Rub-A-Dub-Dub

by Robert L. Fish

  “You didn’t what?” It was a chorus; even Cliff Simpson forgot his research on ships’ brigs to join in.

  “You heard me.” Mr. Carruthers paused in his task to look up calmly. “I said, I didn’t deny the lady’s accusations.”

  Briggs stared through the bars in horror. He shook his head.

  “You’ve gone crackers, too! Why in heaven’s name didn’t you deny them?”

  Mr. Billy-boy Carruthers carefully completed the last button and snapped the thread. The needle was neatly tucked into the spool of cotton and put to one side. In common with most bachelors, especially those who reached his age, he was an excellent seamster, if such a word exists. He buttoned the braces in place, came to his feet and snapped them to make sure his work was of a relatively permanent nature. All remained secure. He smiled his satisfaction and only then did he bother to consider the question and to answer it.

  “Tim, my lad. Cliff, old boy. Are you two seriously suggesting that I damage my self-esteem to that extent? Think what you are saying. Why, man, I haven’t been so flattered in years! Accused of attacking a woman with immoral intent!” He shook his head, smiling, but the other two could see that Billy-boy Carruthers was deadly serious. “No, lads; I said not a word, nor do I intend to. I haven’t the slightest intention of denying one word of the lady’s story.”

  “He’s gone around the bend,” Cliff said sadly and then noticed something that had escaped him before. “I say, Billy-boy; I thought they took away your braces when they shoved you into quod. Standard operating procedure, don’t you know, together with your shoelaces and things, so you wouldn’t—well, you know.” He made a gesture of a hangman’s noose being brought up taut, followed by a neck snapping.

  “You do that very well,” Carruthers said approvingly and grinned. “I think that’s exactly what the Captain had in mind when he allowed me to keep them.” His blue eyes ranged upward. “I’m afraid, though, he never made a detailed study of this cell. I don’t believe I could if I wanted to; the ceiling here is far too low.” He shook his head forlornly. “They just don’t build decks for hanging.”

  “Now, that wouldn’t be a bad title,” Simpson said thoughtfully. “They Don't Build Decks for Hanging.”

  “A great title,” Carruthers agreed. “What does it mean?”

  “Well,” Simpson said, carried away, “you’d have this midget, you see, and he’d be put in this cell for something—cheating at Bingo, or selling tickets to the free cinema, or something—and this little man, Tim’s size roughly, he’d be found strangled with his own cravat, and everyone would naturally assume the shame had caused him to hang himself, but then this chap from Scotland Yard—on vacation, of course—would turn up and study the scene, and he’d prove—”

  “Yes?”

  “That’s as far as I see it at the moment,” Simpson admitted, a bit unhappily.

  “A midget roughly Tim’s size, eh?” Briggs said in an unkindly tone. “Well, you’d have to lie down to hang yourself, Cliff, even on a scaffold. Now, if you two geniuses don’t mind, I’d like to get back to Billy-the-Goat, here, and his problem. Whether you realize it or not, he’s in the soup, especially with his attitude. Rape is a serious offense.”

  “Nonsense!” Simpson said, dismissing the idea as being idiotic. “Worse comes to worse, Billy-boy can insist on a jury trial, and what jury with a man on it over fifty would ever convict Billy-boy of rape?” He turned back to Carruthers, peering at him curiously through the bars. “How’s the food? Crawling with vermin, I expect, what?”

  “I haven’t been here long enough to find out,” Carruthers said dryly, “But I seriously doubt they’d go to all that trouble for just one customer. Anyway,” he added, returning his attention to Briggs, “the charge isn’t rape—it’s ‘attempted rape.’ ”

  “Worse!” Briggs moaned. “Much worse!”

  The other two stared at him.

  “How so?” Simpson demanded.

  “Well,” Briggs said unhappily, “as you said yourself, no jury in the world would even consider rape as the faintest of possibilities where a man of Billy-boy’s age is concerned. But anyone of any age could attempt it. . . .”

  There were several moments of dead silence. Even Billy-boy Carruthers looked a bit thoughtful. It was, obviously, a point none of the three had previously considered.

