The Traces of Merrilee

by Herbert Brean

  There was a light knock at the door.

  I said, “Come in.”

  The first officer opened it. He took one pace into the parlor. An expressionless crewman stood outside.

  “M’sieu.”

  We looked at each other. I think at that moment we hated each other.

  “M’sieu. The second search is complete. She is not aboard. It is certain.”

  I didn’t try to talk; there was all the time left in eternity in which to say things. I finally said, “Thanks for letting me know. Personally.”

  Only revenge was left.

  “Do you know, m’sieu...her relatives must be notified. Do you know where they are?”

  “She had none. Not even an ex-husband. And her mother is dead. Nothing can be done now.”

  “Mais oui.” He touched his cap and the door closed behind him, leaving a vacuum.

  * * * *

  After a time I got up and turned off all the lights. Maybe I was trying to hide from myself.

  It was sightlessly dark in the room. I wanted company. No, I didn’t want company. The cat purred from somewhere. I wanted—I didn’t know what I wanted.

  “Here, cat. Here, Stowaway. Where are you?”

  The purring stopped. Then it started again. Storm noise drowned it out; then I heard it, distantly. Then it was drowned out.

  In one of the bedrooms? Both doors were closed. I listened at each. No.

  The purring was louder in the parlor. I fumbled for my flashlight on the night stand and walked around slowly, making a game of it, snapping the light on periodically to look on the bed and under it, around the chairs, even in the life-belt rack. The purring was loudest at the closet door.

  “Come out. Come out, Stowaway.”

  The purring stopped abruptly, and I fumbled for the doorknob.

  As I did, rockets flashed, my heart stopped, a million cannon exploded.

  The cat never purred except when it was petted.

  The first officer had searched the entire suite—but not this parlor closet.

  I wrenched the door open and shafted the flashlight down. There was the cat, blinking in the sudden light, tail curled under her, lying on the stomach of someone sprawled on the closet floor.

  The someone smiled a beautiful, sleepy smile. Her spun-gold hair was tousled childishly.

  “I’ve had such a nice nap among your shoes,” said Merrilee. “What time is it?”

  She stroked the cat again, and the cat began to purr again.

  I helped her up. I held her. I kissed her—almost tearfully.

  “How the hell long have you been here?”

  “I don’t know. I went to sleep.”

  “Since you left the movie?”

  “No. The movie is where I got scared—when they started paging me. After a while I couldn’t sit still. If they were going to hurt me, they might hurt your friends, too. I just wanted to hide somewhere. I had the key you gave me. So I started up the stairs for here.

  “But the public-address system kept paging me and I—I panicked. I didn’t even get this far; I ducked into the ladies’ room down the hall and just—just sat in one of the booths. For over half an hour. I took a tranquilizer.”

  “Don’t you know they searched the whole damned ship for you, twice—from keel to crow’s-nest? Twice!”

  “Twice? Gee! That shows they do care, doesn’t it?”

  She meant it. I was so relieved I wanted to slap her—with love.

  “That must be why this woman came into the john and called out my name.”

  “It probably was a maid.”

  “I thought she might be one of those hunting me. That’s what gave me the nerve to leave. I got your key all ready and peeked out. No one was in sight. I ran like a bunny down the corridor and let myself in. No one was around except your friend Tom, on the bed.”

  This, of course, would be after I had left with the first officer and before the women came in.

  “I tiptoed around and found I could be comfortable in the closet. Honest—your loafers are as soft as any pillow. The cat came in with me. She’s cute. I took another tranquilizer and went to sleep.

  “After a while I heard you and your friend talking, but far away. When I woke up just now I felt safe and comfortable. I patted the cat. She likes me.”

  Even while she talked, I was thinking far beyond this immediate situation. Thank heaven I had given her the key. Quite aside from possibly protecting her, it had begun a series of events that could miraculously change things. We’d keep her here. No one but ourselves—no one—would know. What that would do to the opposition!

  They knew she was gone. But they knew they didn’t have her, and had not killed her. Had their terror tactics worked so that she had killed herself? They might think so, and act accordingly.

  The hall door kicked open. Tom stood in the doorway, holding two large Martinis. He looked at her for ten long seconds, then came forward.

  He handed her one drink. She smiled her thanks.

  His eyes never leaving her, Tom drank the other one nonstop.

  The Ultimate Traces

  “There! there!” said Holmes, soothingly, patting him upon the shoulder. “It was too bad to spring it on you like this; but Watson here will tell you that I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.”

  —Arthur Conan Doyle

  “The Naval Treaty”

  Chapter 21

  Night Watch

  Betsy and Twit-Twit came out of their rooms in response to Tom’s knocks, and I won’t try to describe their expressions. I locked the outside door and we sat babbling light-headedly for a couple of minutes.

  Above all, there was the wonderful sense of relief.

  And Merrilee’s touching gratitude, like that of a little girl attending the first birthday party ever held for her, that we had been grieved and frightened.

  The instant I had seen her I began to get, for the first time, the scent of victory. I did not dare say what was in my mind, because it might cause something to show in their faces before the night was out.

