The Blind Barber (28 page)

“Peggy takes the note-cases, watches, and the rest of it, including the emerald. She goes to Whistler and says, ‘Captain, do you know what the two people you thought were thieves have done? They’ve saved your bacon and saved the emerald when it was nearly stolen a second time.’ She then tells a story of how, as we were passing by, the skipper and I saw a mysterious masked stranger—”

“Horse feathers!” said Warren, with some definiteness. “You’re drunk.”

Morgan steadied himself. “All right, we’ll omit the mask then. We saw this stranger sneaking out of Kyle’s cabin laden with Kyle’s papers and the emerald. We set on him; and, although he got away without our learning who he was, we retrieved the whole thing … ” A howl of protest arose, and Morgan regarded them sardonically. “Actually, the reason why you oppose it is that you want to hide in with the marionettes and put on that damned show, don’t you? Isn’t that true?”

“Yes, ay know,” Valvick growled stubbornly, “but what about dem getting beaten up?”

“That’s part of it. You don’t honestly imagine even old Whistler would believe
we’d
pinch his watch and cuff-links, do you? Very well: Admittedly we were in a bad position and acted hastily when we ran out on him. But our mythical crook, who was ever in attendance, is on the watch; and, thinking Whistler’s got the emerald from us, bursts in. By the use of a bottle as a weapon—that’s Whistler’s own story, remember, and he’s got to stick to it whether he believes it or not—the crook lays low the captain and the second officer, and he makes a clean haul of everything … ”

He stopped, feeling that the story sounded thin even to his own ears; yet also convinced that their own plan was even more impracticable. It was a case of Mephistopheles or deep water, a toss-up of two insanities, but at least his scheme might do something towards soothing the gigantic wrath of Captain Whistler. Warren grunted.

“And then you and Valvick attack this crook again, I suppose?” he asked. “Hank, it’s the bunk. I’m surprised at you.”

“
No!
You don’t understand. The crook, groggy from Captain Whistler’s powerful smashes, staggers away to fall. We, roused by the noise, return. We find the plunder again. At first we daren’t take it to Whistler, knowing what he’ll think. But Peggy, seeing we have nothing to fear from our noble conduct, persuades us—”

He saw that Valvick was wavering and scratching his chin, and said desperately:

“Let’s put it to a vote. We do this, while Curt returns to the brig and pacifies Woodcock by a definite promise to get him the testimonial.
Listen
!” An inspiration struck him. “Do you realise that, while Captain Whistler’s authority only extends over the high seas, Woodcock is a private citizen and can prosecute in the civil courts? He can get a thousand pounds damages for that, and
he’s
not got any false dignity to restrain him. Do you want to go to jail, Curt? Well, if you leave Woodcock tied up there much longer—and they may not discover him until to-morrow—he’ll be so wild that a bug-powder testimonial from the President himself wouldn’t keep him quiet. For God’s sake, get the champagne out of your brains for three seconds and think! You needn’t stay in the brig any longer than you like, Curt. Whistler’s promised to let you out.”

“I still vote No,” said Warren. A babble of voices arose, while they got together in the middle of the cabin waving their arms and shouting. Mrs. Perrigord said it was oll owfully clever, and she voted as Henry did.

“Eee! Stop it!” cried Peggy, clapping her hands to her ears. “Listen. Let
me
talk. I’ll admit I think it would be rather nice to go to the captain and make goo-goo eyes at him, sort of. Wait! But we’ll let it rest on Uncle Jules and—I don’t care what you say, he’s my uncle, and I won’t have him g-guyed because they s-say he’s too drunk to—”

“Steady now!” said Warren, as she shook her fists desperately.

“ … to play. And we’ll let it rest at that. If he’s sober enough to play inside of, say fifteen minutes or half an hour, we can hold the curtain until then; we’ll adopt Hank’s idea. If not, then we’ll carry on as we’d intended … What’s that noise?” She broke off suddenly. Her smeary eyes travelled past Morgan’s shoulder and widened. Then she screamed.

“Where,”
said Peggy,
“is Uncle Jules?”

The door of the cabin was lightly banging with the slight roll of the ship.

Uncle Jules was gone. Also missing were the watches, the cuff-links, the note-case, the studs, and the emerald elephant.

T
HE MOORISH WARRIOR REMOVED
his spiked helmet and flung it on the floor.

“Sunk!” he said wildly. “Sunk! Done brown. Come on, take our vote if we want to, but we can’t do either one thing or the other now. I’m getting sick of this. What’s the matter with the old soak? Is he a kleptomaniac?”

