by Rufus King
Contents
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
BOOKS BY RUFUS KING
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
ABOUT RUFUS KING
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1930, 1958 by Rufus King.
Copyright renewed (renewal #R203398).
*
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidepress.com
BOOKS BY RUFUS KING
The Lieutenant Valcour Series
Murder by the Clock
Somewhere in This House
Murder by Latitude
Murder in the Willet Family
Murder on the Yacht
Valcour Meets Murder
The Lesser Antilles Case
Profile of a Murder
The Case of the Constant God
Crime of Violence
Murder Masks Miami
Other Mysteries
The Case of the Dowager’s Etchings
The Case of the Redoubled Cross
The Deadly Dove
Design in Evil
Diagnosis Murder
Duenna to a Murder
The Faces of Danger
The Lethal Lady
Murder De Luxe
Museum Piece No 13
Murder de Luxe
The Steps to Murder
A Variety of Weapons
A Woman is Dead
Science Fiction
The Fatal Kiss Mystery
Dog Stories
North Star: A Dog Story of the Northwest
Whelp of the Winds: A Dog Story
CHAPTER 1
LAT. 32° 50' NORTH, LONG. 64° 49' WEST
Mr. Gans, the wireless man, was dead. His body, looking tired and flat, sprawled on the boat deck close by the entrance to Captain Sohme’s quarters. There were bruises upon a neck that had always been thin and ineffective. Someone had closed their fingers about his windpipe and kept them there until his lungs no longer functioned. His heart had stopped beating. He had given up what must have been (judging from his slight physique) a feeble sort of a struggle, and Mr. Gans had died.
* * * *
Up to the moment on their first night out when the elder Miss Sidderby had happened upon Mr. Gans’s tired, flat body, it had been the start of what had promised to be an extremely pleasant voyage. There were unusual things about it, unusual even for the sea, so many of whose pathways journey toward the strange.
Mrs. Poole, of course, was the focal point. The elder of the Misses Sidderby (she was always referred to by the one who accompanied her as “Margaret, my elder sister”) was very adept at making people out, but so far she had failed completely in her effort to make out Mrs. Poole.
The whole business was such nonsense—about Mrs. Poole, that is, with her wardrobe, her jewels, her husband, and her maid, and her dataless past being on board at all. It wasn’t the type ménage you find on the passenger list of a cheap little passenger-carrying freighter—ever—and yet, there it was. If nothing else beyond the mere business of Mrs. Poole and her expensive belongings (the husband looked the least expensive of all of them) being there had happened during the Eastern Bay’s tragic and uncompleted passage from Bermuda to Halifax, the voyage would have been memorable.
No one, it seemed, had seen Mrs. Poole embark when they had sailed from Hamilton; the husband, yes—the flat-featured, big-boned Nordic maid, yes—and the numberless pieces of plain, unlabeled, expensive luggage had certainly all been seen—but Mrs. Poole, no.
Miss Sidderby did have a faint recollection of a shadow done in cool lilac-colored linen passing somewhere along the deck during the momentary excitement up forward when there had been trouble with one of the cranes, and a crate of cargo had crashed down into the hold. Perhaps then…not that it mattered, really; except inasmuch as any triviality, magnified by the circumscribing plates of a vessel, mattered…
It was not until luncheon, after the hot sunbaked wharves and the impudent greens of Bermuda had misted into a memory on the lip of the clean, singing sea, that Mrs. Poole had appeared.
The elder Miss Sidderby, who capitalized her age inasmuch as her sister insisted on exploiting it, was seated at Captain Sohme’s right. As on all of the ships belonging to the Mercantile Transport Line, there was a single oblong table in the diminutive dining saloon, seating twelve people, and the several captains of the company were in the habit of gracing their heads. This was not from any personal desire to mingle with the odd lots of humanity who selected their boats as an inexpensive means for travel, but because they were ordered to do so by the company. It gave, the company claimed, a touch of distinction that was good for business.
Miss Sidderby considered the arrangement excellent. She had a neurotic passion for white drill and brass buttons, the face that surmounted them or the body that filled them being of negligible consequence. She was agreeably pleased.
Captain Sohme, on the other hand, was not. It wasn’t Miss Sidderby who annoyed him. He was used to any God’s quantity of Miss Sidderbys, and could handle them quite capably while thinking of all sorts of other and pleasanter things—it was what he referred to as the whole sweltering arrangement that annoyed him. He would ever so much rather have been forward in the officers’ mess, in his shirt sleeves, and eating again (as he had in those happier, earlier, freer days before the company had converted its ships’ waste spaces into cabins for passengers) all the pickles he wanted, without the astonished comment which the act invariably provoked from equally astonished Miss Sidderbys—“And was it a good preventive for seasickness?”
“But of course”—Miss Sidderby had just reached that point—“you eat them, dear Captain Sohme, because they keep you from, well, la mal de mer, and I wonder whether the steward could bring in some more of the little green ones.”
