by Rufus King
“Mrs. Sanford’s statement is quite correct, sir. I am, I trust, a happily wicked man.”
“Nonsense, nonsense, my dear Mr. Dumarque. You must accept my apologies for Sue. She is very much upset—we are all of us upset.” His nervous laughter glittered like light. “Why shouldn’t we all be upset?—what with death after death and one thing and another, and such a relief, my dear Valcour, to hear you say that this last one was from natural causes, and if you could only prove that the first one was too you don’t know how it will improve the ventilation in our cabin tonight to have the door open again—so stuffy—”
“Be still, Horace,” said Mrs. Sanford, again hoisting her soup.
“No, no, now really, Sue dear…” Mr. Sanford sputtered out like a damped fuse.
“As to Mr. Gans’s death, Mr. Sanford, Captain Sohme is in agreement with me that there should be—well, a semi-official investigation,” Valcour said.
“What sort of an investigation is that?” said Mr. Stickney.
“Alibis, Mr. Stickney.”
“Alibis? How can you have alibis on a ship?” Mr. Stickney appealed to the table at large. “Where else can you be when you’re on a ship but there?”
Valcour said absently, “The matter is relative. There are as many different places on a ship as there are in a city.” He was staring curiously at Captain Sohme, who had just come into the dining saloon and who was taking his place at the head of the table. “Only whereas in a city distances are measured in miles, on shipboard they’re measured in feet.” (“No, no, steward,” Captain Sohme was saying, “nothing but a pot of hot black tea—very strong, as strong as you can make it.”) “If you want to be academic about it, you can take Mr. Gans’s body as a center and draw a radius around it of, say, fifty feet. The alibis to be established must place everyone, at the moment of the crime, outside the circumference of that circle.”
“With the exception, of course…” Mr. Dumarque said, and smiled.
Valcour smiled back at him, and finished the sentence, “Of the murderer.”
“And apart from Miss Sidderby…” Dumarque said.
Mr. Sanford twittered at once: “Oh, but my dear Mr. Dumarque, you can’t, you positively can’t—that dear little lady—”
“Miss Sidderby,” Valcour said, “will be questioned with the rest.”
“Of us?” said Mr. Stickney.
“Of certain members of the crew, and ourselves.”
“And who’ll question you, Valcour?” Mr. Stickney wanted to know.
Valcour smiled. “My own alibi is pretty good. I happened to be playing bridge with Captain Sohme at the time of Mr. Gans’s death.”
“Yes, yes, Valcour, that is true.” Captain Sohme stared vaguely down the table’s length. “I have just had a most distressing experience,” he said. “That poor, poor little lady!”
“Which one?” said Mr. Stickney, who was getting sick of both poor-poor and dear-little ladies.
“Mrs. Poole. I have just come from talking with her in Miss Sidderby’s cabin. I would gladly do what she wishes, but”—Captain Sohme’s sigh was a mild blast—“she wishes for impossible things. Her will, yes; that I could get for her, but as for the rest…” The dining saloon was very still, and creaks were magnified by the stillness as the ship rose and fell in her steady head-on drive into the mild and long-swelled seas.
“Mrs. Poole wanted her will, Captain?”
“Yes, Valcour. I opened the safe at once and got it for her. I felt as if I were soothing a child (it is difficult to express it) but I hope that I will never live to pass through such an unhappy half hour again. Would you believe me, but that poor little lady looks one hundred years older—thank you, no, steward, I do not want another single thing except this tea.”
“I wonder why she wanted her will.” Mrs. Sanford’s voice was a mist drifting through mists.
“She wanted it,” Captain Sohme said, “so that it could be buried with the deceased. I am never through with being astonished at the queer straws which are clutched at as an anodyne for grief. It took me half an hour to persuade her that the burial would have to take place at sea. It was not pleasant, that half hour. I could concede nothing, you will understand, beyond permission that the burial be delayed until tomorrow afternoon. She believes, in her distraction, that we may yet sight some ship. Some ship,” he added vaguely, with a brief glance toward Mrs. Sanford, “that would have conveniences for keeping the deceased until a burial could be arranged for ashore. I will trouble you, please, Mr. Dumarque, for that sugar bowl.”
