Meanwhile, as neither the outline of the ship, nor the flag she was flying, would be visible in the darkness, other precautions had been going forward against her being halted and boarded during the night. At Ah-moi’s orders the portholes of all the deck cabins and the upper lounge had been screened, A-lu-te was informed that for the future she must not use her sanctum in the stern after dark, and even the navigation lights were not switched on; so the yacht was totally blacked out.
Wu-ming had not emerged from his cabin all day and Gregory expected that, even if his injuries permitted him to get up, he would remain there for the rest of the voyage rather than expose himself to the loss of face inevitable as a result of his beating. The doctor was treating him with a fearsome mixture of magical formulae and herbal remedies; so, although Gregory knew that the age-long experience the Chinese had had with herbs made many of their ointments valuable, he was not surprised to learn that his victim was still in very poor shape.
However, no open mention of Wu-ming was made over dinner; and after it, as A-lu-te was to grace the upper deck lounge that night, some of the officers had got up a concert for her entertainment. Gregory was rather bored, as he had never been able to acquire an appreciation of Chinese music; but out of politeness he sat through it till it ended at about half-past eleven, and after a little desultory conversation they all went down to turn in. The sky was overcast; so it was very dark, and the ship was proceeding at only half speed through a calm sea. As they dispersed to their cabins and their chatter subsided, Gregory remembered afterwards noticing how almost unnaturally silent the ship became.
At the bridge end of the range of deck cabins there were two bathrooms. The one on the port side was reserved for the passengers and that on the starboard for the senior officers; apart from Ah-moi, who had his own. It so happened that something had gone wrong that morning with the hot-water supply to the passengers’ bathroom, and it was not until Gregory was about to go down to dinner that Foo told him that the repair had been completed; so he had not had a bath that day. As the night was so sultry, and it had been very stuffy in the blacked-out lounge, he decided to freshen himself up with a dip before going to bed.
Gregory’s cabin was at the extreme end of the port range and Wu-ming occupied the one next to him. As he passed it on his way to have his bath no sounds from it attracted his attention; neither did he expect to hear any, as it was reasonable to suppose that by that hour the wretched man had been given a few pipes of opium and gone to sleep. The next three cabins were those of engineer officers, then came Kâo’s, and lastly that of A-lu-te, who had been given the one next to the bathroom.
Having run a luke-warm bath, Gregory splashed about in it for a time then lay still while a variety of thoughts drifted through his mind. The sound of A-lu-te moving about next door came faintly to him, and he wondered a little uneasily if the kiss he had given her the previous night was going to upset their happy relationship. As was not unnatural in a virile man towards an unattached girl who was charming in both mind and body, and in whose company he had spent many weeks, he already felt attracted to her in a way that was not wholly platonic; but Erika’s death was still too near for him to be capable of falling in love with anybody. As far as A-lu-te was concerned, he felt that if she had really fallen for him she would have given some clear indication of it much sooner, but her ready response to his ill-considered impulse had shown that she was equally attracted to him. It looked therefore as if, given further encouragement, she might easily become seriously enamoured of him. That, he felt, would be most unfair to her, and, in view of Chinese convention should they be caught in a compromising situation, highly dangerous for them both. Obviously, therefore, he must watch his step, and, if she made any reference to what had occurred between them, even at the risk of temporarily hurting her, pass the matter off as a piece of fooling that had no significance.
Having taken this decision, he got out of the bath, and dried himself. He had just finished when he heard a shout. As he listened there came another and it sounded like a cry for help. Wriggling into his dressing-gown, he slipped on his shoes, pulled open the door and stepped out on deck.
Outside it was pitch black, except for one bright streak of light some fifty feet away. As far as he could judge it came from Wu-ming’s cabin. Hurrying towards it he saw that the door was wide open and its interior masked only by the curtain.
‘Are you all right?’ he called. There was no reply, so he jerked the curtain aside. Wu-ming’s bed-clothes were tumbled on the floor, but he was not there.
