The Blind Barber (22 page)

That her tears were dried was due to a new cause for worry, which he saw presented itself to her as soon as they entered the bar.

The bar (quaintly called smoking-room) was a spacious oak-panelled cathedral at the rear of B deck, full of stale smoke and a damp alcoholic fragrance. There were tables in alcoves of deep leather lounges, and a number of gaunt electric fans depending from the pastoral-painted ceiling. Except for one customer, who stood at the bar counter with his back towards them, it was deserted. Sunlight streamed through windows of coloured mosaic glass swaying gently on the floor; only peaceful creakings of woodwork and the drowsy murmur of the wake disturbed its cathedral hush.

Peggy saw the one customer, and stiffened. Then she began to advance stealthily. The customer was a short, stocky man with a fringe of black hair round his bald head, and the arms and shoulders of a wrestler. He was just raising his glass to his lips when he seemed warned by some telepathic power. But before he could turn Peggy had pounced.

“
Ah!
” she said, dramatically. She paused. She drew back as though she could not believe her eyes. “
Tiens, mon oncle! Qu’est-ce que je vois? Ah, mon Dieu, qu’estce que je vois, alors?
”

She folded her arms.

The other started guiltily. He turned round and peered up at her over the rim of his glass. He had a reddish face, a large mouth, and an enormous curled grey-streaked moustache. Morgan observed that the moment Peggy fell into the Gallic tongue her gestures corresponded. She became a whirlwind of rattling syllables. She rapidly smacked her hands together under the other’s nose.

“
Eh, bien, eh bien! Encore tu bois! Toujours tu bois! Ah, zut, alors!
” She became cutting. “
Tu m’a donné votre parole d’honneur, conime un soldat de la France! Et qu’estce que je trouve? Un soldat de la France, hein! Non!
” She drew back witheringly. “
Je te vois en buvant le
GIN
!”

This, unquestionably, was Uncle Jules sneaking out with the laudable purpose of knocking off a quick one before his niece caught him. A spasm contorted his face. Lifting his powerful shoulders, he spread out his arms with a gesture of extraordinary agony.

“
Mais, chérie!
” he protested in long-drawn, agonised insistence like a steamer’s fog-horn. “
Mais, ché-é-riii-e! C’est un très, très, très petit verre, tu sais! Regards-toi, cherié! Regards! C’est une pauvre, misérable boule, tu sais. Je suis enrhumé, chérie
”—he coughed hollowly, his hand at his chest—“
et ce soir
—”

“
Tu parles! Toi,
” she announced, pointing her finger at him and speaking in measured tones,
“toi, je t’appelle dégoutant!
”

This seemed to crush Uncle Jules, who relapsed into a gloomy frame of mind. Morgan was introduced to him, and he followed them to a table while Morgan ordered two double-whiskies and a milk-and-soda. Uncle Jules appealed in vain. He said he had never had so bad a cold in his life, coughing hideously by way of demonstration, and said that if nothing were done about it he would probably be speechless by five o’clock. Peggy made the obvious retort. She also adduced examples from a long list of Uncle Jules’s past colds, including the time in Buffalo when he had been brought back to the hotel in an ash-cart.

He brightened a little, however, as he described the preparations for the performance that night. Preparations marched, he said, on a scale superb. Three hand-trucks had been provided to convey his fifty-eight separate marionettes (housed in a cabin of their own adjoining his, although they were
not
sea-sick, happy
gosses
) together with all the vast machinery of his theatre, to the hall of concert. The three costumes, one in which he spoke the prologue, and two for his extras, the French and Moorish warrior, were now being given a stroke of the iron; the piano and violin for off-stage music were installed behind the scenes as the theatre was set up in the hall of concert. A hall of concert magnificent, situated on B deck, but with a backstage staircase leading up from the dressing-room on C deck. Which reminded him that, while investigating the dressing-room, he and his assistant, Abdul, had met M. and Mme. Perrigord.