Mr. Dumarque reached a pale white hand out for the sugar. The bowl eluded him, and started slipping gently sideways across the table. The sudden roll was bewildering. “What a whopper!” said Wright, and Captain Sohme’s eyes were sudden pinpoints.
It came again—another one—and unfinished soup spilled gently into Mr. Sanford’s lap. “Mercy!” he said. “What’s happened to the sea?”
Captain Sohme was standing. “It is nothing—nothing.” His voice did its best to conceal his anxiety. His years of training rose up and stood by him steadily—that splendid code: the passengers, and there must be no panic. “The explanation is simple, gentlemen. It is just that we are riding in the trough of the waves, when we should be,” he added, as he walked as calmly as possible toward the door, “taking them head on.”
CHAPTER 27
LAT. 35° 11' NORTH, LONG. 64° 28' WEST
The chart room was a vault enclosing tension when Valcour reached it, and no indecision or confusion was lingering upon Captain Sohme’s face. “At last, Valcour,” he said, “I shall be justified to act.” Valcour looked from Captain Sohme to the two figures who, still dazed, were sitting on the chart room’s settee. The helmsman was pressing a wet towel to a welt on top of his head, and young Swithers, with blank-looking eyes, pressed a similar towel to his forehead at the point where it had struck a stanchion when he had fallen. Another man, Valcour knew, had taken the helmsman’s place at the wheel, and the first officer was standing watch, in place of young Swithers, on the bridge.
“You have questioned them?” Valcour said.
“They have just come to, Valcour.”
“What happened?”
“That I do not know. Mr. Swithers, here, I found on the deck at the starboard end of the bridge and occupied with groaning. This seaman, and I believe his name is Peters”—(“Yes, sir,” young Peters admitted, in shreds.)—“I found on the deck by the wheel, and he too was groaning, and the wheel it had been lashed.”
The wheel it had been lashed—Valcour pinned on the phrase. “That isn’t customary, is it?” he said.
“To lash the wheel? Dear God, no!” Captain Sohme’s face was blazing. “And when it comes to my attention the man who did it—”
“Why would anyone do it?”
“To hold the ship on her course, man. If the lashings had not come undone, it would have been longer yet before we knew that this monkey business had happened.”
“The idea was to gain time, then.” (For what?) “Yes, yes, Valcour—but why? Mr. Swithers, you are now maybe able to speak?”
Young Swithers was still foggy. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“Then in the dear name of God you will please tell us what is the meaning of all this?”
“I got hit on the top of the head, sir.”
“Dear man, that much we know—”
“Well it’s all I know, too.” His head was a cage filled with sharp-clawed animals in panic.
“Have you any idea when it happened, Mr. Swithers?” Valcour said.
“Just after two bells.”
Valcour looked at his watch. It was twenty minutes of two. “Say about five or ten minutes after one, Mr. Swithers?”
“Less than that.” (Say anything you like, Swithers’s manner implied, as he groaned and put his hands up to his head.)
“Then that was about forty minutes ago.” Captain Sohme gave a start which, due to his great size, was almost convulsive. “The s
afe!” he said.
Valcour looked at him curiously. “You forgot to close it?”
“Yes, yes, Valcour—and the time coincides, too—it was about forty minutes ago that I opened the safe to get Mrs. Poole’s will. In my excitement about that dear little lady’s misery it is possible that I left its door open. Come—”
They left the chart room and ran down the ladder to the boat deck. The door to Captain Sohme’s quarters was closed. He opened it, and they went inside. “You see?” he said.
Valcour stared at the open safe door. “Was there anything of value in it?”
Captain Sohme, in purple, was feverishly pawing at the safe’s contents. “The ship’s money, Valcour—over two thousand dollars, man—it is gone. Dear God, when the owners they shall hear of this! Death, yes—that they can bear with appropriate sympathies and wreaths, that is but the loss of life—but gold—to lose gold.” His voice was harshly bitter.
“The money was in gold, Captain?”
“Yes, yes—for foreign ports we usually pay off and do our business in gold. It is what we always carry.”