“You let him alone!” cried Peggy. “He can’t help it. He’s drunk, poor darling. Oh,
why
didn’t I think? He’s done it before. Only mostly it’s only motor-car keys, and there’s not an awful lot of harm done, in spite of what awful people say … ”

“What do you mean, motor-car keys?”

Her eyes wrinkled up. “Why, the keys of the cars, you know; things you turn on the ignition with. He waits till somebody goes away, leaving the key in the car, and then he sneaks up ever so softly and pinches the key out. Then he goes away somewhere until he can find a fence, and throws the key over it. After that he goes on to find another car. There was a most horrible row in St. Louis because he got loose in a ground where they park cars, and pinched thirty-eight keys at one haul … But why don’t you
do
something? Go after him! Get him back before they find—”

“H
AH
!” cried a furious voice.

The door was flung open. Fat-faced, with vast trembling cheeks, sinister beetle brows and vast moustachios, a tubby little man stood in the doorway. He pointed at Peggy.

“So! So! You have trieda to deceive me, eh? You have a trieda toa deceive Signor Benito Furioso Camposozzi, eh?
Sangua delta madonne
, I feex you! You tella me he eesa all-right, eh? Haah! What you call all-aright, eh? I tell you, signorina, to youra face, he ees-a
DRUNK
!” Signor Camposozzi was breathing so hard that he choked. Peggy hurried up to him.

“You saw him? Oh, please tell me! Where is he?”

Signor Camposozzi raised one arm to heaven, slapped his forehead, and the whites of his eyes rolled up horribly.

“Sooah? You aska me if I see heem? Haah! I weela tella you! Never have I beena so
insulted
! I go up to him. I say, ‘Signor Fortinbras!’ He say, ‘Shhh-h!’ In heesa hands he hasa got fourteen gold watches and pocket-books. He open theesa pocket-books and handa me—
ME
—he handa me wan pound
note
. He say, ‘Sh-hh! You buya me onea bottle of gin, eh? Sh-h!’ Den he go offasaying, ‘Shh-h!’ and a pooshing wan pound note under every door he see. I say—”

“There goes the old swordfish’s dough,” said Warren, staring from under his villainous eyebrows. “Look, Mr. Sozzi, listen. Did you see—I mean, did he have a kind of a jewel thing with him? A sort of green thing on a gold chain?”

“Haah! Dida I
see
it?” inquired Signor Camposozzi, with a withering leer. “He hasa fasten it around his neck.”

Morgan turned to Valvick. “The fat’s in the fire now anyway, Skipper,” he said. “Whatever else we do, we can’t be marionettes. But if it occurs to Uncle Jules to give that emerald away to somebody … well, we can’t be in more trouble than we are. We’d better go after him. No, Curt! No! You’re not coming, do you hear?”

“Certainly I’m coming,” said Warren, drawing his scimitar again and placing a bottle of champagne in the pocket of his robe. “Think I’m going to miss this? It’s absolutely safe. My own mother wouldn’t recognise me in this outfit. If we run into the old haddock or anybody, I can simply gesture and say, ‘No speeka da Eenglish.’ See?”

As a matter of fact, he was the first one out the door. Nobody protested. The fat was now sizzling and flaring in the fire anyway; and, Morgan reflected, at least three people were better than two at nobbling Uncle Jules—provided they could find him—before he gave away Captain Whistler’s watch to somebody and left a trail of Captain Whistler’s money all along C deck. Also, they were joined by the Bermondsey Terror.

“Head for the bar!” said Morgan as the three of them charged up the passage. “He’ll go in that direction by instinct. No, not that way. Turn round and go by the port side, or we may run into Whistler and his crowd … ”

They stopped. A confused noise was beginning to bellow down in the direction of cabin C 46; the patter of running feet, excited voices, and a stentorian oceangoing call to arms. The four allies instantly shifted their course and made for the forward part of the boat—a fortunate circumstance, since they picked up Uncle Jules’s trail within a few seconds. Indeed, nobody but Messrs. Lestrade, Gregson, and Athelney Jones could have missed it. Two or three doors were open, and infuriated passengers, clad only in dress trousers, and dress shirts hanging out over them, were dancing stockingless in the doors while they bawled at a dazed steward.

“I couldn’t ’
elp
it!” protested the steward. “I tell you, sir—”

“You!” said Warren, presenting the point of his scimitar at the steward’s breast, an apparition which nearly brought a scream bubbling from between the other’s lips. “You!” he repeated, as the steward strove to run. “Have you seen him? A bald-headed drunk with a prizefighter’s shoulders and his hands full of stuff?”

