ADVENTURE TALES #5

by John Gregory Betancourt

  She bent forward and studied his face closely in the darkness.

  “You are a good man,” she said at length. “I can tell. I think you are a poet.”

  Lavender squirmed and feebly ges­ticulated. Before he could deny the am­azing charge, she had hurried on.

  “Yes, I am afraid. Last night — after I had retired — someone was in my cab­in!”

  “A thief?”

  The words came eagerly from the detective’s lips. In his in­terest, he ­for­got her preposterous notion about his pro­fession.

  “I think so. But nothing was taken away. He did not find what he sought.”

  Lavender’s interest deepened. “What did he seek?” he asked.

  “My jewels,” said the baroness. “What else?”

  “They are valuable then?”

  “They are very valuable, my friend. They are valuable because it would cost a fortune to replace them; but they are priceless because they are my family jew­els. I speak of replacing them, but believe me, they could not be re­placed.”

  My friend’s cap came off to the breeze. “Tell me how you know there was someone in your cabin,” he said.

  “I awoke suddenly — I don’t know why I awoke. I suppose I felt someone there. There were little sounds in the room — soft, brushing sounds — and breathing. Light, so light, I could scar­cely catch it. It was only for an instant, then the man was gone. I must have made some little sound myself that alarmed him. As he went, I almost saw him — you understand? He seemed to glide through the door, which he had to open to escape. He made no sound, and what I saw was just black against gray as the door opened. I only half saw him — the other half I felt. You understand?”

  “Yes,” said Lavender, “I un­der­stand perfectly.

  But how can you be sure it was a man? Probably it was — but are you sure?”

  “I think so — that is all. It is my feeling that tells me it was a man. I can­not explain — but if it had been a wo­man, I think I should have known.”

  Lavender nodded. “No doubt you are right,” he said. “Whom have you told of this, Baroness?”

  “I have told no one but yourselves. You will advise me whom I should tell?”

  “You had better tell Mr. Crown, the purser. He will, if he thinks best, tell the captain, I suppose, or whoever handles investigations of this sort. At any rate, Mr. Crown is the man to whom the first report should be made. I am sure he will do whatever is necessary. Probably he will have his own way of getting at the man who did this. I would see the purser at once, Baroness, if I were you.”

  She rose promptly. “Thank you. I am sure your advice is good. I shall go to Mr. Crown at once. You are very good.”

  “Meanwhile,” said Lavender, “we shall, of course, say nothing. Good night, Baroness, and I hope you will not be disturbed again.”

  We rose with her, and watched her as she tripped away to the companion­way. With a wave of her hand, she de­scended the steps and vanished. La­v­en­der shoved me down into my chair.

  “Stay here, Gilly,” he said. “I’ll be back shortly.”

  A moment later he, too, ha­d dis­ap­peared in the direction of the lower deck.

  *****

  Well, it had come! My unthinking pro­phecy had borne fruit, and Laven­der was already involved. Where would it end? I lay back in my deck chair and earnestly consigned the baroness and her family jewels to perdition. It oc­curred to me that it had been nothing less than criminal for her to come on board our ship with the in­fernal things. She could just as well have waited for the Maltania! And La­v­ender might then have been allowed to have his vacation in peace.

  In ten minutes, the subject of my pat­er­nal flutterings was back.

  “She went, all right,” said he la­con­ically.

  “I should hope she would,” I re­torted. “Did you think she wouldn’t?”

  “I wanted to be sure, Gilly,” ans­wered Lavender kindly. “I’m wonder­ing why she didn’t go to the purser first; why she singled me out for her attention; why she didn’t put her blessed jewels in the purser’s charge when she came on board — it’s the thing to do. I’m also wondering how she knows me. For I’m convinced that she does know me, in spite of her as­sertion that I was singled out be­cause I look like a ‘good man.’ I am more than ever convinced that she recognized me when I came on board. She wanted to speak to me then, although she had no attempted jewel robbery to report yes­terday. Really, it’s all very interest­ing.”

  “Yes,” I admitted, “it is. Do you think there will be another attempt, Jim­mie?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” said he thoughtfully. “In fact, I would almost bet on it.”