“A husband and his wife,” pursued Uncle Jules, excitedly, “very charming, very intelligent, of whom the cabin finds itself near by. Listen, my dear! It is he who has written of me those pieces so magnificent which I do not understand. One thousand thunders, but I am enchanted! Yes, yes, my dear. Among us we have arranged the order of the performance. Good! Also we have met a Dr. Keel, a medicine Scottish, who will make recitations. Good! All is arranged. Two professors of a university who voyage shall be our warriors; M. Furioso Camposozzi at the piano and M. Ivan Slifovitz at the violin have arranged for accompanying my sitting with music of the chamber which I do not understand, see you? but, ah, my dear, what a triumph of intelligence. For me, I shall be superb? I—”

“Dear uncle,” said Peggy, taking a soothing draught of whisky neat and sighing deeply afterwards, “it is necessary that I speak with this monsieur. Go to your cabin and couch yourself. But attend! It is I who speak!
Nothing to drink.
Nothing! Is it understood?”

M. Fortinbras swore that an old soldier of France would cut his throat sooner than break his promise. He finished his milk-and-soda with a heroic gesture, and doddered out of the bar.

“Listen, Hank,” said Peggy, dropping the language of Racine. She turned excitedly. “Seeing the old boy has just brought me back to business. I’ve got to see that he keeps sober until after the show; but it’s given me an idea … You’re determined on questioning everybody on this boat, seeing everybody face to face … ”

“I’m letting nobody by,” returned Morgan grimly, “except the people we
know
to be aboard. I’m going to take a passenger-list, and get a crew-list from the captain, and check everybody if it takes all afternoon. It would be devilish easy for somebody to conceal an absence when that first officer went round. ‘Oh, no, she wasn’t hurt—sorry she isn’t here; she’s lying down; but I can give you my word … ’ Peggy, that girl hasn’t vanished. She’s somewhere on the boat. She’s a real person! Hang it, we saw her! And she’s going to be found.”

“Righto. Then I’ll tell you your pretext.”

“Pretext?”

“Of course you’ve got to have a pretext, silly. You can’t go roaring about the ship after somebody who was murdered and starting an alarm, can you? Fancy what Captain Whistler would say, old dear. You’ve got to do it without arousing suspicion. And I’ve got the very idea for you.” She beamed and winked, wriggling her shoulders delightedly. “Get hold of your dear, dear friend Mrs. Perrigord—”

Morgan looked at her. He started to say something, but confined himself to ordering two more whiskies.

“ … and it’s as easy as shelling peas. You’re looking for volunteers to do amateur acts at the ship’s concert.
She’s
in charge of it. Then you can insist on seeing everybody without the least suspicion.”

Morgan thought it over. Then he said:

“Ever since last night, to tell the truth, I have been inclined to scrutinise any idea of yours with more than usual circumspection. And this one strikes me as being full of weak points. It’s a comparatively simple matter if I encounter a lot of shy violets who are averse to appearing in public. But suppose they accept? Not that I personally would object to an amateur mammy-singer or a couple of Swiss yodellers, but I don’t think it would go well with the chamber-music. How do I persuade Mrs. Perrigord to accompany me, in the first place, and to put all my crooners on the programme, in the second?”

Peggy suggested a simple expedient, couched in even simpler language, to which Morgan rather austerely replied that he was a married man. “Well, then,” Peggy said excitedly, “it’s even easier than
that
, if you’re going to be fussy and moral about it. Like this. You tell Mrs. Perrigord that you’re after material for character-drawing, and you want to get the reactions of a number of diversified types. On Being Approached to Make Exhibitions of Themselves in a Public Place … Now don’t misunderstand me and get such a funny look on your face! She’ll eat it up. All you’ve got to do is suggest getting somebody’s reactions to some loony thing that nobody’s ever thought of before, and the highbrows think it’s elegant. Then you might jolly her along and sort of make goo-goo eyes at her. As for the volunteers, bah! You can turn ’em all down after you’ve heard ’em rehearse, and say it won’t do … ”

“Woman,” said Morgan, after taking a deep breath, “your language makes my gorge rise. I will
not
make goo-goo eyes at Mrs. Perrigord, or anybody else. Then there is this question of rehearsing. If you think I have any intention of sitting around while amateur conjurers break eggs in my hat and wild sopranos sing ‘The Rosary,’ you’re cockeyed. Kindly stop drivelling, will you? I’ve been through too much to-day.”

“Can you think of any better plan?”

“It has its points, I admit; but—”

“Very well, then,” said Peggy, flushed with triumph and two whiskies. She lit a cigarette. “I’d do it myself with
Mr.
Perrigord, only I have to help uncle. I’m the Noises Offstage, you know: the horses, and Roland’s horn, and all that, and I’ve got to get my effects set up this afternoon. I’ll get it over as quickly as I can, because we
must
find that film. What I really can’t understand is why our crook returned that emerald and yet didn’t—I suppose he really didn’t put the film back in Curt’s cabin, did he? Do you think, we ought to look?”

