The Blind Barber (10 page)

It wasn’t. Afterwards he realised that what had struck him first was something about the position of those sheets …

During the brief moment of silence while they all looked into the white state-room, he thought of many things. That girl—he saw again her straight, heavy, classic face, with its strong eyebrows, twitching and blood-smeared against the pillow—that girl
had
been here. There was no question about that. Ergo, there were three explanations of why she was not here now.

She might have recovered consciousness, found herself alone in a strange cabin, and left it for her own. This sounded thin, especially as her injury had been severe and as a normal person on recovering consciousness would have called for help, kicked up a row, rung for the steward, at least shown a sign of weakness or curiosity. But there was an even stronger reason. Before leaving the cabin, she would not have remade the bed. She would not carefully have put on
fresh sheets and a pillowcase
, in addition to disposing of a soiled towel and hanging another exactly in its place. Yet this had been done. Morgan remembered that, as they put her down, there had been spots of blood flicked on the sheet. He remembered that a lurch of the ship had caused the contents of a whisky-glass to soak the pillow and a part of the top sheet. The bed had been remade! but why and by whom?

The second explanation was a piece of fantasy which even Morgan doubted. Suppose the girl had been acting? Suppose she was in league with their friend the joker; that she had only pretended being hurt to distract their attention while somebody rifled Warren’s cabin? Ridiculous or not, that film had very dangerous potentialities in countries where it is not considered humorous to direct raspberries at the Chancellor. The world wags, and Progress brings back the solemn nonsense of autocracy. In England or the United States the thing would be regarded with levity, as the sort of diplomatic howler often perpetrated by a Tophat; but elsewhere—? Still, Morgan did not believe in any such abstruse plot. Aside from the fact that the joker could gain very little freedom of movement merely because he had got a woman to sham injuries in the next cabin, there was the question of the girl’s condition. The dangerous contusion along the skull, the blood of a real cerebral hæmorrhage, the white eyeballs uprolled in unconsciousness, were not feigned. She had been hurt, and badly hurt.

The third explanation he did not like to think of. But he was afraid of it. It was five miles, they said, to the bottom of the sea. As he saw weird images in the stuffy little cabin, he felt a jerk of relief—yes, in a way—that Peggy Glenn had disregarded orders and had not stayed at the bedside.
Somebody
would have come in and found her there.

These thoughts were so rapid that Captain Whistler had spoken no more than one sinister sentence before Morgan turned round. The captain, his fat figure hunched into a waterproof, had lowered his head nearly into the collar. Under the full electric light the colours of his swollen face were even more of the paint-palette variety, especially the left eye that had closed up behind a purpling hatch. He knew that they were looking at this, and it made him madder still.

“Well?” he said. “What kind of a joke is this? Where’s the woman you said was dying? Where’s the woman you begged me to help? Blast my compass with lightning! What’s your idea in wasting my time when there’s fifty thousand pounds’ worth of emeralds stolen somewhere on this ship? There’s nobody in that bunk. There’s
been
nobody in that bunk.” A ghoulish thought seemed to strike him. “You don’t tell me there’s anybody there now, do you? Come on, young man; you don’t seriously think you see anybody there now, do you?”

He backed away a little, his eyes on Warren.

“Barnacle,” said Captain Valvick violently, “dere iss no yoke. Ay tell you he iss right! Ay saw her—ay have my fingers on her head. Ay carry her in here. She wass—” Words failed him. He strode over, seized the pillow out of the berth and shook it. He peered under the berth, and then into the one above. “Coroosh! You don’t t’ink we are in de wrong place, do you?”

Peggy, who had been stretching her arms out of Warren’s loose blue coat to push the hair from her eyes, seized the captain’s arm.

“It’s true, Captain. Oh, can’t you see it’s true? Do you think we could have been mistaken about a thing like that? There’s my compact, see? I left it on the couch. She was here. I saw her. I touched her. Maybe she just woke up and left. She had on a yellow crêpe de chine frock, a dark green coat with—”

Captain Whistler inspected each one of them with his good eye and then shut it up. Then he passed the back of his hand across his forehead.

“I don’t know what to make of you,” he said. “So help me Harry! I don’t. Forty years I’ve been at sea, thirteen in sail and seventeen in steam, and I never saw the beat of it. Mr. Baldwin!”