It was then that Mrs. Poole, imperceptibly preceded by her husband, had come in. Her dress was white, much whiter than the ivory paneling of the saloon. Her arms, her face, her legs (she wore no stockings) were dusted copper, and her hair and eyebrows were whitely blond above curiously satisfied eyes. Her age was a stationary twenty-six.
Captain Sohme stood up. He was drawn, really, to his feet by what must have constituted for him this immaculate vision—had it been lunch time on the Ile de France…but here, on the somewhat shabby and getting-disgruntled Eastern Bay… He bowed. He drew out the chair upon his left. Mrs. Poole sat down. Mr. Poole, noting that the chair next to his wife was empty, took it.
Miss Sidderby, who never really lost it, was the first to find her voice. “Well, we’re all together at last—like
a happy, happy little family.” She smiled impartially around the filled chairs.
It wasn’t Mrs. Poole’s laugh so much as what she said that proved instantly disturbing. “Are you very familiar with families?”
“Families? It’s Mrs. Poole, isn’t it?” (Mrs. Poole continued to smile, and accepted the identification—Miss Sidderby’s tone had placed it on the border of an accusation—while she arranged her napkin.) “I am Miss Sidderby and this”—she might really just as well get it over with—“is my younger sister. I simply can’t introduce you to the rest of our little coterie, but Captain Sohme will. Yes, dear Captain Sohme, I am sure, will.”
Miss Sidderby withdrew from the field into a rather commonplace cupful of soup accompanied by limp crackers, with the disturbing comment on families (disturbing because of its very obvious implications) unanswered, and Captain Sohme, thinking that there might be something to the company’s crazy idea after all, indicated a pasty-faced, middle-aged man seated on the younger Miss Sidderby’s right.
“Mr. Stickney,” said Captain Sohme.
Mr. Stickney bowed over his cup of soup. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Poole, I’m sure.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Sanford.” Captain Sohme’s slight bow included an elderly couple over-burned by the sun. Mrs. Sanford, in nondescript foulards, looked syrupy. She was more solidly built than her husband, who gave one the faintly transparent effect of a shadfly.
“Mr. Dumarque.”
Mrs. Poole had already noted Mr. Dumarque. He was the striking exception to what she had expected to find on board the ship. She had seen him once as he walked along the deck past the open door of the passage in which she had been standing. His high-heeled shoes had attracted her attention immediately. The shoes were cut low—a compromise between a pump and an oxford tie—and their heels were quite slender and very tall. There was no reason for them (Mr. Dumarque was himself verging on six feet) any more than there was for the fine black lisle stockings that showed between them and his plain gray, soft woolen knickerbockers. A black Homburg hat had topped a face that was neither sufficiently unusual nor vital enough to explain such eccentricity in dress. “Mr. Force—Mr. Wright…”
Mrs. Poole’s queerly satisfied-looking eyes left the politely blank ones of Mr. Dumarque and went on to those of Mr. Force. Mr. Force was young. She doubted whether he had even turned twenty. She wondered what chance or purpose placed him, with his youth, as a voyager at sea… “Mr. Wright”… There was nothing arresting about Mr. Wright, in his plump forties, his forehead bulging somewhat, his undersized nose shiny… Ugly people didn’t annoy her; they simply failed to exist, even when they were clever. What a pother the world raised about cleverness. Cats were clever, and who cared, and most clever people had a lot of cat in them—the uglier, usually, the cleverer, and the cleverer the cattier—compensation presumably on the part of Nature who’d mixed the pudding wrong and…
“And now, Mrs. Poole, we come to our celebrity.”
Mrs. Poole smiled at the last person. She felt very amiable, very satisfied. She rather liked the look of the quiet, presentable, somewhat elderly man whose gray eyes were smiling into hers.
“A celebrity?” she said.
“Yes, Mrs. Poole. This is Lieutenant Valcour, of the New York Police.”
“Oh.” She prevented too much of the water from spilling, and carefully put the glass back on the table. “Really. My home, Mr. Valcour, is in New York, too.”
Lieutenant Valcour’s bow was impersonal and polite. It overlapped and included young Mr. Poole. “Yes, Mrs. Poole,” he said, “I know.”
CHAPTER 2
LAT. 32° 52' NORTH, LONG. 64° 48' WEST
Captain Sohme, partially satiated with pickles (he curbed his stride until the third meal out) returned to his quarters immediately after lunch. He nodded to young Swithers, the second officer, who was pensively contemplating nothing at the starboard end of the bridge, and went inside his cabin.
It was a pleasant cabin, paneled in dark woods, roomy, and moderately cool even in the hottest weather. An electric fan blurred silently on a bracket shelf and methodically shafted the air with draft.
Captain Sohme took off his jacket. It fitted quite tightly at its (and his) middle, and there was an appreciable rounding of his figure as he emerged from it. He removed a stiff collar, a black tie, loosened a set of vermilion and green striped braces, replaced the white oxfords on his feet with grass sandals, drew the curtains over the brighter of the cabin’s ports, and lay down on its bunk. Peace sifted gently about him, and sounds blended into their familiar melody: the little creaks and complainings of the Eastern Bay—the sea dividing at the ship’s sharp stem and shivering along her length like the restless tearing of an endless piece of silk—the pulse of engines—and the sing of a gentle westerly breeze through topgear—soothing—a divine gift to digestive slumber—
“Damn!”
