The Blind Barber (7 page)

M
ORGAN ALMOST PITCHED HEAD
foremost into the wardrobe as his clumsy fingers fumbled at the hook on the door. He righted himself, squeezed outside, and called to Valvick to follow.

There was something caught there. It was small and broken-looking, snapped between the jamb and the heavy door—a woman fallen forward across a sill six inches high. She wore no hat, and her dishevelled brown hair, which had tumbled down along one side, blew wildly in the draught. They could not see her face. Her hands, flung forward out of the sleeves of a green, fur-edged coat, were groping in weak movements—horribly, as though she were tapping at the keys of a piano. The head and body rolled with the ship. As they did, a splashing of blood ran thinly along the rubber matting of the floor.

With his shoulder, Morgan forced the door wide while Captain Valvick picked the woman up. Then the door boomed shut once more with a cessation of draught that made them shiver.

“Dat blood,” said Valvick, suddenly, in a low voice. “Look! It iss from her nose. She been hit on de back off de head … ”

Her head lay limply in the crook of the captain’s arm; and he moved his arm as though with a notion he must not touch her there. She was a sturdy, wiry girl with thick eyebrows and long lashes—not unattractive under a pallor that made her rouge stand out, but with one of those straight Greek-coin faces which have a look of heaviness rather than beauty. Her throat quivered as the head lolled over. Breathing raspingly, with eyes squeezed shut, she seemed to be trying to move her lips.

“In here,” Warren’s voice said in a whisper from the door of the dark cabin. They carried her in, a trembling Peggy making way for them, laid her down on the berth, and switched on the dim lamp inside. Morgan closed the door.

Peggy was very pale, but with some sudden mechanical impulse she seized a towel off the rack and wiped the blood from the nose and mouth of the inert girl.

“Who—who is she? What—?”

“Get some whisky,” said the captain, curtly. Blinking his pale blue eyes, he puffed slowly through his moustache; there was a scowl on his face as he ran one finger along the base of the woman’s skull. “Ay dunno, but she may be hurt bad. Ha! Turn her on de side, and you wet de cloths. Ay haff to know somet’ing of what de doctor know because dere is no doctor on de cargo-boat … Ha! Maybe—”

“I’ve seen her before,” said Warren. He steadily poured out whisky and put it to the girl’s lips as the captain eased up her head. “Hold it … I’ll see if I can force her teeth apart. Damn it! she’s jerking like a mule … She was the girl in the wireless-room this afternoon, the one who was there when I got my cable. You think her skull’s fractured?”

“She might—” Peggy observed, in a small voice—“she might have fallen—”

“Haaaah!” growled the captain, jerking his neck. “She fall like Mr. Warren fall in de next cabin, you bet.” His fingers were still exploring; his face looked heavy and puzzled. “Ho! Ay dunno, but ay don’t
t’ink
she got de skull fractured; don’t feel like it. See, it pain her when ay feel, eh? And dat iss not de way dey act if dey are bad ’urt … ” He drew a wheezing breath. “Try de whisky again. So.”

“I’ll swear I heard her saying my name,” Warren whispered. “Got those wet towels, Hank? Put ’em on. Come on—er—ma’am,” he said, with a kind of wild, coaxing note, “take some of this liquor … Up you go! … Come on!”

His face wore a rather weird encouraging smile as he clicked the glass against her locked teeth. A shudder went over the white face. The
Queen Victoria
pitched down in a long foam of water, diving with such a deeper cyclone plunge that it flung them all against the forward bulkhead, and they could feel the thick shaking as the propellers beat out of the water. But they could hear something else also. It had been done softly, with little draught and no slam whatever, but the door to D deck had again been opened and closed.

They were silent amid the rattling of the cabin. Warren, who had been cursing in a whisper when the contents of the glass splashed wide, turned round sharply. His face, under the wild goblin hair, wore a look of triumphant malevolence. Clinging to furniture, they waited …

Somebody was trying the latch-hook of the cabin next door.

There was an elaborate pantomime of communication. Morgan’s lips elaborately writhed to frame, “Let him get inside,” as he jerked his thumb at the next cabin. Valvick and Warren nodded; they were all making fierce gestures, and nodding to one another, and trying to reach the passage-door without sprawling full-length. Warren glared at Peggy, and his lips formed, “You stay
here
,” as he pointed at the girl in the berth and then savagely stabbed his finger at the floor. Giving him an answering glare, she folded over her under-lip mutinously and shook her head until the hair obscured her eyes. He repeated his order, first pleadingly and then with a graphic pantomime of somebody being strangled. Rearing out of the trough, the ship was climbing again on a steep upward slant …

The light in the next room was switched on …

Here on the floor, the whisky-bottle was rolling and bumping wildly. Captain Valvick made a dart for it, as a man chases his hat in a gale. The pantomime still went on, grotesque against the dim light in the berth, where that pale-faced figure was twisting …

The door of the next cabin slammed.

