Midnight Sailing, page 15
“You’ll probably want to explain in private,” Larkin said. “If my presence is embarrassing—”?
“Please don’t go,” said Frayle, with his disagreeably pleasant smile and well-modulated sarcasm. “This is going to be fun. The more the merrier. Unless, of course, you yourself feel embarrassed.”
“My face isn’t even a delicate pink,” Larkin said.
Dorothy went over to Frayle, and put one hand on his shoulder. She said, “Charlie, I’ve fallen in love with Glen Larkin—just like that.”
“Congratulations,” said Frayle. “You’ve picked a beaut.”.
“He’s in love with me, too,” Dorothy continued. “So that sort of washes us up, doesn’t it, Charlie?”
“Does it?” said Frayle. His blond eyebrows went up.
“You know I’ve never been in love with you, Charlie,” the girl said. “I’ve been terribly fond of you, and I still am. I’ve always been frank about it. I like you and I admire you, and you said that no man can ask more. But a woman can, Charlie. I didn’t realize it before, but I do now. And since I’ve found what I must have wanted all along, you can understand, Charlie, that I’m going to keep it.”
Frayle’s dimples appeared but his eyes did not smile. “Assuming,” he said, “that the conquering knight’s intentions are—what’s the phrase?—strictly honorable.”
“That doesn’t make any difference, Charlie. And it doesn’t change—”
“Our relationship, you’re probably going to say,” Frayle interrupted. “You expect me to be a—I was going to say ‘brother’ but I won’t debase myself—a trusted friend and platonic companion. Our business relations will continue as usual …”
“Well, won’t they, Charlie?”
“No,” said Frayle.
“Charlie, you’re going to be a jealous—”
“Heaven forbid! I’m not in the least jealous. Because your little romance isn’t going to last.”
“Oh, I know what you think, Charlie,” the girl said. “But this isn’t just another shipboard romance. I’ve crossed the ocean enough times to know all those symptoms. But this isn’t just moonlight on the boat-deck.”
“I know,” said Frayle. His dimples deepened. “This is genuine and profound and soul-shaking. But it can’t last, puss. It ends at Honolulu. The lucky bridegroom to-be has arranged all that. Thanks to your friend Larkin, the blushing bride will hardly have the time to blush. She’ll be taken into custody before we pass Diamond Head.”
“What—what do you mean?”
“A radiogram came for you,” said Frayle. “I took the liberty of opening it. Here. Read it and weep.”
Dorothy took the envelope Frayle handed her. She paled as she read the message. Her lips parted, and her eyes grew almost round with wonder and incredulity. Then their expression softened, like the eyes of a hurt child. She sat down looking at Larkin.
Larkin knew what had happened. He felt crawly and miserable inside, yet there was nothing he could do about it—at least, nothing as long as the lean, blond Frayle stood there grinning and gloating.
Larkin sat down beside the girl, put his arm around her. She seemed to draw away from him a trifle, then sat rigidly motionless. At last she relaxed and turned to him with the shadow of a smile. “It’s not true?”
“What’s not true, sweetheart?” Larkin asked.
“Are you a newspaperman?”
“Yes, of course.”
The girl’s wan smile faded. The lines of her face hardened until her features assumed the cold, impersonal beauty of a Grecian statue. She dropped the radiogram into Larkin’s lap. He read:
Dorothy Bonner Steamer Kumomaru
Evening papers print sensational account arthurs mysterious death aboard ship dispatches signed glen larkin stop federal agents now planning arrest you honolulu stop retaining legal counsel for you there say nothing particularly to larkin before consulting attorney who will board ship—pendenning
Good old Beasley! He would do a man a favor and give him a byline, even when a man might prefer to remain anonymous.
The girl said in a tight voice, “You lied to me.”
“I didn’t,” said Larkin. “I didn’t tell you I wasn’t a newspaperman. I gave you three guesses. You guessed wrong.”
“I’ll say she guessed wrong!” Frayle laughed with loud, full-throated satisfaction.
“And you did lie to me last night,” Dorothy insisted bitterly. “You swore you didn’t take this ship because I was aboard.”
“Wrong again, darling.” Larkin tried to smile. “I swore that I hadn’t heard your name up to an hour before sailing. And that, strangely enough, is true. It was a last minute assignment.”
