by Otto Penzler
He beat it out in a hurry, grinding his hands together. Should have thought of it sooner, before he’d let them haul it in there! He’d ask to be changed, that was all. Get the kind he wanted, away from that bloodhound and by himself. Sure they could switch him, they must have some last-minute cancellations! Always did.
The purser spread out a chart for him when he put it to him in his office, seemed about to do what he wanted; Sherman felt better than he had at any time since five that morning. Then suddenly he looked up at him as though he’d just remembered something. “You Mr. Sherman, 42-A?” Babe nodded. “Sorry, we’re booked solid; you’ll have to stay in there.” He put the chart away.
Arguing was no use. He knew what had happened; Fowler and his badge again. He’d foreseen this move, beat him to it, blocked it! “You weren’t bragging, brother, when you called yourself a clairvoyant!” he thought bitterly. But the guy couldn’t actually know what was in the trunk, what was making him act like this? Just a hunch? Just the fact that he’d sized Babe up as off-color, and noticed the frantic way Babe had tried to keep the trunk with him when he boarded the train? Just the way any dick baited anyone on the other side of the fence, not sure but always hoping for the worst? Well, he was asking for it and he was going to get it—and not the way he expected, either. He’d foreclosed his own life by nailing Babe down in the cabin with him!
Just the same, he felt the need of a good stiff pick-up. They were already under way when he found his way into the bar, the jurisdiction of the French Republic was slipping behind them, it was just that pot-bellied old gent now with the brass buttons, the captain. The straight brandy put him in shape; the hell with both sides of the pond! Once he got rid of her there wouldn’t be any evidence left, he could beat any extradition rap they tried to slap on him. Water scotches a trail in more ways than one.
He spent the afternoon between the bar and 42, to make sure Fowler didn’t try to tackle the trunk with a chisel or pick the lock while his back was turned. But the dick didn’t go near the cabin, stayed out of sight the whole time. The sun, even going down, was still plenty hot; Sherman opened the window as wide as it would go and turned on the electric fan above the door. It would have to be tonight, for plenty of good reasons! One of the least was that he couldn’t keep checking on the thing like this every five minutes without going bughouse.
A steward went all over the ship pounding a portable dinner gong, and Sherman went back to the cabin, more to keep his eye on Fowler than to freshen up. He wouldn’t have put on one of his other suits now even if he could have gotten at it.
Fowler came in, went around on his side of the trunk, and stripped to his undershirt. Sherman heard a rustle and a click, and he’d turned off the fan and pulled down the shade. Almost instantaneously the place got stuffy.
Babe said, “What’s the idea? You ain’t that chilly in July!”
Fowler gave him a long, searching look across the top of the trunk. “You seem to want ventilation pretty badly,” he said, very low.
It hit Sherman, like everything the guy seemed to say, and he forgot what he was doing for a minute, splashed water on his hair from force of habit. When it was all ganged up in front of his eyes, he remembered his comb was in there, too, he didn’t have a thing out. He tried combing with his fingers and it wouldn’t work. He stalled around while the dick slicked his own, waiting for him to get out and leave it behind.
The dick did some stalling of his own. It started to turn itself an endurance, the second dinner gong went banging by outside the window. Sherman, nerves tight as elastic bands, thought: “What the hell is he up to?” His own shirt was hanging on a hook by the door, he saw Fowler glance at it just once, but didn’t get the idea in time. Fowler parked a little bottle of liquid shoe-blackening on the extreme edge of the trunk, stopper out, right opposite the shirt. Then he brushed past between the two, elbows slightly out. He had no right to come around on that side; it was Sherman’s side of the place. The shirt slipped off the hook and the shoe-polish toppled and dumped itself on top of it on the floor. The shirt came up black and white, mostly black, in his hand.