Gregory was still grasping the curtain when a figure came running up out of the darkness. It was little Foo, and on seeing the cabin empty, he exclaimed:
‘Then it was Mr. Wu-ming! I think he’s thrown himself overboard.’
Two more figures appeared, coming from round the end of the range of cabins. They were Kâo and his man P’ei.
‘Did you see what happened?’ Gregory asked quickly.
‘No,’ Kâo wheezed, gasping to get his breath. ‘P’ei was reading me to sleep. We heard a shout and ran out on deck. We thought it came from our side of the ship, but there was no one there. Then we ran across to the other, but there was no one there either.’
By this time shouts and the patter of running feet were coming from all directions. Two of the engineer officers came up behind Gregory and two sailors arriving from the opposite direction only just avoided cannoning into Kâo’s broad back. One of the sailors cried:
‘I told you it wasn’t this side! The struggle I heard took place over to starboard.’
‘Who was it called for help?’ asked one of the engineers.
‘It must have been Mr. Wu-ming Loo,’ Gregory replied. ‘We all know he wasn’t himself, and his cabin’s empty.’
‘He’s thrown himself overboard,’ Foo said again. ‘I feel sure I heard a splash just after those two cries.’
‘What’s all this? What’s happening here?’ boomed Ah-moi’s rich voice, and the beam of a torch suddenly lit up the group.
It was Kâo who answered. ‘No one seems to know for certain, but they say Wu-ming has jumped overboard.’
Turning, the Captain bellowed orders to the bridge for the ship to be put about and her lights switched on. Then he asked Kâo: ‘Who says so?’
‘He is not in his cabin,’ said Gregory, ‘and my man thinks he heard a splash.’
‘I thought I did too, Sir, P’ei now volunteered. ‘As I was still fully dressed I was out of the cabin before Mr. Kâo Hsüan and ran on ahead of him. But I didn’t see anyone.’
‘Yes. I heard the splash distinctly, Sir,’ one of the sailors put in. ‘And before that there were two cries for help.’
‘That’s right,’ added his mate. ‘And there was a struggle.’
‘How do you know?’ Ah-moi asked sharply. ‘You could not have seen anything, owing to the darkness.’
‘I heard it, Sir. Me and my mate had just met in the stern, him coming from the port and me from the starboard. We’d been doing a round of the ship to see that no lights were showing, on orders from the Bosun. There was a trampling of feet. It was not like a man running, but a slithering sound, as if someone was being dragged across the deck.’
‘That’s so,’ chimed in the third officer, who had just come round from the starboard side. ‘I heard that sort of noise through the porthole of my cabin just after the cries had woken me. Then I heard a splash. That’s why I ran aft instead of for’rard. I felt sure someone had gone overboard; so I raced to the stern and threw out a life-buoy.’
Muffled in a heavy coat the old doctor had now joined the group. In a calm voice he addressed Ah-moi. ‘Captain; at night in such darkness sounds are often apt to be misleading. This evening when I visited Wu-ming his mind was much disturbed. I think the explanation of this tragedy is simple. He felt that after the humiliation he had suffered he could not face the future.’
‘Then why did he cry out for help?’ protested the engineer ‘I heard him do so
distinctly.’
‘Yes, yes!’ chorused several of the others.
The look-out from the crow’s-nest had just descended his ladder. He said gruffly, ‘I heard the cries, Sir, and focused my night glasses on to the deck. It was so dark down here that I couldn’t see much, except the splash when he went over the side. But I got the impression a moment before that he was struggling with someone.’
‘If you are right, this is no case of suicide,’ said Ah-moi tersely. ‘Somebody threw him over.’
‘No!’ exclaimed Kâo in a shocked voice. ‘I cannot believe it! For taking his own life he had good cause; but who would wish to murder him?’
Slowly Ah-moi turned, looked hard at Gregory, and muttered, ‘Last night …’ He broke off there, but everyone present knew what had happened, and guessed his thought.