“Yes! Y-yes, sir! Take that thing away! Just gone! Did he get yours too?”

“My what?”

“Shoes!” said the steward.

“I’ll have the law on this line!” screamed one maddened passenger, laying hold of the steward’s collar. “I’ll sue ’em for the biggest damages ever awarded in a court. I’ll complain to the captain. I put my shoes outside my door to be polished, and when I go to get ’em what do I see but—”

“He’s stolen every damn shoe that was outside a door!” snorted another, who was sniffing after shoes up and down the passage like a terrier. “Where’s the captain? Who was it? Who—”

“Come
on
,” said Captain Valvick. “Out on de deck and go round.”

They found a door forward, and plunged out on C deck—on the same deck and the same side that had seen the hurricane of the night before. As before, it was dimly lighted, but this time peaceful. They paused and stared round, breathing cool air after the thick atmosphere inside. And Morgan, as he peered down a companion-way leading to D deck, came face to face with Mr. Charles Woodcock.

Somebody swore, and then there was silence.

Mr. Woodcock was coming slowly and rather painfully up the steps. Aside from rumpled clothes, he was undamaged, but every joint was cramped from his long trussing in torn sheets. His bush of hair waved in the breeze. He writhed his shoulders, cracking the knuckles of his hands; and on his bony face, as he looked up and saw who stood there, was an expression—

Morgan stared as he saw that look. He had expected many things from the unfortunate bug-powder representative, triumph, threats, rumpled dignity swearing vengeance, sinister joviality, at all events hostility. But here was an expression which puzzled him. Woodcock had stiffened. His tie was blown into his face and seemed to tickle his nose and terrify him like the brushing of a bat in the dark. His bony hand jerked. There was a silence but for seething water …

“So it’s
you
again,” said Warren, and slapped the scimitar against his leg.

Woodcock recognised the voice. He glanced from Warren to Morgan.

“Listen!” he said, clearing his throat. “Listen! Don’t fly off the handle now. I want you to unnastand something … ”

This looked inexplicably like retreat. As startled by Woodcock’s appearance as he had evidently been by theirs, Morgan nevertheless cut in before Warren could speak again.

“Well?” he demanded, and assumed by instinct an ominous tone. “Well?”

The pale smile fluttered on Woodcock’s face. “What I wantcha to unnastand, old man,” he said, writhing his shoulders again and speaking very rapidly, “is that
I
wasn’t responsible for you being stuck in the brig, even if you think I was; honest to God I wasn’t. Look, I’m not mad at you, even if you’ve hurt me so bad I’ll maybe have to go to the hospital. That’s what you’ve done—but you can see I’m not mad, can’t you, old man? Maybe it was right for you to take a sock at me—from what you thought, I mean. I know how it is when you get mad. A guy can’t help himself. But when I told you—you know, what I did tell you—it was absolutely in good faith … ”

There was something so utterly suspicious and guilty-seeming about the man that even the Bermondsey Terror, who had evidently no idea what this was all about, took a step forward.

“’Ere!” he said. “Oo’s
this
?”

“Come up here, Mr. Woodcock,” said Morgan quietly. He jabbed his elbow into Warren’s ribs to keep him quiet. “You mean that you really didn’t see that film stolen out of Curt Warren’s cabin, after all?”

“I did! I swear I did, old man!”

“Attempted blackmail, eh?” asked the Moorish warrior, who had opened his eyes wide and was fiddling with the scimitar.

“No! No! I tell you it was a mistake, and I can prove it. I mean, it may
look
like the man I saw isn’t on board at all, but he is! He’s got to be. He must have been disguised or something … ”

A dim suspicion that at last the Parcæ had got tired of tangling things up for their particular crowd, and had begun on somebody else, began to grow hopefully in Morgan’s mind.

“Let’s hear your side of the story,” he said, playing a chance. “Then we’ll decide. What do you have to say about it?”

Woodcock came up to the deck. A scowl, of which neither of them probably knew the reason, had overspread the rather grim faces of large Valvick and even larger Bermondsey. Woodcock saw it, and veered like a sloop in a windward breeze.

Clearing his throat, he set himself amiably for a hypnotic speech.

“So listen, old man. I
did
see that guy; word of honour. But after I talked to you to-day I said to myself, I said, ‘Charley, that fellow Warren’s a real white man, and he’s promised to get the testimonial for you. And you’re a man of your word, Charley,’ I said,” lowering his voice, “‘so you’ll get the name of the man for him’ … ”