  So, during those few minutes of happy conversation, I mentioned only that I thought it might be better if we had dinner by ourselves in the suite and kept Merrilee’s presence a secret from everyone, especially the waiter and steward.

  “One other thing,” I said. “If you’ll just take my word for it, it’s kind of important that we keep a close watch on the radio shack.”

  “Why?” said Tom.

  “Because the opposition may send a message very quickly. Perhaps it has already. Maybe not. I need to know who sends it, or by what intermediary.”

  “So?”

  “I’m going topside and camp near the radio office. All of you stay here, order another drink, and then dinner. But order only for four. And when the waiter comes, Merrilee, you be well out of sight so he doesn’t see you. Like in the closet.”

  She made an impish smile.

  “You can take the cat if you like. But all order generously, because we must make four dinners do for five people. After you four have eaten, Tom will come up and spell me while I grab a bite. Dine well. This is going to be a heavy night.”

  But the dinner-by-turns proved unnecessary.

  I went up to the dark sun deck, pulled a deck chair into a far corner, and slouched in it with my coat pulled up around my ears. It was cold, with spatters of rain and salt spray, and the ship was pitching with regular irregularity. But I didn’t care. The end was approaching and, as I lay watching for whoever might approach the radio shack and wondering whether he (or she?) already had, I thought of bits of stagecraft that might help us. One I liked particularly.

  Then a tall muffled figure came up the little port-side stair and moved toward the bridge. He walked head down into the gale. It was the first officer.

  I go
t up and yelled “Hey!” not too loudly, and he wheeled.

  “Do me a favor. In the Merrilee Moore investigation.”

  “M’sieu!”

  I’d startled him.

  “I want to know who sent or received cables, or made telephone calls from the ship, since around four o’clock. I know that’s a lot to ask. But I’m not prying into other people’s personal affairs. I’m gradually locating the person responsible for Miss Moore’s disappearance and also for two murders.”

  We surveyed each other a long moment. Perhaps the light wasn’t very good. Then he said, “Come,” and walked into the radio shack.

  He talked in French with the radio officer and turned to me with a sheaf of papers.

  “There ’as been only one telephone this afternoon, m’sieu,” he said. “It was to Beirut, this telephone, and it was made by a passenger, a Lebanese, who deals in oil and travels with us often. I think probably not important.”

  “I think probably not. The cables?”

  “It is understood you ’ave never seen them?”

  “It is understood.” He handed me five paper flimsies.

  Two were to the same Wall Street broker from the same name and ordered sales of two batches of the same stock. The third read:

  YOUR WINE MADE MY DINNER STOP MUCH LOVE STOP ABBY

  That one I handed back to him. Somebody aboard had been cabled some wine. “You can check later if someone named Abby received the wine.”

  “I can check now.” He talked to the radio man and got a considerable reply in French.

  “It seems this is the young lady in charge of the other young-lady students—their chaperone. The telegrapher received the wine order yesterday by the wireless and Mademoiselle Elwyn herself sent the reply from here this afternoon.”

  “Okay.”

  I looked at the next one. It was brief and pointed, and it was addressed to what sounded like a legal firm, at a midtown New York address.

  HEREWITH RESIGNATION STOP WHOEVER YOU ARE STOP PENNYPACKER

  I read the last one. It was addressed to a small Scottish village outside Edinburgh, and read tersely:

  ARRIVE MONDAY WEEK STOP MACKENZIE

  It sounded authentic.

  “Will you arrange for me to see whatever other messages are sent tonight?”

  He looked unhappy, shrugged the French shrug, spoke to the radio man, who looked at me and said, “Oui, m’sieu,” and we left.

  I thanked him; he looked uncomfortable and headed for the bridge, and I went to the chair I had occupied to put it back in the rack. As I lifted it, someone else came up the starboard ladder and clattered lamely on high heels across the deck toward the radio office.

  It was Mrs. Cotton-Hair Pennypacker.

  When she’d gone inside, I put the chair down softly and waited in my corner, glad that my topcoat was dark blue. She came out and ducked hurriedly down the ladder. I went back into the radio office and held out my hand. The radio man handed me the message she had just turned in.

  It was addressed to one John Schneider at the New York office of Roger Kane Productions and said simply:

  LOVELY TRIP STOP ALL IS WELL EDITH

  “Thank you.”

  He saluted gravely, and I said that I might be back a little later, and he smiled with good humor. I went back to our suite, feeling pretty good.

  They had ordered more than enough for five people and were into the profiteroles when I came in. I squeezed a chair into a corner of the table set for four, sipped a glass of Montrachet, and told Tom to forget about the watch on the radio shack. Now we had more interesting things to do. There was lobster mayonnaise, with a rack of lamb and Chambertin to follow; I ate hungrily.

  It was getting on to nine-thirty when we finished and upended the wine bottles in the ice buckets.

  “I have a little errand,” I said. “Won’t take a minute. Tom, want to come along?”

  I explained what I had in mind on the way to the smoking room. I also asked him a question.

  “Look, you know everything about the market.”

  “I do?”

  “Sure. So what’s a ‘straddle’?”