“Oops, sorry!” he apologized smoothly. “Now I’ve done it—have it laundered for you—”
Sherman got the idea too late, he’d maneuvered him into opening the trunk in his presence and getting a clean one out, or else giving up his evening meal; he couldn’t go in there wearing that piebald thing!
He jerked the thing away from the detective, gave him a push that sent him staggering backward, and went after him arm poised to sock him. “I saw you! Y’did that purposely!” he snarled. He realized that he was giving himself away, lowered his arm. “Hand over one of yours,” he ordered grimly.
Fowler shook his head, couldn’t keep the upward tilt from showing at the corners of his mouth though. “One thing I never do, let anybody else wear my things.” He fished out a couple of singles. “I’ll pay you for it, or I’ll have it laundered for you—” Then very smoothly, “Matter, mean to say you haven’t got another one in that young bungalow of yours?”
Sherman got a grip on himself; this wasn’t the time or the place. After all, he still held the trump in his own hands—and that was whether the trunk was to be opened or to stay closed. He punched the bell for the steward and sat down on the edge of his berth, pale but leering.
“Bring me my meal in here, I can’t make the dining saloon.”
Fowler shrugged on his coat and went out, not looking quite so pleased with himself as he had a minute ago. Sherman knew, just the same, that his own actions had only cinched the suspicions lurking in the other’s mind about the trunk. The first round had been the detective’s after all.
That thought, and having to eat with his dinner tray parked on top the trunk—there was no other place for it—squelched the little appetite he’d had to begin with. He couldn’t swallow, had to beat it around the other side and stick his head out the window, breathing in fresh air, to get rid of the mental images that had begun popping into his dome.
“Going soft, am I?” he gritted. After a while he pulled his head in again. There were a few minor things he could do right now, while the dick was in the dining room, even if the main job had to wait for tonight. Tonight Fowler would be right in here on top of him, it would have to be done with lightning-like rapidity. He’d better get started now, paving the way.
5
He closed the window and fastened it, so the shade wouldn’t blow in on him. He set the untouched tray of food down outside the door, then locked it. The boat was a pre-war model reconditioned, one of the indications of this was the footwide grilled vent that pierced the three inside partitions just below the ceiling line—a continuous slitted band that encircled the place except on the deck side. It was the best they could do in 1914 to get a little circulation into the air. He couldn’t do anything about that, but it was well over anyone’s head.
He got out his keys and turned the trunk so that it opened away from the door. He squatted down, took a deep breath, touched the key to the lock, swung back the bolts, and parted the trunk. He didn’t look up, picked up a handkerchief, unfolded it, and spread it over her face. He got out a couple of the shirts that had been farthest away, protected by other things, and his comb, and then he took a file that was in there and went to work on the pearls.
It was hard even to force any two of them far enough apart to get at the platinum wire underneath without damaging them in the filing, but he managed to force a split in their ranks right alongside the clasp, which stood out a little because of its setting. The wire itself was no great obstacle, it was just getting the file in at it. In five minutes the place he had tackled wore out under the friction, and it shattered to invisibility. Three pearls dropped off before he could catch them and rolled some place on the floor. He let them go for a minute, poised the file to change hands with it and unwind the gnarled necklace—and heard Fowler saying quietly: “What’s the idea of the lock-out? Do I get in, or what?”
&nbs
p; His face was peering in and down at Sherman through that damnable slotted ventilator, high up but on a line with the middle of the door, smiling—but not a smile of friendliness or good omen.
Sherman died a little then inside himself, as he would never die again, not even if a day came when he would be kneeling under the high knife at Vincennes or sitting in the electric chair at Ossining. Something inside him curled up, but because there was no blade or voltage to follow the shock, he went ahead breathing and thinking.
His eyes traveled downward from Fowler’s outlined face to the top of the trunk in a straight line. Her handkerchief-masked-head was well below it on his side, her legs stayed flat up against her as he’d first folded them, from long confinement and now rigor. He thought: “He doesn’t see her from where he is. He can’t or he wouldn’t be smiling like that!”