The knock on his cabin door was repeated. What blessed fool…no member of the ship’s complement would dare…this sacred hour when delicious pickles were assimilated to the gentle song the old lady sang when at sea…
“Come in!”
Lieutenant Valcour opened the door and accustomed his eyes to the comparative blackness of the cool dim room.
“Captain Sohme?” The captain’s white-clad body looked as if it had been done architecturally in elevation; its pale bulk on the bunk grew recognizable. “You must forgive me for this intrusion, but my business is somewhat urgent.”
“Come in, Lieutenant, come in.”
Valcour, who was already in, closed the cabin door. He remained standing while Captain Sohme swung a surprised pair of legs over the edge of the bunk and rested grass-slippered feet on the floor.
“Urgent? I do not understand.” His mind was fogged with balked sleep. It fled to the weather—to storms, collision, fire—the normal perils which one met for the good of one’s soul at sea. But there was nothing; just the whispering, the pulse, the gentle song of westerly breeze through rigging.
Valcour’s voice was very gentle, too. It carried to the red and prominent ears of Captain Sohme, and no farther.
“The matter concerns a criminal whom I believe you have on board,” he said.
Captain Sohme sat very still. Patterned pools reflected from the waters busily went on with their dance against the ceiling. The second officer’s shoes squeaked faintly, familiarly, in transit across the near-by bridge. Criminal—fuss—bothersome worries of landsmen intruding upon the quiet orderliness of shipboard—
“What sort of a criminal?” he said.
“It’s a man we want in New York for murder.”
“Murder?” Captain Sohme’s squinted eyes opened widely. “So.” Mingled with the surprise of it was a mounting sense of outrage. “Why have you left him free until he should come aboard my ship?” he said. The sense of outrage was mounting higher. Exactness—orderliness—the very backbone of a successful passage was bending. Beyond the acknowledgably moody weather there should be no surprises at sea.
“That couldn’t be helped, Captain.”
Valcour took a cigarette from a leather case, Captain Sohme accepted one, and held it daintily pinched between a great thumb and large forefinger until it was lighted.
“Why not?” he said. The cigarette was wetly clutched between thick wet lips. He did not wait for an answer. He stood up. “Come with me and we will put this man in irons at once.”
“I don’t know who he is.”
Captain Sohme stared curiously. He had had the impression that Valcour was taking the voyage for a rest. Was it, he wondered, for a mental rest? All callings had their obsessions…
Valcour was speaking again:
“We haven’t any description of him. They’re waiting at headquarters for an eye witness, who was attacked at the same time as the murdered man, to recover sufficiently to give them one. Then it will be wirelessed on here to me.”
The cigarette had reached a point of wetness where it had to be discarde
d. Captain Sohme replaced it with a cigar. “I do not understand you at all, Lieutenant. If no one knows what this man looks like, what makes you think he is on board this ship?”
Valcour, as a desirable example for Captain Sohme, kept his voice quite low. “There was an unmailed letter which he lost on the scene of the crime.”
The ship’s bell, with its peculiar effect of syncopation, was struck by the constantly bored Mr. Swithers three times. Its sound cut sharply into the cabin’s deep hush, and Captain Sohme definitely gave up his midday nap. He stared with frankly puzzled eyes at Valcour. He went to a locker and filled two liqueur glasses with brandy. Valcour accepted one, and Captain Sohme delicately held the other fragile glass between his thick strong fingers. “Tell me,” he said, “what was in that letter.”
“A curious message, Captain—unfinished. It went like this: ‘Death comes again and again when one is young, even though the body does not die. I know where you are and I am coming to you because—’ The message breaks off there.”
Captain Sohme’s face flushed a deeper vermilion. “But that is childish foolishness, Lieutenant,” he said.
“On the contrary, we believe that it is extremely serious. The envelope had been stamped and addressed, but the house indicated by the address was closed. It took us, up at headquarters, five days to trace the whereabouts of the person who lived there. She is a woman of great wealth and, also, a woman who is incurably romantic. Her movements have been willful and erratic all her life—I might also add erotic. We learned finally that she was in Bermuda and I came on at once—to find it advisable to sail on this ship.”
“This woman, she is on this ship?”
“Yes, Captain. The envelope was addressed to Mrs. Victor Barton. That was the name, before her recent divorce, of the present Mrs. Poole.”
Captain Sohme fled instinctively to arms—his one splendid vision: the only authentic vision that the Mercantile Transport Line had ever vouchsafed him—“But man alive, you surely can’t connect anything criminal with her.”
“I’m not. I simply believe that the man we want is in her vicinity, and her present vicinity is on board this ship.”
“You have proof that this man went to Bermuda and is now on board here?”