“Sir!” answered the second officer, who had been standing outside the door with a blank expression on his face. “Yes, sir?”

“Mr. Baldwin, what do
you
make of all this?”

“Well, sir,” replied Mr. Baldwin doubtfully, “it’s all these elephants and bears that bothers me, sir. Not knowing, can’t say; but I’d got a bit of a notion we were trying to round up a bleeding Zoo.”

“I don’t want to hear anything about elephants and bears, Mr. Baldwin. W
ILL YOU SHUT UP ABOUT ELEPHANTS AND BEARS
? I asked you a plain question and I want a plain answer. What do you think of this story about the woman?”

Mr. Baldwin hesitated. “Well, sir, they can’t
all
be loonies, now, can they?”

“I don’t know,” said the captain, inspecting them. “My God! I think I must be going mad, if they’re not. I know all of them—I don’t think they’re crooks—I know they wouldn’t steal fifty thousand pounds’ worth of emeralds. And yet look here.” He reached over and touched the berth. “Nobody’s lain on that, I’ll swear, if there was the blood they say. Where’s the towel they say they used, hey? Where’s the blood they say was outside the door? The woman didn’t change the linen on that bed and walk off with the towel, did she?”

“No,” said Morgan, looking straight at him. “But somebody else might have. I’m not joking, Captain. Somebody else might have.”

“You, too, eh?” said Whistler, with the air of one whom nothing surprises now. “You, too?”

“The whole bed was changed, Captain, that’s all. And I’m just wondering why. Look here—it won’t take a second. Lift off that bedding and look underneath at the mattress.”

This, allied with Morgan’s absent expression as he blinked at the bed, was too much for the captain’s grim-faced attempt to listen to everybody’s side of the case. He picked up the pillow and slammed it down on the berth.

“I’ll do no such damn fool thing, sir!” he said in what started to be a bellow but trailed off as he remembered where he was. “I’ve had about enough of this. You may be right or you may not. I won’t argue, but I’ve got more important things to attend to. To-night I’m going to call a conference and start one of the finest-toothed-comb searches that you ever heard of on sea or land. That elephant’s aboard, and strike me blind, I’ll find it if I have to take this tub apart one plate from another. That’s what
I’m
going to do. And to-morrow morning every passenger will come under my personal observation. I’m master here, and I can search the cabin of anybody I like. That’s what
I’m
going to do. Now, if you’ll kindly get out of my way—”

“Look here, Skipper,” said Morgan, “I admit we wouldn’t be much help, but why don’t we join forces?”

“Join forces?”

“Like this. I admit appearances are against us. We’ve told you a story you don’t believe, and nearly given you apoplexy. But in all seriousness, there’s a very sound reason behind everything. It’s a big thing—bigger than you know. And why don’t you believe us?”

“I believe,” said the captain grimly, “what I see and hear, that’s all.”

“Yes, I know. That’s what I’m kicking about,” the other nodded. He got out his pipe and absently knocked the bowl against his palm. “But we don’t. If we did, what do you suppose we should have thought when we walked up and found you sitting bunged-up and gibbering on a wet deck, with an empty whisky-bottle beside you and babbling wildly about your lost elephant?”

“I was
PERFECTLY SOBER
,” said the captain. “If any illegitimate lubber,” said the captain, lifting a shaking arm … “if any illegitimate lubber refers again to what was pure misfortune—”

“I know it was, sir. Of course it was. But it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other, don’t you see? The misfortunes are precisely alike. Symbolically speaking, as Mr. Baldwin says, they are elephants and bears. And if you insist on having your elephants, why shouldn’t you allow Curt his bears?”

“I don’t understand this,” said the captain dazedly. “I’m a plain man, sir, and I like plain speaking. What are you getting at? What do you want?”

“Only this. If I were to sit down at the breakfast table to-morrow morning and tell only what I had
seen
tonight—Oh, I don’t say I
would,
of course,” said Morgan, assuming a shocked expression and also closing one eye significantly. “I only use the illustration as an example, you understand—”

This was the sort of plain speaking the captain clearly comprehended. For a moment his head rose in appalling wrath out of the collar of the waterproof.