But the opening ran all around, on the side of him and in back of him. He must be up on a stool out there; all he’d have to do would be jump down, shift it farther around to where he could see, and spring up on it again. If he did that in time, he could do it much quicker than Babe could get the trunk closed. “He hasn’t thought of it yet!” Babe told himself frantically. “Oh, Joseph and Mary, keep it from occurring to him! If I can hold him up there just a split minute, keep talking to him, not give him time to think of it—”
His eyes bored into Fowler’s trying to hold him by that slight ocular magnetism any two people looking at each other have. He said very slowly: “I’ll tell you why I locked the door like that; just a minute before you showed up—”
Whang! The two halves of the trunk came together between his outstretched arms. The rest of it was just reflex action, snapping the bolts home, twisting the key in the lock. He went down lower on his haunches and panted like a fish out of water.
He went over to the door and opened it, still weak on his pins. Fowler got down off the folding stool he’d dragged up. If he was disappointed, he didn’t show it.
“I didn’t hear you knock,” Sherman said. There was no use throwing himself at him right now, absolutely none, it would be a fatal mistake. “I’ll get him tonight—late,” he said to himself.
Fowler answered insolently. “Why knock, when you know ahead of time the door’s going to be locked? You never get to see things that way.”
“More of that mind-reading stuff.” Sherman tried to keep the thing as matter-of-fact as possible between them, for his own sake, not let it get out of bounds and go haywire before he was ready. “I don’t mind telling you you’re getting on my nerves, buddy.”
He spotted one of the pearls, picked it up before Fowler saw what it was, put it in his pocket. “First you gum up a good shirt on me. Then you pull a Peeping Tom act—” He kept walking aimlessly around, eyes to the floor. He saw the second one and pocketed that, too, with a swift snake of the arm. His voice rose to a querulous protest. “What are you, some kind of a stool pigeon? Am I marked lousy, or what?” Trying to make it sound like no more than the natural beef of an unjustly persecuted person.
Fowler said from his side of the trunk: “Couple little things like that shouldn’t get on your nerves—” pause— ”unless you’ve got something else on them already.”
Sherman didn’t answer that one, there didn’t seem to be a satisfactory one for it. He couldn’t locate the third pearl either—if there had been one. He wasn’t sure any more whether two or three had rolled off her neck.
He flung himself down on his bunk, lay there on his back sending up rings of cigarette smoke at the ceiling. Fowler, hidden on his side of the trunk, belched once or twice, moved around a little, finally began rattling the pages of a magazine. The ship steamed westward, out into the open Atlantic. They both lay there, waiting, waiting….
The human noises around them grew less after an hour or so; suddenly the deck lights outside the window went out without warning. It was midnight. A minute later, Sherman heard the door open and close, and Fowler had gone out of the cabin. He sat up and looked across the trunk. He’d left his coat and vest and tie on his berth—gone to the washroom. He listened, heard his footsteps die away down the oilcloth-covered passageway outside. That was exactly what Babe Sherman was waiting for.
He swung his legs down and made a beeline across the cabin, didn’t bother locking the door this time, it was quiet enough now to hear him coming back anyway. He went through that coat and vest with a series of deft scoops, one to a pocket, that showed how good he must have once been at the dip racket. The badge was almost the first thing he hit, settling his doubts on that score once and for all—if he’d still had any left. New York badge, city dick. Sherman had no gun with him, didn’t work that way as a rule. He thought, “He almost certainly has. If I could only locate it before he comes back—” He didn’t intend to use it in any case—too much noise—but unless he got his hands on it ahead of time, it was going to be very risky business!
