The Blind Barber (18 page)

(“Steady,” thought Morgan.)

“But that’s more important. And, if you liked, you could, I say, you
could,
help me a little in return … Are you sure there’s nobody listening at that door?”

His tone was so gruffly and uneasily conspiratorial that Valvick peered out the door and closed all the portholes. Peggy said, earnestly:

“I don’t think, Captain, you have the least idea how glad we’d be to make it up to you. If there’s anything we can do—”

Whistler hesitated. He took another sip of whisky.

“I’ve just seen his lordship,” he went on, as though he hated to make a confession, but that Hector Whistler was a desperate man. “He’s—haaa—up in the air, because the emerald wasn’t insured. He
had the cheek to say I was drunk or careless, the
??!!!£!??/???¾½¼¾⅜¼!!!
old
?!!!£?£¾!—that’s what he said! He said it would never have happened if I had left it with him …”

“You haven’t found it, by any chance, have you?” asked Morgan.

“
No!
I have searched this ship with fifteen picked men from fo’c’s’le-head to rudder, and I have
not
found it, young man. Now, then, be quiet and listen. I don’t think he’ll sue the line. But there’s a question of law to be considered. That question is: Was I, or was I not, guilty of careless conduct? The emerald was technically in my possession, although I had not locked it in my safe. Show me the lubber,” snarled Captain Whistler, glaring from one to the other of them, “who says I was guilty of careless conduct—contributory negligence—just show him to me, that’s all. Let me so much as glimpse his sky-s’ls, and I’ll make him regret the day his father first went courting. Am I guilty of careless conduct if four armed Dagoes take me from behind and give me the marlinspike with a bottle? Am I?
No
,” was Captain Whistler’s reply, delivered with a gesture like that of the late Marcus Tullius Cicero, “no, I am not. Well, then. If somebody would tell old Sturton that I was murderously set on without a chance to defend myself … Mind, I don’t want you to tell him you
saw
me attacked. If there’s any lying to be done, sink me! I can do it myself. But if you could tell him you are able to swear, from your own observation at the time, that you believed me to be the victim of a ruthless attack … well, the money don’t count much with him, and I’m pretty certain he won’t sue … How about it?” inquired the captain, suddenly lowering his voice to a startlingly more normal tone.

There was a chorus of assent.

“You’ll do it?”

“I’ll do more than that, Skipper,” said Warren, eagerly. “I’ll tell you the name of the son of a bachelor who’s got that emerald right now.”

“Eh?”

“Yes. I’ll give it to you straight from the table. And the man who’s got that emerald at this very minute,” announced Warren, leaning over and pointing his finger in the captain’s face, “is none other than the dastardly crook who’s masquerading on this boat as Doctor Oliver Harrison Kyle.”

Morgan’s spirit, uttering a deep groan, rose from his body and flapped out the porthole on riddled wings. He thought: It’s all up now. This is the end. The old mackerel will utter one whoop, go mad, and call for assistance. Morgan expected many strange, possibly intricate observations from the captain. He expected him to order a strait-waistcoat. He expected, in fact, every conceivable thing except what actually happened. For fully a minute Whistler stared, his handkerchief at his forehead.

“You, too?” he said. “You think so, too?” His voice awed. “Out of the mouths of babes and—and lunatics. But wait. I forgot to show you. That was why I wanted you here. I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it. But when even the maniacs can see it, I’ve got to hard my helm. Besides, it may not mean that. I don’t believe it. I’m going insane myself. Here! Here! Read this!” He whirled to his desk and rummaged. “This was what I wanted you to see. It came this morning.”

He held out a radiogram, delicately scented with Swat Number 2 Instantaneous Insect Exterminator, and handed it to Morgan.

Commander, S.S.
Queen Victoria
, at sea [it ran]. Federal agent reports unknown man picked up supposedly dying Chevy Chase outside Washington March 25. Thought victim auto accident concussion of brain. No identification no papers or marks in clothing. Patient rushed to Mercy Hospital in coma. Two weeks delirious until yesterday. Still incoherent but claims to be person aboard your ship. Federal agent thinks crook responsible Stelly and MacGee jobs. Federal agent thinks also physician is impostor on your ship. Well-known figure and must be no mistake made or trouble, and medical profession influential care all sides …

Morgan whistled. Warren uttered an exclamation of triumph as he read the message across the other’s shoulder.