  “Well, it’s relatively rare and usually occurs when someone playing the market has a strong hunch or information that a certain stock is definitely going up or definitely down. The straddle gives the speculator a chance to profit either way.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “To put it simply for mental giants like yourself, the speculator buys an option to buy a certain number of shares of a given stock at a future date at a certain price. And at the same time, he buys another option—to sell the same amount of the same stock at the same future date at the same price.”

  “It sounds like a complicated road to nowhere.”

  “Not if the stock is volatile, as we say in the street. Suppose the straddle is for six months. In that time, the stock may go down, and the straddler can buy it more cheaply than the specified option price. So he makes money if it goes back up. And if it goes up far enough, then he will also make money when he buys at the specified price. And the reverse is also true.”

  “I think I get it, but don’t try to explain the reverse, or I’ll fall off.”

  “It’s a rather unusual stock-market maneuver,” said Tom, “but familiar enough to money men.”

  In the smoking room, we bought two decks of ship’s cards from the steward, and Tom bought us into the ship’s pool again because he said he felt this was a lucky night. I wondered if he was right.

  Then he went back to the suite to figure out exactly what needed to be done to the cards, and I went hunting.

  It wasn’t easy. Not because the quarry was hard to track down, but because the storm was approaching a climax. Even using the lines strung on the stairways, you had to walk—and sometimes were compelled to run-in a quick-footed crouch, and the ship’s personnel all wore the fixed mechanical smiles of men under strain. I tried the dining salon first and scored immediately.

  The room was half-empty. Not many passengers felt hungry tonight. Cotton-Hair Pennypacker was there, with Steak-Lover and his wife, both of whom were eating broiled lobster for once, over great white bibs tucked under their respective chins. Mr. Bu and his breath-taking friend were at a nearby table and, farther away, the other Pennypacker.

  I went to Cotton-Hair’s table. “We had dinner at home tonight,” I said. “Our lady friends are not feeling too well. None of us are. So Tom and I were thinking of a little poker to cheer us up. Do you ever give up bridge for poker?”

  “Well now, there’s just nothing I like better than a little session of poker,” said Cotton-Hair. “And you are certainly entitled to a chance to recoup. Dear, you’ll excuse me, I’m sure.”

  “I’d rather read my mystery novel anyway,” she said.

  “Care to join us?” I asked Steak-Lover.

  “Maybe. But not until I’ve finished dessert.” The words came slowly out of a mouth filled with lobster.

  I caught Bu’s eye and made card-dealing motions with my hands and asked a question with my eyebrows. He nodded yes. His girlfriend kept her eyes demurely on her plate.

  Widow’s-Peak Pennypacker was watching me out of the corner of his left ear. “Poker?” I called. It was a goofy and unexpected chance.

  He spread cheese on a piece of bread, then looked up again. “Maybe. What time?”

  “Let’s say ten-thirty. In the smoking room.”

  He waved assent. “Ten-thirty it is.”

  “Ten-thirty,” Cotton-Hair said.

  I left. As I did, I spotted the college girls’ chaperone, still enjoying her wine. In fact, she looked extremely happy. I felt better than she did, though. I’d rounded up quite a few.

  And we’d round up a few more.

  Chapter 22

  The Monster

 
The maid knocked at ten to make down the beds, and we hurriedly bundled Merrilee into the closet. While the maid worked, Tom stood in front of the closet door to prevent slipups. There weren’t any and, when she had left, I said, “You all have assignments. Merrilee, yours is to stay out of sight in this suite until a certain time, as I’ll explain. Tom knows what he has to do. Betsy and Twit-Twit are in charge of communications.”

  “Which means?” Betsy said.

  “Which means that at ten-thirty Tom and I begin a little poker game in the smoking room. With a number of other people. But after about an hour—around eleven-thirty—I will stand up, stretch, and rub my left eye. That’s the signal. One of you will be watching from outside on the deck. You will take turns watching, spelling each other every few minutes so you won’t be too noticeable.

  “Meanwhile, Tom and I will have properly conditioned the people at the poker table. When you see my signal, you will immediately phone Merrilee here in the suite, and she will come up to the smoking room and walk in quietly to our table and stand there, saying nothing, but looking at everyone around the table solemnly. She will, in effect, be someone who has returned from the dead.”

  “You mean it?” Merrilee asked.

  “You will have risen from the sea, as far as anyone knows. Because everyone thinks you went overboard. That’s the effect we want. You’re an actress. Act it.”

  She shivered. “All right. I’ll rise dead from the sea.”

  “As a matter of fact, you could even wet your hair a little. And sprinkle a little water in your face. That’s all. We have a lot to do. Let’s go.”

  “I like this,” said Betsy. “I’m going to reconnoiter right now, and spot a good window and a phone. Not that I know what I’m doing.”

  “It’s just as well you don’t.”

  Betsy left. Twit-Twit was watching me.

  “How many players will we have?” said Tom.

  “Better figure on both seven and eight. How are you at dealing from the bottom of the deck?”

  “I’d rather do it the way you first suggested. That way we can be sure.”

  “Okay. Gamble on it. The whole thing is a gamble. If we wind up with six or nine players, you can duck out to the men’s room and reshuffle.”