  *****

  II

  IN THE dining saloon, the next mor­n­ing, the company had percept­i­bly thinned out, for a stiff breeze and a choppy sea had sprung up in the night. At the purser’s table, however, we sat six strong, as we had begun the voyage. Crown, the purser, pink complexioned and almost ridiculously fat, beamed good nature upon his charges, from his seat at the head of the table. He was in jovial spirits.

  “If there were a prize offered for the table that showed no desertions,” said he with a chuckle, “I think we should win.”

  Beverley of Toronto, who sat at my left, growled humorously. “There are sev­eral days ahead of us,” he significantly observed. “I, for one, do not intend to crow.”

  Lavender, who had been the last one to sit down, was looking around the room. The Major’s wife, thinking him to be looking in her direction, raised her brows and smiled; and he caught the gesture, and smiled and nod­ded back. He spoke to the purser, beside whom he sat.

  “Two of the notables have not ­ma­t­erialized,” he remarked casually. “The bar­on­ess and the clergyman are miss­ing.”

  The purser looked startled.

  “Yes,” he answered, “I noticed that. Murchison is ill, I hear; but I don’t ­understand the baroness’ absence. She looked to me like a sailor.”

  He seemed worried for a moment, and looked back at Lavender as if long­ing to confide in him; but the presence of the others at the table prevented. Lavender himself, having given the offi­cer the hint he intended, devoted himself to his breakfast. From time to time, however, during the progress of the meal, he glanced toward the baroness’ seat at a neighboring table, as if hoping to see that it had been occupied during the mo­ments of his inattention. But the breakfast hour passed away and the ob­ject of his solicitude did not ap­pear. The purser, too, continued to be worried, although he kept up a lively flow of conversation.

  Outside the saloon door, the de­tective and the ship’s officer paused while the passengers dispersed.

  “She may be ill, of course,” said the purser, at length. It was almost humorously obvious that he would have been relieved to hear that the baroness was very ill indeed.

  “Of course,” agreed Lavender, “but we had better find out. She told you, I suppose, that she came to me first?”

  “Yes,” said the purser, “one of my assistants tried to look after her, but she insisted on seeing me. I’m glad she was so cautious about it. Usually, a wo­man gets excited, tells everybody her difficulties, and then in loud tones de­mands to see the captain. As a result, the trouble — whatever it is — is all over the ship in no time, and everybody is nervous. I sup­pose I’m a fool, Mr. Lavender, but some­how I’m nervous now, myself. I hope there’s no further trouble.”

  “What did you do, last night?”

  “Spoke to the night watchman. He’s supposed to have had an eye on her cab­in all night. Of course, he couldn’t watch it every minute, and do the rest of his work, too; but he was ordered to notice it particularly every time he passed, and to hang around a bit each time. I fancy he did it; he’s a good man.”

  “And the baroness herself?”

  “Refused, in spite of all my persuasion, to place her jewels in charge of my office. Of course, in the cir­cum­stances, if anything does happen t
o them, it’s her own lookout. Just the same; that sort of thing, if it gets out, gives a ship a black eye, so to speak.”

  “Well,” said Lavender, “we’d better have a look at her cabin. Nobody seems to be interested in our movements. Come on, Gilly!” He started up the stairs to the cabin deck to have a look at her cabin. Nobody seemed to be interested in our movements. “Who is her stewardess, Purser?”

  “Mrs. King, a nice old soul. I spoke to her, too, but all I said was that the baroness was nervous, and to do what she could for her. We’ll see Mrs. King at once.”

  He sighed and rolled heavily away, and we followed closely at his heels, down the corridors of the lurching ­ves­sel to the stewardesses’ sitting room. Mrs. King, however, had nothing to tell us.

  “She didn’t call,” said the woman, “and I didn’t go near her.”

  “She wasn’t down to breakfast this morning,” explained the purser, “and we thought perhaps she was ill. You haven’t been to her cabin yet, this morn­ing?”

  “No, sir,” replied Mrs. King, “hav­ing had the lady’s own orders not to wake her if she didn’t choose to get up.”