  “I’m afraid there’s only one thing for it,” said Clifford Simpson.

  He and Tim Briggs were at their usual table in the corner of the Promenade Deck bar, sipping brandy. The third chair at the table was conspicuously empty; others in the room studiously avoided glancing in their direction. The master-at-arms, who also rounded up items for the ship’s newspaper, had not been idle. Yet, despite the disaster of the previous afternoon, it was still a lovely clay. Through the broad windows they could see people standing about the edge of the outside swimming pool while the lifeguard put them through a series of calisthenics, vainly attempting to remove in fifteen minutes what his pupils spent eighteen hours per day putting on. The very sight of the sweating, jumping, miserable bathing-suited specimens outside made the bar both cooler and more cozy.

  “And that is?” Briggs asked.

  “That, I’m afraid, is something that will meet with your disapproval. Although,” Simpson added, thinking about it, “we’re really quite lucky, when you consider it.”

  “What will I disapprove of, and wherein are we lucky?” The brandy had made Tim Briggs a bit more mellow than usual.

  “We’re lucky that Sir Percival Pugh is aboard,” Simpson said simply and instantly hid his face in his glass, avoiding the explosion he knew would result. He was not wrong.

  “Pugh? That twister? That Jeremy Diddler?” Tim Briggs suddenly seemed to realize that his shriek of anguish had caused heads to turn. He dropped the volume but the tone of scathing denunciation remained. He hastily swallowed the balance of his drink and thrust his glass from him, as if thrusting Sir Percival away in the same motion. “Under no circumstances,” he said in a cold voice, “do we get tangled up again with that—that—that legal larcenist!”

  “Now, see here, Tim,” Simpson said. Knowing Briggs, he was well aware that the first outbreak carried away the majority of the tantrum. “Try to be reasonable. Billy-boy is just stubborn enough to maintain his quixotic attitude, and this Carpenter woman is obviously vindictive enough to continue to press her charge. As things stand, therefore, the very best that Billy-boy can come out of this with is the worst of it. Now, you and I both know Pugh—”

  “Do we ever!”

  “As I was saying, we both know Pugh, and we know that he could probably take the evidence in this case as it stands and end up having the Captain found guilty, even though he had eighteen witnesses that he was on the bridge at the time.”

  “Yes; and charge us an arm and a leg in the process!”

  “We can afford his services. After all,” Simpson said, “we did take almost three thousand pounds from the Carpenters, and even Pugh wouldn’t ask more than that.”

  “Wouldn’t he! He asked ten thousand quid to keep you from hanging!”

  “Which I considered reasonable.”

  “Well, yes,” Briggs conceded. “But that was a murder charge. This is only attempted rape.”

  “Look, Timothy.” When Simpson used the full name, Briggs knew he was serious. “We can afford his services and we need them.”

  “Well, it isn’t just the money, either,” Briggs retorted. “It’s—” He seemed to hear himself for the first time and was shocked to the core. “Well, of course it’s the money! What am I saying? But I will admit I wouldn’t mind it nearly so much if it were going to somebody else. Pugh! That twister!”

  “Of course he’s a twister; it’s precisely why we need him. And there isn’t anyone else. Certainly none to hold a candle to Pugh. He’s the best there is. He’s never lost a case.”

  “I know. . . .” Briggs gnawed on his lip for several moments in painful silence and then suddenly looked
up, his expression of torment disappearing, to be replaced by a sunny smile. “I’ve got it!”

  “You’ve got what?”

  “The solution to our problem! The answer to Billy-boy’s dilemma! We don’t need Sir Land-pirate Pugh; he can go to the devil! We can handle this ourselves!”

  “Oh, ah?”

  Simpson studied the wizened excited little face across from his with cautious curiosity. Tim Briggs, Simpson knew, was far from stupid; in those distant halcyon days when they were all writing mystery novels Briggs’ plots were usually far and away the most exotic. Imagination the little man had, and it was just possible that he might have stumbled onto a line of action that would, indeed, both free Billy-boy from the brig and also obviate the necessity of paying over huge sums to Sir Percival Pugh. On the other hand, of course, he could also be talking through his hat.