“You’ve come to that, have you?” demanded Captain Whistler. “If that message is right, I don’t know what to think. There’s no other physician than Dr. Kyle aboard the ship—except the ship’s doctor, and he’s been with me seven years.”

Will not be definite case trouble. Arrest nobody yet. Am sending man Inspector Patrick knows accused personally. Patrick sailed S.S.
Etrusca
arrive Southampton one day before you. Afford him facilities. Advise.

Arnold, Commissioner N.Y.P.D.

“Ha-ha!” said Warren. He threw out his chest. He took the radiogram from Morgan and flourished it over his head. “Now say I’m crazy, Skipper! Go on, say it—if you can. By God! I knew I was right. I had him figured out … ”

“How?” demanded Captain Whistler.

Warren stopped, his mouth slightly open. They all saw the open trap into which, with cheers and wide eyes, Warren had deliberately walked. To tell why he thought Dr. Kyle guilty was exactly the one thing he could
not
do. Morgan froze. He saw his companion’s eyes assume a rather glassy look in the long silence …

“I’m waiting, young man,” said Whistler, snappishly. “Sink me! I’d be eternally blasted if I’d let the police get all the credit for a capture on
my
ship, sink me! provided I could think of a way to trap that—Go on! Speak up! Why do you think he’s guilty?”

“I tell you I’ve said it from the first. Ask Peggy and Hank and the captain if I haven’t! I’ve sworn he was posing as Dr. Kyle, ever since he batted me over the head in my cabin … ”

He stopped suddenly. Captain Whistler, who had started to take a healing pull at his whisky-and-soda, choked. He put down the glass.

“Dr. Kyle batted you over the head in your cabin?” he said, beginning to look curiously at the other. “When was this?”

“I mean, I was mistaken. That was an accident! Honest it was, Captain. I fell and hit my head—”

“Then I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, young man.
I will not be trifled with any longer.
You made an accusation, and it seems—I say it
seems
—to be right. Why did you accuse Dr. Kyle?” Warren ruffled his hair. He gritted his teeth feverishly.

“Well, Captain,” he said, after a pause, “I knew it! He
looked
guilty. He—had a kind of guilty look about him when he was so pleasant at breakfast and said somebody’d been raped; that’s why … You don’t believe me, do you? Well, I’m going to show you, and I’m going to prove that he’s got to be put under lock and key! So I’ll tell you why I came up here to see you. There was a murder committed aboard this boat last night, you old sturgeon! Hank,” said Warren, whirling around, “
give me that razor
.”

It is a literal fact that Captain Whistler shot at least six inches into the air. Without doubt this was due partly to the extraordinary power in his sea-legs that uncoiled him from his chair like a spring; but behind this materialistic explanation there surged a stronger spiritual ecstasy. And he did not forget what to do. Even as he was descending, his hand flashed into the drawer of the desk and emerged levelling an automatic pistol.

“All right,” he said. “Steady, me lads … ”

“Captain, it’s absolutely true,” said Morgan, seizing his arm. “He’s not mad and he’s not joking. This criminal did commit a murder; I mean, the impostor on the boat. If you’ll give me one minute, I’ll prove it. Come on, Valvick. To hell with his gun. Let’s hold him back in his chair and sit on him until we can jam the truth down his throat. By this time your second officer will have made the rounds of the boat, and he’ll find a woman missing. That woman was murdered last night, and she’s overboard now—”

There was a knock at the door.

Everybody froze; why, none of them knew, except that it may have been some latent idea they were all making outstanding asses of themselves. A silence fell while Whistler gibbered a command to come in.

“Beg leave to report, sir,” said the crisp voice of the second officer. “And”—his eyes flashed over—“
and
to Mr. Morgan, as you ordered. Two of us have made a complete round of the ship. We have investigated every passenger and member of the crew. There was nobody hurt last night.”

A vein was beginning to beat in Morgan’s temple. He controlled his voice. “Right-ho, Mr. Baldwin. But we’re not looking for a person who was merely hurt. We’re looking for a woman who is murdered and missing …”

Baldwin stiffened. “Well, sir, you may be,” he said in a tone of regret. “But you won’t find her.
I have checked over personally everybody on this ship, and there is nobody missing, either.”

“Is that so, Mr. Baldwin?” inquired Whistler, almost genially. “Well, well.”