Whether or not it was the wind, they could not tell. Warren tore open the door of his state-room, the sticking-plaster on his head going before like a banner, and lurched into the passage. Plunging out after Valvick’s big figure, Morgan seized the handrail in the passage just in time to steady himself as the ship plunged once more.
The door opening out on C deck was closing again.

Either he had been too quick for them or he had been frightened away. With a rather satiric wink, the rubber edging of the door caught and contracted; the gilt piston closed softly. Over the tortured wrenching and bone-cracking of the woodwork, when the whole ship seemed to be heeling over down a colossal chute, Warren let out a howl and charged for the door. The inrush of wind smashed over them as he got it open; they were whirled sideways in the trough of the wave, and the wind carried away something Captain Valvick was crying, about “be careful,” and “hold de rail,” and “close to water line.”

The spray took Morgan in the face as he clambered out into darkness. Between spray and bellowing wind, he was momentarily blind. The wind cut through him with paralysing chill, and his foot slipped on the wet iron plates. A whistle and drumming went by in the halloo of the blast. A few lights from high up in the ship gleamed out across a darkness shot with ghostly white. The lights shone on creaming white flickers; on a curl of grey-black swell that shone like grained wood, and then a mist of spray as the wet deck tilted sickeningly and the crash of water rose high in a spectral mane. Morgan seized at the bulkhead rail, steadied himself, and shaded his eyes.

They were on the windward side. D deck was long, rather narrow, and very dimly lighted. He saw it go up before them on the rise—and he saw their man. A little way ahead, not holding to the rail, but, head down, a figure was hurrying towards the bow. Even in the dull yellow flicker in the roof they could see that this figure carried something under its arm. And this was a circular black box, flattish, and about ten inches in diameter …

“Steady, boys!” said Warren, exultantly, and flapped against the rail. “Steady, boys!” Here we go down again. “Hang on!” He stabbed his finger ahead. “And
there’s
the son-of-a—”

The rest of the sentence was lost, although he seemed to keep on speaking. They were after him. Far ahead, Morgan could see the lamp on the tall foremast swing up, rear, and swerve like a diver. He thought (and thinks to this day) that they did not so much run down the deck as hook their elbows to the rail and sail down it like a stupendous water-chute. They were going so fast, in fact, that he wondered whether they could stop in time, or whether they would go straight at the big enclosure of glass that protected the fore part of the deck from the wind’s full violence. Their quarry heard them now. He had reached the turn of the deck by the glass enclosure when he heard the clatter of pursuit; he was almost in darkness, and he whirled round towards them. Juggled on flying water, the liner crested another rise …

“H
AAA
!” screamed Warren, and charged.

To say that Warren hit the man would be a powerful understatement. Morgan afterwards wondered why that crack did not jar the other’s head loose from his spine. Warren landed on his quarry’s jaw, with the weight of his own thirteen stone and the catapult-start of the Atlantic Ocean behind. It was the most terrific, reverberating smack since Mr. William Henry Harrison Dempsey pasted Mr. Luis Angel Firpo clean over the ropes into the newspapermen’s laps; and it is to be recorded that, when the other hit the glass enclosure, he bounced. Warren did not afterwards even give him time to fall. “You’ll go around smacking people with a blackjack, will you?” he demanded—a purely rhetorical question. “You’ll come into a guy’s cabin, hey! and crack him one with a lead pipe? Oh, you will, will you?” inquired Mr. Warren, and waded in.

Both Captain Valvick and Morgan, who had been ready to lend assistance, clutched the rail and stared. The circular tin box slid from the victim’s arms, clattered on the deck, and rolled. Valvick caught it as the deck was carrying it overboard.

“Yumping Yudas!” said the captain, his eyeballs bulging. “Ho! Hey! Go easy! Ay t’ank you going to kill him if you keep on … ”

“Whee!” said a voice behind them. “Darling! Sock him again!”