The fog was smothering him in blankets. “This doesn’t make sense, Captain,” Valcour said. He went over and closed the cabin door and shot its bolt. (“Ruin—this is ruin,” Captain Sohme was muttering.) “Listen to me please, Captain. There is no sense to this robbery at all.”
“Sense, man? There is no sense to stealing gold?”
“Try and take it easy, Captain. Your gold must still be on the ship, mustn’t it?”
“Ha!” The idea came as a drop of blessed relief. “You are right, Valcour, and we will search for it inch by inch.”
“Will you sit down please, Captain, for a moment?”
Captain Sohme was on his way to the door. “We will commence this search at once.”
“You don’t want the gold thrown overboard, do you?”
The sentence was a brake, and Captain Sohme stopped just short of the door. “What do you mean, Valcour?”
“If you’ll sit down for a moment…”
“This thief would steal to throw the gold overboard? We are again in insanities?”
“Precisely. Let me explain the thing to you as I see it.”
“I pray you to be quick, Valcour.”
“All right. Suppose that you yourself were this thief. You look in here, you see that the safe door is open, you find the gold and take it. Then what would you do?”
“Run like hell, man, and hide it,” Captain Sohme said promptly.
Valcour shrugged. “Exactly.”
“Well?”
“You wouldn’t, after stealing the gold, mount the ladder outside here to the bridge, hit the officer on watch on the head, hit the helmsman on the head, and lash the wheel, would you?”
Captain Sohme sank heavily into a chair. “I would not,” he said. “But this thief, perhaps he did those things first?”
“Why should he? If your purpose was to rob the safe, wouldn’t you first make sure that this room was unoccupied, and wouldn’t it be obvious to you then that the safe was open? Why pull all the rest of that stuff?”
“I do not care, Valcour. The important thing is the gold, and I want it.”
“I think that you should care, Captain. There is a deeper significance in this matter than robbery. I advise that we question the helmsman at once. You said his name was Peters?”
Captain Sohme went to a speaking tube that connected with the bridge. He blew into it expertly. “Peters,” he said, “you will send him down here, please, at once, if he is finished with groaning about that bump.” He went over to the door and unbolted it. He sat down. “In your mind, Valcour, you are connecting this incident with the deaths?”
“Yes, Captain. Toody is at the bottom of this, too.”
“Toody?” (Was the man mad?) “What is this Toody?”
Valcour was conscious that his smile was more than just half inane. “Toody is a long story,” he said. “I think it had better keep.”
“It is a pet name, perhaps?”
“Yes, Captain.” Valcour felt wretchedly giddy “It’s a little pet name for the murderer.”
“You must not joke at such a moment, Valcour. I am distressed about that gold… Come in!” The door opened and Peters was in the room, with the wet towel arranged turbanwise on his head.
“What happened to you, Peters?” Captain Sohme said.
“Captain, I got hit on the top of the head.”
Captain Sohme’s great fingers clutched, for want of a substitute, the arms of his chair. “Do not drive me crazy, man,” he said.
“But I did, Captain.” Young Peters, who had a flair for the dramatic, ripped the towel from his head. “Look at the bump.”
Captain Sohme, who felt cold to bumps, waved the approaching head away. “The details, man—the details!”
“Sir?”
“How did it happen? Who did it?”
“How should I know, sir?”
“How—stop fixing that damn thing in loops and listen to me when I am speaking—how can somebody hit you on the head and you do not know about it?”
“It’s the God’s truth, Captain—there I was at the wheel, and the next thing I knew I wasn’t, and I ought to go soak this head in water.”
Captain Sohme was in complete agreement. “Well, Valcour?” he said, when they were alone again.
“I would like to see the manner in which the wheel was lashed, Captain. Shall we go up?”
They mounted to the bridge and went into the wheelhouse. The line which had been used to lash the wheel had been removed. It lay in one corner on the floor. Valcour went over and picked it up. “What about these knots, Captain?” he said. “Are they O.K.?”
“O.K., Valcour?”
“Yes, were they made by a seaman?”
Captain Sohme stared at the knots. “They’re grannies,” he said.
“Sailors don’t make grannies, do they?”
“Dear God, no.”
“Do you mind if I cut this line?” Valcour took a penknife from his pocket.
“No. Why?”