The fool had left one of his two valises open under the bunk, ready to haul out his pajamas! Sherman went all through it in no time flat, without messing it too much either. Not in it. It was either in the second one, or he carried it in a hip-holster, but probably the former was the case. Then one of those hunches that at times visit the deserving and the undeserving alike, smote him from nowhere; he tipped the upper end of the mattress back and put his hand on it! A minute later it was broken and the cartridges were spilling out into his palm. He jammed it closed, put it back, and heaved himself back onto his own bunk just as the slap-slap of Fowler’s footsteps started back along the passageway. “Now, buddy!” he thought grimly.
Fowler finished undressing and got under the covers. “Gosh, the air’s stale in here!” he muttered, more to himself than Sherman. “Seems to get ranker by the minute!”
“Whaddya want me to do, hand yuh a bunch of violets?” Babe snarled viciously. He got up and went out, for appearance’s sake, then stayed just outside the door, head bent, listening. Fowler didn’t make a move, at least not to or at the trunk. Sherman took good aim out through the open window that gave onto the little cubicle between their cabin and the next, let fly with the handful of bullets. They cleared the deck beautifully, every last one of them.
He went back in again, saw that Fowler already had his eyes closed, faking it probably. He took off his coat and shoes, put out the light, lay down like he was. The motion of the boat, and the black and orange frieze of the ventilator high up near the ceiling—the corridor lights stayed on all night—were all that remained. And the breathing of two mortal enemies, the stalker and the stalked….
Sherman, who had cursed the ventilator to hell and back after it had nearly betrayed him that time, now suddenly found that it was going to come in handy after all. It let in just enough light, once your eyes got used to the change, so that it wouldn’t be necessary to turn on the cabin light again when the time came to get her out. He couldn’t have risked that under any circumstances, even if it took him half the night to find the keyhole of the trunk with the key. This way it wouldn’t.
The guy was right at that, though, it was getting noticeable in here.
He planned it step by step first, without moving his shoulders from the berth. Get rid of her first and then attend to the dick later was the best way. She couldn’t wait, the dick could. They had six days to go yet, and the dick couldn’t just drop from sight without it backfiring in some way. Down here wasn’t the right spot either. They might run into heavy weather in a day or two, and if he watched his opportunity he might be able to catch the dick alone on the upper deck after the lights went out. Even raise a “Man overboard!” after he went in, if it seemed advisable. Or if not, be the first to report his disappearance the day after.
So now for her. He knew the set-up on these boats. There was always a steward on night duty at the far end of the corridor, to answer any possible calls. He’d have to be gotten out of the way to begin with, sent all the way down to the pantry for something, if possible. Yet he mustn’t rap on the door here in answer to t
he call and wake up the flatfoot. And he mustn’t come back too quickly and catch Babe out of the cabin—although that was the lesser danger of the two and could always be explained away by the washroom. Now for it; nothing like knowing every step in advance, couldn’t be caught off-base that way.
6
There is an art in being able to tell by a person’s breathing if he is asleep or just pretending to be; it was one of Sherman’s many little accomplishments. But there is another art, too, that goes with it—that of being able to breathe so you fool the person doing the listening. This, possibly, may have been the other man’s accomplishment. His breathing deepened, got scratchier—but very slowly. It got into its stride, and little occasional burblings welled up in it, very artistically. Not snores by any means, just catches in the larynx. Sherman, up on his elbow, thought: “He’s off. He couldn’t breathe that way for very long if he wasn’t—be too much of a strain.”
He got up off the bunk and put on his coat, so the white of his undershirt wouldn’t show. He picked up the shirt that Fowler had ruined and balled it up tightly into fist-size, or not much bigger. He got out the trunk key and put it down on the floor right in front of the trunk, between his bent legs. He spit muffedly into his free hand, soaked the hollow of it. Then he gave that a half-turn up against the lock and each of the clamps. The lock opened quietly enough, but the clamps had a snap to them that the saliva alone wouldn’t take care of. He smothered them under the ganged-up shirt as he pressed each one back. He got it down to a tiny click. Then he took a long, hard look over at Fowler through the gloom. That suction was still working in his throat.