Morgan made an irritable gesture.

“Don’t you see that it wasn’t the barber who did that? Off-hand, you’d say that there was only one explanation of it. When we chucked it away, it landed either in Kyle’s cabin or in the Perrigords’. The obvious answer is that one of ’em found it in the cabin, meditated keeping it, then got scared at the row and sneaked it back to Sturton. But, damn it all! I can’t believe that! Does it sound like Kyle? It does
NOT
. Conversely, if Kyle is a masquerading crook you can lay a strong wager that a cool hand like the Blind Barber wouldn’t return that emerald—as Whistler said. Wash out Kyle either because he’s a crook or because he isn’t. If he’s genuinely a great brain specialist he wouldn’t do one thing, and if he’s genuinely a great crook he wouldn’t do the other … And what have we left?”

“You think,” demanded Peggy, “that nasty Mrs. Perrigord—?”

“No, I don’t. Or friend Leslie, either. I can see Leslie handing over the emerald to Sturton with immense relish, and giving a long dissertation on the bad taste of gaudy baubles, but—Ah! News! Enter our squarehead.”

He broke off and gestured to Captain Valvick, who had just shambled into the bar. The captain was puffing hard; his leathery face looked redder than ever, and, as he approached, he distilled like a wandering oven a strong aroma of Old Rob Roy.

“Ay been talking wi’ Sparks and de Bermondsey Terror,” he announced, somewhat unnecessarily and wheezed as he sat down. “And, ay got proof. Dr. Kyle iss not de crook.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Yess. De Bermondsey Terror iss willing to swear. He iss willing to swear Dr. Kyle has gone into his cabin last night at half-past nine and he hass not left it until de breakfast bugle diss morning. He know, because he hass heard Dr. Kyle iss a doctor, and he wonder whedder he can knock on de door and ask him if he can cure de bad toot’. He didn’t do it because he hass heard Kyle is a great doctor who live in dat street, you know, and he iss afraid of him. But he knows.”

There was a silence.

“Hank,” Peggy said, uneasily, “more and more—that radiogram from New York, where they were so sure—don’t you think there’s a dreadful mistake somewhere? What
can
be happening, anyhow? Every time we think we know something, it turns out to be just the other way round. I’m getting frightened. I don’t believe anything. What can we do now?”

“Come along, Skipper,” said Morgan. “We’re going to find Mrs. Perrigord.”

C
LEAR YELLOW EVENING DREW
in over the
Queen Victoria
moving steadily, and with only a silken swishing past her bows, down towards a horizon darkening to purple. So luminous was the sky that you could watch the red tip of the sun disappear at the end of a glowing path, the clouds and water changing like the colours of a vase, and the crater of glowing clouds when the sun was gone. The dress bugle sounded at the hush between the lights. And the
Queen Victoria
, inspired for the first time by that mild fragrance in the air, woke up.

Sooner or later on any voyage this must happen. Hitherto-blank-faced passengers rouse from their deck-chairs and look at one another. They smile nervously, wishing they had made more acquaintances. The insinuating murmur of the orchestra begins to have its suggestion on them; they see broad Europe looming, and lamps twinkling in the trees of Paris. A sudden clamour of enjoyment whips the decks like the entrance of a popular comedian. Then they begin by twos and threes to drift into the bar.

Activity had begun to pulse this night before it was quite dark. The beautiful, mongoose-eyed shrew who was going to Paris for her divorce searched out her shrewdest evening-gown; so did the little high-school teacher determined to see the Lake Country. Love affairs began to flicker brightly; two or three bridge games were started; and the disused piano in the screened deck off the bar was rolled out for use. The dining-saloon was in a roar of talk. Diffident ladies had come out with unexpected rashes of jewels, optimists ordered from the wine-list, and the orchestra was for the first time encouraged. When Henry Morgan—tired, disgusted, and without energy to dress for dinner—entered with his two companions towards the close of the meal, he saw that it was the beginning of what for the sedate
Queen Victoria
would be a large night.

His own ideas were in a muddle. After four exasperating hours of questioning, he was almost convinced that the girl with the Greek-coin face had never existed. She was not aboard, and (so far as he could ascertain) had never been aboard. The thing was growing eerie.