  “I see. Well, you must go to her now, and see if she needs you. She may be ill, or she may just have missed the breakfast gong and be sleeping. Give her my compliments, and say that I was inquiring for her.”

  The woman seemed reluctant, and hung back for a moment; then she moved slowly off to the door of the cab­in numbered B–12, where she paused un­certainly.

  “All right,” said the purser im­pa­tiently, “knock, and then go in!”

  Mrs. King timidly knocked, and again stopped as if in apprehension.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Laven­der, in his friendliest tones, seeing that the woman was frightened.

  The ship lurched heavily, lay over for a long moment, and came up again. We all braced our legs and clung to the near­est woodwork.

  “She doesn’t — answer,” said the mat­ron faintly.

  “Open the door!” ordered the pur­ser.

  Thus adjured, Mrs. King turned the handle, and with a terrific effort put her head inside the door. In an instant the head was withdrawn. The woman’s face was pale and scared. The purser looked angry. Lavender, how­ever, knew what had happened. With a quick frown, he pushed past the motionless woman and entered the little cabin, the purser and I at his heels. We filled the place.

  There was no particular disorder. The port stood half open, as it had stood through the night, to allow ­ventilation. On the upholstered wall bench stood the baroness’ bags. Her trunk half projected from beneath the bunk. The curtains blew gently with a soft, swishing sound.

  Even in the bunk itself there was small disorder. Yet beneath the white cov­er­ings, with tossed hair and dis­torted features, the Baroness Borsolini lay dead.

  For an instant, we all stood in si­lence. Then, from the corridor with­out, sounded the frightened whimper of Mrs. King, the stewardess. Laven­der beck­oned her inside, and she docilely obeyed.

  “Stay here until we have finished,” he quietly ordered.

  “Good God!” said Crown, the pur­ser, in awed dismay. Then he continued to stare, without speech, at the bed.

  Lavender bent over the silent fig­ure of the woman who, only the night ­before, had whispered her trouble to him.

  “Strangled,” he murmured softly. “Killed without a sound.”

  “Good God!” said the purser again.

  Once more the stewardess’ scared whimper sounded.

  “Don’t, please,” said my friend, gently. To me, he said, “Gilly, can you say how long she has been dead?”

  Anticipating the question, I had been examining the body, although with­out touching it. Now I stepped forward for a closer examination.

  “Six or seven hours, at least,” I said at length. “The ship’s doctor — Brown — will tell you better than I.”

  “We’d better have him in,” said La­v­ender, “although you are probably right. Excuse me, Mr. Crown,” he added. “I don’t mean to usurp your position in this matter.”

  The purser shuddered. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll be glad to do what­ever you suggest.”

  “Then get the doctor here, quietly, and ask Rittenhouse if he cares to come down. What else there is to do, you will know better than I — that is, I suppose you will have to report to the captain, or something of the sort. You’d better take Mrs. King out of this, too, Crown. I would like to talk to her a little later, though.”

  He looked keenly at the frightened, shaking woman, but his touch on her arm as he uttered his last words was gentle. I knew that he was wondering about her hesitation before opening the door. I, too, had been wondering. Was it merely a woman’s uncanny pre­science, or something more sig­nif­i­cant?

  When the purser and the matron had gone away, he turned to me.

  “A queer, unhappy case, Gilly,” he quietly remarked. “Do you sense it? The beginning, if I am not mistaken, of some­thing very curious indeed.”

  Without further words, he turned from the bed and began a swift search of the cabin. His nimble fingers flew as he worked, and under his touch the possessions of the murdered baroness came to view and disappeared again with skillful method. Apparently he found nothing to guide him.

  When he had finished, he said, “The question is, of course: did he, or she, or they — whichever may have been the case — find what they were looking for?”

  “The jewels are gone?” I asked. “You don’t find them?”

  “They are not here,” he replied, “un­less they are very cleverly hidden. The second question we are bound to consider, Gilly, is: were there any jew­els?” That startled me. He answered my surprised glance.

  “We have no proof that she ever had any jewels. She was vague enough about them, when she spoke to us — vague about their value — and she re­fused to deposit them with the purser, which was her proper course. We have only her word for it that she possessed the jew­els, and that she carried them with her. None the less,” he added firmly, “she may have had them, and they may have been stolen. Certainly she was not murdered as a matter of whim.”