Warren was escorted to the brig, under heavy guard, at exactly 11:45 Eastern daylight-saving time.

I
N THE GREAT BOOK-LINED
room above Adelphi Terrace the warm May sun threw flat shadows on the floor and the river glittered under its blaze. Through the open windows they could hear the distant bang of the clock in Westminster Tower beating out twelve. Cigar stumps had accumulated, and Morgan was growing hoarse from his recital.

Sitting back in the chair, his eyes half-closed behind the eyeglasses on the ribbon, his chins upheaving in chuckles under the bandit’s moustache, Dr. Fell shifted his gaze from the distant traffic along the Embankment.

“Noon,” said Dr. Fell. “Now, break off for a minute and I’ll order up some lunch. A long cool draught of beer will do you an uncommon amount of good.” Wheezing, he pulled a bell-cord. “First, my boy, allow me to say that I would have given a year of my already wasted life to have been with you on that voyage. Heh! Heh-heh-heh! And at the moment I will ask only one question. Is there more to come? Is it really possible for any given group of people to get in
more
trouble than your excellent band has already done?”

Morgan croaked slightly.

“Sir,” he said, with a deep gesture of earnestness, “what I’ve already told you is a—a microscopic atom, an invisibility, a microbe concealed in a drop of water in the vast comprehensive ocean of trouble which is to come. You have heard nothing yet, nothing. That my brain is still whole I am prepared to admit, but why it is still whole I can’t tell you. After the sinister episode of the gold watches … but that’s yet to come.”

He hesitated.

“Look here, sir. I know your interest in detective plots, and if I came to ask your aid, I’d want to get everything straight first. That is, I like my own plots to be clean-cut. If it’s going to be really a murder story, in spite of all entangled nonsense, I want to know that so that I can be prepared, and not have the whole thing sprung on me as a hoax. I like to see the body on the floor. When somebody disappears in a story, you’ve nothing solid to go on. It might be—and generally is—a dastardly trick to prove that there’s been no murder, or that the wrong person’s been murdered, or something that only annoys you … That’s from the analytic side, you understand, and not the human side. But, as to the murder, if you ask me at this moment whether there’s really been a murder, I’ve got to admit I can’t tell you.”

Dr. Fell grunted. He had a pencil in one hand, with which he had been tapping some notes.

“Well, then,” he said, blinking over his eye-glasses, “in that case, why don’t you ask
me
?”

“You—er—think—?”

“Yes, there’s been a murder,” replied Dr. Fell. He scowled. “I dislike having to tell you that. I dislike having to think of it, and I hope I may be wrong. There is one thing that, inevitably, you have got to tell me, which will settle any doubts. But one thing I insist on. Don’t be afraid of the nonsense. Don’t apologise for the vast Christian joy of laughing when an admiral slips on a cake of soap and sits on his own cocked hat. Don’t say that it has no place in a murder case, or that a murderer himself can’t laugh. Once you set him up as a waxworks horror, leering over his red hands, you will never be able to understand him and you will probably never see who he is. Damn him if you will, but don’t say that he isn’t human or that real life ever attains the straight level of ghastliness to be found in a detective-story. That’s the way to produce dummy murderers, and dummy detectives as well. And yet—”

He stabbed at the notes with his pencil.

“ … and yet, my lad, it’s both logical and ironical that this particular case should produce what is in a sense a dummy murderer … ”

“A dummy murderer?”

“I mean a professional criminal; an expert mimic; a mask. In short, a murderer who kills for the sake of expediency. How can a person who’s playing a part as somebody else be anything more or less than a good or bad copy of the original? So he eludes us in his own personality, and all we’ve got to judge by is how well he speaks stolen lines. H’m! It makes for better analysis, I dare say, and the mask is undoubtedly lifelike. But, as for seeing his real self in the mask, you might as well question one of M. Fortinbras’s marionettes … ” He stopped. The small, lazy eyes narrowed. “You jumped a little there. Why?”

“Well—er,” said Morgan, “as a matter of fact, they’ve—er—they’ve got old Uncle Jules in the brig.”

For a moment Dr. Fell stared, and then his vast chuckle blew a cloud of sparks from his pipe. He blinked thoughtfully.

“Uncle Jules in the brig?” He repeated. “Most refreshing. Why?”