  “What’s the brainstorm?”

  Briggs took several moments to savor his triumph. He poured himself a brandy and a glass of champagne, sipped at one and then the other, his tiny eyes glittering over the rim at Simpson. When he knew he had worked that ploy as far as it could go, he put aside his glass and leaned forward, hitching his chair closer to the table.

  “Now, look, Cliff,” he said quietly, watching his companion closely, “this idiotic charge against Billy-boy can only hope to stand up for a minute if this Mrs. Carpenter can be presented to the authorities as a mountain of virtue. Once this facade of rectitude is removed, the charge falls of its own weight. No popsy could hope for a second to get away with it. Right?”

  Simpson merely stared at him with no expression, waiting for further amplification. Briggs obliged.

  “Let me put it to you this way: if it can be shown that this Carpenter woman is in the habit of allowing other boyfriends to enjoy her favors—such as they are—her story gets pretty weak, and Billy-boy walks out of choky free as a bird. Right?”

  “I suppose so,” Simpson said slowly. “But do you have the slightest proof or even indication that Mrs. Carpenter is anything but what she appears to be—an excellent card cheat, a nasty-tempered young woman, as well as a devoted wife?”

  “No,” Briggs admitted freely. “Not at the moment. But it’s early on, you know. Proof shouldn’t be hard to come by.” Simpson frowned. “You think she’s been playing around?”

  “I haven't the faintest,” Briggs said with a grin. “But she’s going to begin to. Or, at least, it’s going to look as if she had begun to play around!” He tried to look virtuous but only succeeded in looking more wicked than ever. “One has to fight fire with fire, you know.”

  “And just who is the fire she’s going to play around with?”

  “Me,” Briggs said proudly. He seemed to recognize that honesty demanded cognizance of the possibility of failure. “If it doesn’t work, of course, then I guess it’ll have to be you. . . .”

  7

  In the novel Soho Slaughter (author: Timothy Briggs; publication date, May 1921) a miscreant alliteratively and euphemistically named Second-Story Sam, intending to rob the home of a well-to-do tycoon, quite properly took the sensible precaution of telephoning the residence first. Having cased the place thoroughly for several weeks, he knew it was the night the butler bowled and the cook visited her sister in Lambeth; but he also needed to know, quite properly, if the householders themselves were around.

  The telephone rang the requisite number of times to satisfy Second-Story Sam that the abode was, indeed, deserted. He therefore proceeded the one block from the telephone kiosk to the house, his burglar tools concealed beneath his clothing, approached the place from the rear, or garden, side, shinnied up the rainspout, applied his jimmy professionally, and in a moment had nipped into the upstairs library where the safe was located.

  His mind was on other things, such as anticipating the size and shape of the haul, and it was for this reason that he was halfway across the paneled room before he noted the presence there not only of the tycoon householder himself, but of his guest, none other than Chief Inspector “Fists” McFinch of the Burglary Division of Scotland Yard, and the scourge of all lifters in the area. Needless to say, Second-Story Sam was collared on the spot, and after he had been handcuffed and was being led to the door, he happened to glance at the telephone on the desk and to note the number. It was not the one he had dialed, and he was now paying both for failing to put on his bifocals when looking the number up in the directory and for not having rung the doorbell as a backup—or extra precautionary measure—in case of emergency.

  Timothy Briggs well recalled the result of Second-Story Sam’s oversights, and he had no intention of duplicating them. Before attempting entrance to Stateroom B-67, he fully planned upon not only telephoning but also ringing the small bell outside the door and following this up by knocking loudly on the panel. His problem at the moment, however, was not in determining the emptiness of the room before breaking in; it was managing to break in in the first place.

  Second-Story Sam, while failing in the more essential things, at least had encountered no difficulty in jimmying open the window to the library, and if it had worked for Sam, Briggs could see no reason not, at least, to give it a try. It was logical to attempt it first upon their own stateroom, however, and to this end he brought Simpson into the action.

  “You go down to the end of the corridor and cough or sneeze or drop something heavy if somebody comes about the corner,” he said. “I’m going to see if any of the table utensils from breakfast might be used for getting open a locked door.”