  “I think you suspect something that you are not mentioning, Jimmie,” I re­marked, with another glance at the dead woman.

  He followed the glance. “Yes,” he replied, “you are right. I believe this all began somewhere on shore. Almost the most important thing to be done, is to establish the identity of this wo­man.”

  “You doubt that she is —?”

  “The Baroness Borsolini? Well, yes and no. She may have been just what she claimed to be, and yet nobody in particular. ‘Baroness,’ in Italy, means no­thing of importance. The last Ital­ian baron I knew was floor-walker in a Chicago ­department store. And, of course, she may not have been a baroness at all. My doubt of the poor wo­man, I will admit, goes back to the fact that she seemed to know me. However, if we are fortunate, we shall know all about her before long.”

  Again I looked a question.

  “Last night,” said he, “I sent a wire­less, in code, to Inspector Gallery, in New York. I was curious about the baroness and her tale, and suspecting further trouble, I tried to anticipate some of our difficulties.”

  “You anticipated — this?”

  “No,” he flared quickly. “Not this, by Heaven! If I had, Gilly, I’d have stood guard myself all night long. I an­ticipated another attempt on the jew­els,” he added in lower tones. “An­other attempt on ­what­ever it is this woman had that her murderer wanted. We must have a talk with that night watchman, too, be­fore long. I wonder who occupied the cabin across the way?”

  “We can soon discover that,” said I; and at that moment the purser came back with the doctor.

  Brown, a fussy little man with a beard the color of his name, had heard the story from the purser, and was prepared for what he saw. He conducted a swift and skillful examination that proved his ability, and verified my statement as to the time the woman had been d
ead.

  “Let us assume seven hours, then,” said Lavender. “That would fix the mur­der at about two in the morning — possibly a little earlier, possibly a little later. Where the devil would the watch­man have been at that hour? No doubt he had just passed on, for certainly the ­mur­derer would have been watching for him. By the way, Crown, who occupies B–14?”

  The baroness’ cabin was at the cor­ner of an intersecting passage, and its entrance was off the smaller corridor. B–14 occupied the corresponding ­po­sition across the passage, and was the opposite cabin to which Lavender had referred.

  “I’ll find out for you,” answered the purser; but the doctor replied to the question.

  “A clergyman,” he said. “Mur­chi­son, of some place in Iowa. He’s ill. He had me in, last night.”

  “Last night?” echoed my friend.

  “Yes,” said the doctor, “and it can’t have been very long before — before this happened! About one o’clock, I think. It’s not nice to think that this may even have been going on, while I was just across the way.”

  “How is he?”

  “Oh, he’s sick enough, but it’s the usual thing. It was new to him, though, and I suppose he thought he was going to die. The poor chap is pretty low.”

  “He may have heard something, if he was awake,” suggested Lavender. “Can he be questioned?”

  “Oh, yes, but I doubt if he heard anything but his own groans. Some­body’s with him now. I heard talking as I came by.”

  “I told Major Rittenhouse,” volunteered the purser. “He said he’d be right down. He ought to have been here by this time.”

  “We’d better go to my stateroom,” said Lavender. “There’s nothing further to be learned here, I think. I shall want to talk with the night watchman, Purser, when I can get to him. I suppose he’s asleep now. Doctor Brown, would you care to speak to your pa­tient across the way? Ask him if he heard anything in the night, you know; and press the point. Any trifle may be important.”

  The door opened and the tall fig­ure of Major Rittenhouse entered softly. He closed the door quietly behind him.

  “I heard the last question,” he re­marked, then glanced at the bed. For just an instant, his eyes rested on the dead woman, then without emotion he continued. “I have already questioned Mr. Murchison, Lavender. It occurred to me as a good idea to look up the nearest neighbor. In a case like this, time is of considerable im­port­ance. Murchi­son was awake most of the night, and had the doctor in, once. About four o’clock he got up and staggered around his room a bit, then opened his door. He saw some­one leav­ing this cabin, and sup­posed the baroness to be ill, too, for he thought no more about it.”