“I want to save these knots.” Valcour cut the knots from the line and put them in his pocket. “They’re more likely to have been made by one of the passengers, wouldn’t you say, than by one of the crew?”
They had left the wheel and were starting down again for the boat deck. Captain Sohme stopped when halfway down the ladder. “Valcour,” he said, “that is true, and I do not mind telling you that I have changed my mind. This business, it is coming out into the open. Two bumps on the head and the theft of gold are things that a man can understand. We will conduct that inquiry which you spoke about before lunch, and we will search the entire ship and every person on it for that gold. We are no longer going through fog, man. Our course is plain.”
Valcour’s smile was without humor. “On the contrary, Captain. Of all the strange things that have happened since the beginning of this case, nothing, than this present incident, has served to make the business more obscure.” They had reached the gray and misted boat deck. The sea was a pewter plate beyond the rail. “I’m beginning to change places with you. You’ll have me trying to persuade you about such things as ‘forces’ next.”
“You may well laugh, Valcour.” Now that definite things had happened, and that definite steps were to be taken, Captain Sohme felt quite human and sane again.
“I am not laughing, Captain.” Valcour’s face was very grave. “I tell you in all seriousness that the single detail of lashing that wheel has made me uneasy. Have you ever felt a sense of fear, when there didn’t seem to be any reason for it?”
“Not since I have been a child, Valcour.”
“Well,” Valcour said, “I’m feeling it now.”
CHAPTER 28
LAT. 35° 12' NORTH, LONG. 64° 28' WEST
Cable from Commissioner of the New York Police Department to port authorities at Bermuda:
REQUEST YOU ADVISE US WHETHER COMMERCIAL OR GOVERNMENTAL P
LANE CAN BE CHARTERED OUR EXPENSE TO FOLLOW NORMAL COURSE SS EASTERN BAY AND ATTEMPT DROP CODE MESSAGE INCLUDED IN OUR PREVIOUS CABLE ON HER DECK STOP REALIZE ATTEMPT MUST BE MADE BY PLANE FROM BERMUDA IMMEDIATELY OR NOT AT ALL STOP AGAIN EMPHASIZE URGENCY OF CASE STOP IF UNFAVORABLE WEATHER CONDITIONS OR OTHER CAUSES PREVENT PLEASE ADVISE US AT ONCE AND WE WILL TRANSFER OUR EFFORTS TO UNITED STATES COASTAL RADIO STATIONS AND AIRPORTS STOP REALIZE AND APPRECIATE FULLY EXTENT OF YOUR COOPERATION
* * * *
The inquiry began at half-past two. At Valcour’s request (it amounted to insistence, almost) Captain Sohme was present. It gave, Valcour told him, an official character to the proceeding which it otherwise would have lacked. Personally, Captain Sohme did not want to be there at all; he wanted to be with the recovered Mr. Swithers while Mr. Swithers and the chief steward were searching the passengers’ cabins and the ship for the stolen gold.
Valcour sat beside Captain Sohme at the forward end of the small lounge. The leaden sky and air made of it a cubicle of murk which the ceiling lights, that had been turned on, scarcely affected at all, and the sea was a woman’s glass with the ship a tense, unhappy atom creeping, turn by turn, along its flat insensate floor.
“Everything,” said Valcour, “is known on board a ship.” His voice was quiet and yet it carried to the further corner of the saloon where Mr. Dumarque and Mr. Wright were seated on a cushioned settee. His eyes rested lightly on the Sanfords and the Misses Sidderby (the maid had taken the elder Miss Sidderby’s place in watching Mrs. Poole) who were grouped about a table, and then passed on to Mr. Stickney and young Force who, at a smaller table, were engaged in smoking an endless chain of cigarettes. “By ‘everything,’” Valcour went on, “I mean ordinary happenings and events. And that is why this inquiry will differ so radically from any that would have been conducted were we ashore.”
“You’re darn well tootin’ it will so far as I’m concerned,” said Mr. Stickney. “If you’ve got any idea in your head, Valcour, that you’re going to put me through any third-degree stuff you’re all wet.”
“I’m sorry that you persist in this attitude, Mr. Stickney. None of us can force you to answer any questions, but I wish you would let me point out why it would be advantageous for you to do so.”