A pregnant silence fell. The ring of flat, broad Chinese faces about Gregory took on a new, menacing look, and he found himself the focus of a score of black, accusing eyes. All of them had found him already on the scene of the tragedy when they arrived. With a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he now recalled that the night before, in Ah-moi’s presence, he had actually threatened to throw Wu-ming overboard. It was now as clear as if they had cried it aloud that they believed him to be Wu-ming’s murderer; and he had no alibi.
12
The Captive
It was a very nasty situation. The atmosphere had suddenly become so hostile to Gregory, that for a moment he feared that the angry Chinese might close upon him and throw him overboard to join Wu-ming. But Ah-moi dissolved the group by giving a sharp order:
‘All men on duty will return to their posts. Passengers, officers and servants are to go to the upper deck lounge and wait for me there.’
As they turned away Gregory saw A-lu-te on the fringe of the group. She had been there for some minutes and heard most of what had been said, but she did not speak to him. Up in the lounge he spent a most anxious twenty minutes. Everyone was clearly averse to discussing the tragedy further for the moment; so an awkward silence prevailed while the ship slowly circled on the chance that Wu-ming might be spotted. His weak condition and broken arm made it most unlikely that he had been able to keep himself afloat for more than a few minutes; so none of them was surprised when Ah-moi came in and announced that the attempt had been abandoned as hopeless.
The Captain sat down at one of the tables and questioned everyone in turn. When he came to Foo he asked what he had been doing on deck at that hour of the night; but Foo’s explanation was quite adequate. He said that as he had nothing in common with the crew, and much disliked their crowded quarters, he had taken his sleeping mat up to a sheltered corner abaft the stern funnel; and Gregory confirmed that his servant had formed the regular habit of sleeping on deck.
Nothing fresh emerged from anything the others had to say and, with a stony stare at Gregory, Ah-moi summed matters up:
‘At night in pitch darkness a wrong interpretation may easily be put upon sounds heard from a distance. Wu-ming admittedly had grounds for making away with himself, and the cries for help that were heard may, perhaps, have been made by him after he struck the water. But we cannot ignore these reports that a struggle took place and you, Mr. Sallust, were discovered within a few yards of the spot at which he must have gone overboard. The brutality with which you treated him last night showed the depths of your hatred for him; and even after it you threatened him with death. It is——’
Suddenly A-lu-te interrupted him. She spoke quietly but firmly. ‘Honoured Sir. Permit me to inform you that there is no basis for speculating further on those lines. Mr. Sallust can have had nothing to do with this. I too heard those cries for help, and at the moment they were uttered Mr. Sallust was with me in my cabin.’
In the shocked silence that followed one could have heard a pin drop. Her compatriots stared at her with fascinated horror. It was Gregory who first found his tongue and, determined to deny her statement whatever the cost to himself, he began:
‘The lady A-lu-te is most generously——’
But Kâo cut him short and shouted him down. Turning on his niece, he cried furiously, ‘Have you no shame, girl! Such a lapse from virtue even if confessed in private would call for the severest punishment. But to proclaim it publicly shows such abandon that I’ve a mind to turn you over to the stokers in the hold!’
A-lu-te was very pale; but she stood up, turned upon him with a withering glance, and declared firmly, ‘Any shame that there is in this lies with my honourable uncle for entertaining such unworthy thoughts. Mr. Sallust told me he meant to have a bath. He had promised to lend me one of the books he bought while in San Francisco. When he came out of the bathroom I heard him pass my cabin; and as I did not feel like sleep, I called to him to bring me the book. He returned with it, opened the door of my cabin and handed it to me. He was on his way out when we heard Wu-ming’s cries.’
Turning again, she bowed to Ah-moi and, a picture of injured innocence, walked with head held high out of the lounge.
There was a moment’s awkward silence, but it was at once clear that no one present had the least doubt about the validity of her testimony. Ah-moi stood up, glanced round and said:
‘What the lady A-lu-te has told us must remove from our minds all suspicions that any of us may have entertained about Mr. Sallust. And, as far as we know, no one else on board had any motive for desiring the death of Mr. Wu-ming Loo. I think we must now accept it that those who thought they heard sounds of a struggle were mistaken, and that he took his own life.’