“Are you,” he said thickly, “trying to blackmail—”

It took all Morgan could do, with a swift tactical change, to smooth him down. But it was like a shrewd lawyer’s inadmissable question to the witness at a trial which the judge orders the jury to disregard: the suggestion had been put forth, and the effect made. An effect had been made, unquestionably, on the captain.

“I didn’t mean anything,” Morgan insisted. “Lord knows, we won’t be much help. But all I wish you’d do is this. We’re as interested as you are in catching this crook. If you’d keep us posted as to any developments—”

“I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t,” growled the other after a pause, during which he cleared his throat several times. Whistler’s eye and jaw were paining him considerably, as Morgan observed; it was much to his credit that he could keep his temper down to a simmering point. Still, ramifications were beginning to suggest themselves to him, and it was apparent that he did not like them. “I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t. I tell you straight, right here and now, tomorrow morning I’m going to haul all of you up to Lord Sturton and make you tell him the story you told me. If it weren’t so late, I’d take you all up now. Oh, you’ll be in it, right enough …

“I’ll tell you frankly, Mr. Warren,” he added, in a rather different tone, and swung round on him, “that if it weren’t for your uncle, you certainly wouldn’t get the consideration you are getting. And I’ll be fair. I’ll give this cock-and-bull story of yours a chance.”

“Thanks,” said Warren dryly. “And I can take my oath Uncle Warpus will appreciate it if you do. And how?”

“Mr. Baldwin!”

“Sir?”

“Make a note of this. To-morrow morning you will institute an inquiry, with whatever reason or pretext you like, to find out whether any passenger on this boat got an injury along the lines you’ve heard described. Be discreet, burn you! or I’ll have your stripes. Then report to Mr. Morgan. Now I’ve done all I can for you,” he snapped, turning round, “and I’ll bid you good night. But, mind I expect co-operation.
CO-OPERATION
. I’ve done a good deal already, and if so much as one word of all this is breathed, God help you! … And you want to know the truth, Mr. Warren,” said Captain Whistler, his Cyclops eye suddenly bulging past all control, “I think you’re mad, sir.
I THINK YOU’RE STARK, RAVING MAD
, and these people are shielding you. One more questionable action, sir, just one more questionable action, and into a strait-waistcoat you go. That’s all !!!’&—£&&’”£&£⅔
¹
/
₄
⅔¾⅛!!!???! … Good night.”

The door closed with a dignified slam, and they were alone.

Brooding, Morgan stared at the floor and chewed at the stem of his empty pipe. Besides, his eyes would keep wandering to the berth; and he did not like to think of that. The
Queen Victoria
was pitching less heavily now, so that you could feel the monotonous vibration of the screw. Morgan felt cold and unutterably tired. He jumped as voices began to sing and glanced up dully. Peggy Glenn and Curtis Warren, with seraphic expressions on their faces (at two o’clock in the morning) had their heads together and their arms round each other’s shoulders; they were swaying slowly as they uplifted throats in harmony:

“Oh, a life on the ocean wave
[sang these worthies]

A ho-ome on the ro-olling deep …!

A life on the ocean wave …”

“Shut it, will you?” said Morgan, as Captain Valvick uttered a hoot of approval and joined his unmusical bass to the chorus. “Aside from the fact that there are people hereabouts trying to sleep, you’ll have the captain back in here.”

This threat quieted them in the middle of a bar. But they shook hands all around, gleefully, and Warren insisted on shaking Morgan’s hand in a shoulder-cracking grip. The Englishman studied them: Valvick draping himself affably over the washstand, and Peggy and Warren chortling on the berth. He wondered if they had any idea what had really happened. He also wondered if it would be wise to tell them.

“Boy,” said Warren in admiration, “I don’t mind telling you it was a swell piece of work. It was great. It was
the nuts
.” He waggled his hand high in the air and brought it down on his knee. “That crack about elephants and bears, and the horrible threat to spill the beans on that incorrigible souse, Captain Whistler … yee! Great! You are hereby elected Brains of this concern. Henceforth anything you say goes. As for me, I’m going to be good, and how. You heard what the old sea-terrier said.”

“Au, sure,” agreed Valvick, with a ponderous gesture. “But it iss going to be all right in de morning. He find de emerald. Whoever hass de cabin where Miss Peggy trow it in iss going to wake up in de morning and see it. And dere you be.”