by Molly Thynne
“Keep your tail up. The voyage isn’t over yet, you know.”
The speaker, a spare, long-limbed cattle rancher, swung his chair round and stretched his legs. The half tolerant, half contemptuous note in his voice would have roused the anger of either of the other players, but it was a long time since the man he addressed had been in a position to resent the attitude of anyone undiscriminating enough to put up with his company.
He stood, swaying slightly on his feet, the sweat glistening on his white face, his dull eyes fixed vacantly on the glass he had just emptied.
“When I say I’m through, I mean it,” he said heavily. “And, what’s more …”
He broke off, evidently thinking better of what he had been about to say. For a moment he stood staring at the men who had been his boon companions for the greater part of the voyage. He seemed to have some difficulty in finding his voice, but when he did speak it was to the point.
“Curse you!” he said gently, his face devoid of all expression. But there was no doubt as to his sincerity. Then, without another word, he turned and left them.
As he threaded his way clumsily in and out of the tables to the door, the laughter of the three men followed him and he cursed them again, softly, but venomously.
He climbed to the upper deck and leaned over the rail, gazing out into the soft, starlit darkness. At first the cool air made him dizzy and it was some time before his brain began to clear and he was able to take stock of his position. As usual, the more he looked at it, the less he liked it. He had been pretty flush when he came on board and had won a very nice little sum during the first week. Then his luck had changed and he had been fool enough to go on playing. And there wasn’t a soul on board he could touch for a penny.
His mind went back to the country he had left and tears of maudlin self-pity filled his eyes. He had been happy there, he told himself, until his wife had died and left him alone in the world. He had buried her, it is true, without a tear and had grudged her even the expense of the cheap funeral. It was only after her death that he began to miss her, or rather her pitiful earnings that had kept him in drinks during the greater part of their married life. For one short year he had supported her, working as correspondence clerk in a South American store, then he had thrown up his job, or the job had thrown up him, she had never been able to arrive at the true facts of the case, and it had dawned on her that she must go back to the stage if they were to live at all. For fifteen years the plan had worked admirably, from his point of view, and then she had died and left him stranded on a cold world. As he brooded over his loss, sagging against the rail of the Enriqueta, her desertion struck him as infinitely pathetic. After her death he had drifted along somehow, taking some curious bypaths on his way, until by chance he had fallen in with a member of his wife’s old company and had managed to touch him for a loan. With characteristic optimism he had invested the proceeds in a lottery ticket and had won enough to pay for his passage home and leave him a considerable sum in hand.
Then, casting about for a further means of support, he had remembered his one remaining relative, a widowed sister. He had cabled to her, announcing his advent, in the role of heartbroken widower, and had shaken the dust of Buenos Aires off his feet, in the haste of his departure conveniently overlooking the repayment of the money he had borrowed from his wife’s old friend. And now he found himself stranded once more, this time on the high seas and with no prospect of replenishing his empty pockets.
He pitied himself profoundly as he gazed across the dark waters, but even self-commiseration palls after a time and his mind began to dwell sentimentally on the sister he had not seen for nearly twenty years. He had last heard from her on the occasion of his father’s death three years before. Incidentally, the old man’s will had been infernally unjust, but he had never blamed her for that and certainly her letter had been, on the whole, friendly. It was apparent to him now that he had always been far fonder of her than she had realized. After all, blood was thicker than water, he reflected complacently, blissfully unaware that his cable was still undelivered, his sister having been in her grave for nearly two years. His name not being mentioned in her will, her lawyers had not thought it necessary to inform him of her death.
Somewhat sobered, but still a prey to a gentle melancholy induced by the contemplation of his sad plight, he roused himself and made his way to his cabin.
To reach it he had to pass a row of staterooms on the upper deck. Though his brain had cleared considerably since he had left the smoking room, his legs were still inclined to play him false and, half-way down the alley, he lurched suddenly and cannoned with his full weight against one of the stateroom doors.
The catch must have been insecurely fastened, for it gave under the impact and he would have fallen headlong into the cabin if he had not clutched at the sill to steady himself.
Sober enough to realize that he had committed an unwarrantable intrusion, he began to stammer a clumsy explanation.
Then his eyes fell on the man whose privacy he had invaded and the apology died on his lips.
“Good Lord,” he cried. “You! Well, of all the luck! My dear chap, where on earth have you been hiding yourself?”
His voice was warm with the delighted surprise of a confirmed cadger who scents an unexpected victim.
“Doing yourself proud, I must say,” he went on, oblivious of the ominous silence with which his effusive greeting had been received.
Uninvited, he pushed his way into the cabin, closing the door behind him, and cast an approving eye round the luxurious stateroom.
“Pretty snug, what?” he commented.
Then, as his fuddled brain slowly took in certain aspects of the scene before him, his pale eyes narrowed and his expression changed to one of crafty appreciation.
“I say, old chap,” he whispered. There was a wealth of meaning in his voice now. “Let me in on this. Where’s it all come from …”
The sentence died away in a gasp, ending in a choking gurgle. Without a word, the man he addressed, who had neither opened his lips nor moved from his position opposite the door since the intruder’s unceremonious entry into his cabin, launched himself at the other’s throat. The attack was so swift and unexpected that it caught the other man unprepared. In any case he was in no condition to defend himself.
There was a thud as his head struck the panelling of the door behind him, then the elbow of his assailant hit the electric light switch and plunged the cabin into darkness.
For a space only the scraping of the two men’s feet upon the floor indicated the silent struggle that was in progress. It ceased abruptly with the dull sound of a heavy fall.
Then silence.
Published by Dean Street Press 2016
Copyright © 1928 Molly Thynne
Introduction Copyright © 2016 Curtis Evans
All Rights Reserved
This ebook is published by licence, issued under the UK Orphan Works Licensing Scheme.
First published in 1928 by Hutchinson under the title The Red Dwarf
Cover by DSP
ISBN 978 1 911413 52 3
www.deanstreetpress.co.uk