Gregory had been of that opinion all along; but it was with very considerable relief that he went down to his cabin, as, had it not been for A-lu-te’s lie, at best he must have remained a suspected murderer, which would have rendered his position in the ship next to intolerable.
The following morning, although the sea had become rather choppy, he went along with her to her stern lounge as usual, and as soon as they were seated, with Su-sen just out of earshot on the far side of the screen, he said in a low voice, ‘I’m most terribly grateful for what you did last night. I need hardly assure you that I’m completely innocent of Wu-ming’s death; but things looked pretty black against me, and for a time I was afraid Ah-moi meant to take some action against me merely on suspicion.’
‘I know you too well to believe you capable of so horrible a crime against a helpless man,’ she answered slowly. ‘That was why I lied to clear you. All the same, I am convinced that Wu-ming was murdered.’
‘Whatever leads you to think that?’
‘The sounds of a struggle were not accounted for.’
‘In his weak and semi-delirious state he may have fallen on his way to the rail, then dragged himself to it before climbing over.’
‘What about the sailor up in the crow’s-nest? He said he thought he saw a struggle going on through his night glasses.’
‘He must have imagined it. And Ah-moi was right last night when he wound up by saying that, apart from myself, no one had any motive for killing Wu-ming. Besides, if anyone had wanted to drag him out of his cabin and throw him overboard they would have waited until about three in the morning, when everybody but the watch would have been sound asleep.’
‘Not necessarily. If someone had chanced to run into the murderer just after the deed, at that hour, it would have been very difficult for him to explain his presence in that part of the ship. As it was done while most of us were still awake there were half a dozen people on the scene within two minutes. That enabled the murderer to mingle with them and the explanation of his presence became as plausible as anyone else’s.’
Not for the first time Gregory admired her capacity for sound reasoning. ‘That’s a point to you,’ he admitted. ‘But it doesn’t mean a thing unless you can name someone who might have had a motive for killing him.’
‘I am convinced that it was Foo,’ she replied quietly.
‘What; my poor Foo again!’ he laughed. ‘Really, you seem to h
ave quite a fixation about him. Next you’ll be trying to persuade me that after all it was he who put the poison in my cocktail.’
‘I’d wager my pearls against a string of false ones that he did.’
‘D’you mean to tell me that in spite of the way our test of Wu-ming turned out you still believe him to have been innocent?’
‘Yes. I went yesterday morning with Su-sen to inquire after him. At first he was most loath to allow me to enter his cabin; but believing that sooner or later he would have to suffer the humiliation of coming face to face with me I thought it better that he should get it over as soon as possible, and while his injuries still made him an object for sympathy. You see, whatever he may have done he was driven to it by his passion for myself. In the eyes of a woman that excuses almost anything; and I was greatly ashamed of having made his love for me the vehicle of his undoing. To restore his face I said that I had come to ask his pardon. We talked then for some time. His distress at having lost control of himself was very great, but, as he honestly believed that you were about to seduce me, understandable. Then he asked me to explain why you had accused him of putting poison in your cocktail. I told him, and he vowed that up till that moment he had not even known that you believed the cocktail to have been the cause of your illness. That led to my telling him about the banana crates. Again, he swore by his ancestors that your suspicions of him were entirely without foundation. His indignation at being thought capable of such crimes appeared so genuine that I could not help but believe him.’
After a moment, Gregory said, ‘Knowing what a kind heart you have, I can quite understand how you felt about him, but I’m sure you let it influence your judgment. After all, having received your forgiveness about the last affair, was it likely that he would voluntarily blacken himself in your eyes by making admissions about the earlier ones? In any case, he would not have dared to do so. For him to have done anything short of denying everything would have been virtually a confession that he murdered his uncle; and if you had passed that on to your uncle, when we got back to the island Mr. Wu-ming Loo would have been for the high-jump.’
The Island Where Time Stands Still Page 22
