feller, always smoothly shaven except for his mustache, had gone from Friday afternoon until Sunday night without a single sign of stubble sproutin' on his face.

  "There was where I woke up. All the bits of funny business began to assemble at the end of a shaving-brush.

  " 'Captain Benoit' was somebody else.

  "That's why he spoke only French: to disguise his voice. That's why he always wore his cap: because no wig ever invented will stand scrutiny at close range. That's why he kept out of everybody's way, and only appeared in the softest of artificial light. But could he keep up that deception long? No! Only long enough so that he could murder Mrs. Bey, leave evidence to incriminate a phantom Captain Benoit, get himself confronted with that evidence in the role of Benoit, and break down and confess. Then Benoit, having confessed, shoots himself and drops overboard. A character has been created, and is now destroyed. The case is closed. And next day the real murderer appears languidly in his proper character, safe forever.

  "You see how a ghost was to get the blame?

  «

  "The role of Benoit was made up lock, stock, and barrel: with fake clothes, fake family photographs, fake passport, fake handwriting carefully practiced, even fake trunk-labels. It was done with care, and, burn me, some artistry! It was too bad the whole scheme went wrong.

  "But, once you've decided that was the game, it's a very simple matter to decide who the impersonator must have been. There were certain qualifications the feller had to have. Thus:

  "One. He had to be a passenger. No officer or member of the crew, with official duties to attend to, could possibly qualify.

  "Two. He had to be a man who had been confined to his cabin, and was never seen on deck until after Benoit's 'death.'

  "Three. He had to be a man who spoke very good French.

  "Four. He had to be a man who had never been seen in Benoit's company, or at a time when Benoit was also in view.

  "And that, my fatheads!—that tore it! There was only one possible person."

  H.M. broke off to gobble the rest of his whisky-punch. With deep and evil satisfaction, he took a cigar out of his pocket, sniffed at it, drilled its end with a match, lighted it, and settled back.
But he also produced the folder-plan of the Edwardic, which Max had noticed in his cabin on Friday night.

  He went on:

  "I'll take those points in reverse order, if you got no objection. A little side-questionin' elicited wonders on this subject. You can supply the corroboratin' information yourselves.

  "Very well. Now, you've seen (in the dining-room, for instance) Mr. Lathrop in the presence of Captain Benoit. You've seen Mr. Hooper in the presence of Captain Benoit You've seen Dr. Archer in the presence of Captain Benoit. You've seen Max Matthews in the presence of Captain Benoit. But did any of you—at anytime, or anywhere—ever see Jerome Kenworthy in the presence of Captain Benoit? You can bet you didn't

  "Speak good French? Did you know Kenworthy took high honors for the Diplomatic, and was in the Diplomatic until they kicked him out of it. (Ah, I see the gal nodded there!) Well, the one supreme crowning qualification for the

  Diplomatic Service, the sine qua non of everything, is an excellent knowledge of French. That fits in too.

  "And as for being always in his cabin for the first couple of days?

  "I hardly have to tell you that. It was notorious. Hey? But that's not all. He's carefully trained his cabin steward (didn't he tell you this himself?) never under any circumstances to try to barge in unless summoned. Is that correct?"

  Both Griswold and Max nodded. The purser groaned.

  "His cabin steward," continued H.M., "seems to have been worried as blazes because Kenworthy—apparently— hadn't eaten a mouthful of food in several days. But he had! Remember, 'Captain Benoit' appeared only at meal-times, and not always then. He ate his food. He then returned, and as a rule made himself sick (genuinely, violently sick) by deliberately swallowin' nux vomica or somethin' else that'd do the work. His illness wasn't a sham. It was rather a brilliant alibi. You don't expect a man half-dead from seasickness to worry about cuttin' people's throats. But he was never actually seasick at any time. Don't you realize that these thin rangy blokes, who slosh down booze all day, seldom are?"