  “Right-O,” said Simpson amiably and ambled off down the corridor.

  Fifteen minutes of profound effort, interrupted only once, proved completely useless. The spoon failed to give purchase, the fork bent, while the butter knife, apparently designed for other purposes, merely snapped. The doors on the S.S. Sunderland were fireproof and therefore of metal, and the products of Sheffield apparently were no match for those of Clydeside.

  “Come on back, Cliff.”

  Simpson ambled back. “No go, eh?”

  “Not a prayer.” He thought a minute and then looked up. “Let me try a bit of celluloid slipped between the latch and the jamb. Got a playing card?”

  “We gave them all back, remember? How about a wine list?” Briggs considered it. “We can try. It might do.”

  The wine list did not do. In fact, it was quite evident as the two men straightened from the recalcitrant door that nothing less than a key, designed for that particular lock and no other lock, would or could do the trick. The two climbed the steps back to the Promenade Deck, wandered automatically to the bar at the aft end, dropped into their usual chairs, accepted their usual drinks, and fell into brown studies, seeking a solution to their problem.

  The most logical spot to get a key, of course, was at the purser’s desk, but the cubbyholes of this domain were well—and seemingly perpetually—guarded by a uniformed junior purser-type who apparently neither ate nor slept. There was, of course, the possibility that more than one man was in attendance at different times and that they all merely looked so much alike that one couldn’t tell them apart, but this really contributed little to the solution to the problem. It appeared obvious that in order to gain access to the key rack, the junior attendant of the moment was going to have to be lured from his post. Briggs suddenly looked up.

  “Cliff, could you reach the key rack from the front of the desk? I mean, without having to waste time going behind the counter? If I could get the purser-type’s attention off to one side for a moment, say? Or manage to have him run some sort of errand?”

  Simpson thought about it, trying to picture approximately where the cubbyhole for Stateroom B-67 was located. “I could try, I suppose.”

  “Can’t ask more than that,” Briggs said logically and came to his feet. The two men retraced their steps, leaving their drinks in a state that would assure the bar steward of their return.

  The purser’s square was empty, a not unusual condition for that time of the da
y—empty, that is, except for the attendant who smiled at them alertly from behind his counter. Simpson’s eye located the tiny box assigned to Stateroom B-67 and noted with pleasure that a key did, indeed, rest therein. He leaned against the counter gently, calculating angles and distances. It was possible. The purser smiled at them again, but it promised to be the last smile unless some task was demanded of him soon.

  “Yes, gentlemen?”

  “I do believe I’m not feeling well at all,” Briggs said, and did his best to look the part. The purser’s eyes swiveled in his direction. “I say, I don’t suppose you might dash about the corner to the dining room and get me a glass of water, could you?”

  Simpson stared at his partner in crime with a startled expression. The thought of Briggs requesting water was incredible; but then he recalled that people supposedly feeling ill quite often drank water. It was difficult to comprehend, but there you were. His eyes moved from Briggs to the uniformed purser. This one was hesitating, painfully torn between his oath to Aid Passengers, and his duty Not to Leave His Post. He attempted to resolve both his problems at once.

  “Possibly if I were to ring through to the surgeon’s office, sir?”

  “I don’t want an operation,” Briggs said curtly. “My heavens! A simple glass of water!”

  “Oh, ah!” said the purser, recognizing the logic of the other’s position.

  He sighed and slipped from behind his counter, determined— if he had to get water—to get water at a speed no other junior purser-type would duplicate for years. He disappeared about a corner. Simpson winked at Briggs in congratulation and stretched, leaning as far forward as his extreme height permitted. By going tippy-toe, it appeared that he could just make it.

  And then, “Suffering the cramp, Mr. Simpson?”

  The deep, unexpected voice behind him very nearly made Mr. Simpson suffer heart seizure as well as cramp. He straightened up guiltily and turned; Briggs had also swung about. Captain Charles Ever ton Manley-Norville, never more magnificently uniformed nor more authoritative in stature, was eyeing them from the stairway with cold sardonicism.