Reeling, Morgan turned round to see Peggy Glenn, without hat or coat, capering in the middle of the spray-drenched deck. Her hair was blowing wildly, and she beamed as she spun to keep her footing. She had the whisky-bottle in one hand (“in case somebody needed it,” as she afterwards explained), and she was waving it encouragingly.

“You blasted little fool,” yelled Morgan, “go back!” He seized her arm and dragged her to the inside rail, but she broke loose and stuck out her tongue at him. “Go back, I tell you! Here, take this—” he got the tin box from Valvick, and thrust it into her hands—“take this and go back. We’ll be there. It’s all over … ”

It was, and had been for some seconds. By the time she was persuaded to work her way back some distance, Warren had arranged his tie, smoothed the hair over his sticking-plaster, and come up to them with the deprecating air of a person who regrets having caused a fuss.

“Well, boys,” he said, “I feel a little better. Now we can examine this blackjack-user and see if he’s carrying the first part of the film on him. If not, we can easily find out his cabin.” He drew a deep breath. A high wave careered, swung and broke close to the deck, drenching him; but he only adjusted his tie and wiped the water from his eyes in a negligent fashion. He was beaming. “This isn’t a bad night’s work. As a member of the Diplomatic Service, I feel that I have earned considerable thanks from Uncle Warpus, and—What the devil’s the matter with—!”

The girl had screamed. Even with the sea noises, it went up shrill and thin above them, paralysing on the darkened liner.

Morgan whirled round. She had taken the lid off the tin box, and Morgan noted in fascinated horror that the lid had a hasp and a hinge, which he did not remember having seen … Holding tight to the rail, he wove his way to where the girl, under a sickly electric bulb, was holding the box out and staring into it.

“Coroosh!” said Captain Valvick.

The box was not tin; it was thin steel. Inside, it was padded and lined with gleaming white satin. Bedded into a depression in the middle was a glow of green brilliancy which shifted and burned under the moving light. There were two rubies for eyes in the exquisitely carven thing; a piece of subtle Persian workmanship somewhat larger than a Vesta matchbox, and wound with gold links into a pendant.

“
Hold it
!” shouted Morgan, as a jerk of the deck nearly carried the box overboard. He clutched it in. Wet splashes flashed out on the satin … “Thought,” he yelled, “gone overboard … ”

He swallowed hard, and a nauseating suspicion struck him as he peered over his shoulder.

“By the Lord! had he pinched the emerald elephant?” demanded Warren. “Look here; we did better than we knew. Getting this back—ha! Why old Sturton’ll—What’s the matter with you all? What are you thinking about?” His eyes suddenly widened. They all stared at one another under the wild screaming of the night. “Look!” muttered Warren, swallowing hard. “That is, you don’t think—
hurrum
?”

Captain Valvick groped his way down to where a stout mass in a waterproof, dead to the world, was wedged into an angle of the glass enclosure. Bending down, and sheltered by the enclosure, they saw the spurt of a match.

“Oh, Yesus!” said the captain, in an awed voice. He got up. He pushed back his cap and scratched his head. When he came back to them his leathery face had a queer, wrinkled, wryly amused expression, and his voice was matter-of-fact.

“Ay t’ank,” he observed, scratching his head again—“ay t’ank we haf made a mistake. Ay t’ank we are in one most hawful yam. Ay t’ank de man you haff busted in de yaw is Captain Whistler.”

M
ORGAN REELED, IN A
more than merely literal sense. Then he recovered himself, after a long silence in which everybody stared at everybody else. He hooked his arms in the rail and took a meditative survey of the deck. He cleared his throat.

“Well, well!” he said.

Captain Valvick suddenly chuckled, and then let out thunderous guffaws. He doubled up his shoulders, shook, writhed in unholy fashion, and there were tears in those honest old eyes as he leaned against the rail. Warren joined him; Warren could not help it. They chortled, they yowled, they slapped one another on the back and roared. Morgan eyed them in some disapproval.

“Not for the world,” he observed, in a thoughtful yell, “would I care to be a spirit of Stygian gloom upon the innocent mirth and jollity of this occasion. Go on and gather rosebuds, you fatheads. But certain facts remain for our consideration. I am not thoroughly familiar with maritime law. Beyond the obvious fact that we have compounded and executed a felony. I am therefore not fully aware of the exact extent of our offense. But I have my suspicions, gentlemen. It would strike me that any sea-going passenger who willfully up and busts the captain in the eye, or is found guilty of conniving at the same, will probably spend the rest of his life in clink … Peggy, my dear, hand me that bottle. I need a drink.”