“Why, yes, puss, you don’t understand,” volunteered Frayle with suave mockery. “You’re Mr. Larkin’s assignment. He’s been assigned to spy on you, to pry into your private affairs, to dissect your private emotions and strip your thoughts naked for the delectation of the subway straphangers.”
“You must be very proud of yourself, Glen.” There was no sarcasm in the girl’s voice, but there was cold fury in her eyes and contempt in the curve of her lips. She continued, “You do your work so well, too, that I’m sure you’ll get a promotion. Such perfect technique! You make love just as though you meant it—”
“I do mean it, darling!”
“—just as though you weren’t making mental notes of every confidence a gullible girl might give you with her kisses, a girl who was silly enough to believe you…”
“Dorothy darling,” Larkin pleaded. “Call me a louse if you want, but don’t say I’m not sincere. I was never more sincere in my life than when I told you I loved you. I do love you. I wish there were other ways of saying it, of making it more emphatic, but there isn’t.”
“Of course he loves you, puss,” Frayle purred. “You must be very dear to him—at least professionally. Unfortunately he has delivered you into the hands of the law, but I’m sure he’ll write a glowing account of your incarceration and trial. Or he probably loves you so much that he’s completely disgusted with his noble career of muckraking and intends to resign and devote the rest of his life to your service.”
“Would—would you do that, Glen?” the girl asked. There was a tremor of hopefulness in her voice.
Larkin stood up. He wanted to commit assault, battery and first-degree mayhem on the person of the lank; grinning towhead in the trench coat. His hands itched to destroy that insolently handsome smile, and, though not often given to physical outbursts, he was confident that he could do it. And with that confidence there came a new sense of faith in himself and in Dorothy Bonner’s intelligence. He deliberately turned his back on Frayle and addressed the girl.
“No, of course I wouldn’t, darling,” he said. “And if you have as much sense as I think you have, you know it without asking. After all, I have a profession that I enjoy, that I’m fitted for, and that pays me a good living. Moreover, I stand fairly high in it, and I’ll probably stand higher before the Japs finish blowing Eastern Asia completely off the map. It’s too bad that my job rubs you the wrong way because its present phase happens to seem unpleasant to you personally. But you’ll get over that. I’m not really a scandalmonger; I’m a foreign correspondent.
“I don’t know all the details of this mess that seems to be brewing for you in Honolulu, but I’ll stand by you of course. And I imagine that when I find out exactly how your friend Frayle got you into it, I’ll be able to get you out more or less simply. And after that, I think you’ll get used to the idea of being married to a newspaperman.”
“Married!” The girl sniffed. “You’re not only a sneak and a hypocrite, but a fool and an egotist to think that after what you’ve done, I’d marry you.”
“I think you will,” said Larkin, “when I ask you.”
Larkin grinned. Dorothy slapped him. It was a resounding slap, but it failed to efface the grin.
Frayle guffawed heartily. He said, “Remember your father’s advice, puss—never trust your own instincts or shipboard acquaintances. Better come back to the old established firm. We’ll find a way to get you out of this.”
“Wait, Charlie.” She stood for a long moment in front of Larkin, looking at him with eyes that were very bright. She said, “Glen, give me that envelope.”
“I haven’t got it,” said Larkin.
A queer expression came into Frayle’s face. “What envelope, puss?” he asked.
“The envelope that Rodriguez had the whole crew looking for yesterday,” the girl said, still staring at Larkin. “Get it, Glen. We’ll wait here.”
“I haven’t got it,” Larkin insisted. “It’s been stolen.”
“You’re lying again.”
“Suit yourself,” Larkin shrugged.
“Glen, you’re being hateful and vindictive. You’re going to hold it as a club over my head, just because—”
“I don’t go in for blackmail or intimidation,” Larkin said. “If I had the envelope, I’d return it gladly. But since I’ve been so careless as to let someone steal it while I was bathing this evening—” he paused as he glanced at Frayle—“why, you’ll have to consider me under obligation to you until I can get it back. Or I can give you my note for a million dollars or so, and you can garnishee my salary for the next few centuries.”
“Come on, puss. Don’t argue with him. He won’t get ashore with it.” Frayle took the girl’s arm.
Dorothy held back, still looking at Larkin with eyes that were dark with the despair of shattered faith and wounded pride. “Glen, I—” she began.
“Yes, darling.”
The words would not pass the girl’s parted lips. She turned away, leaning wearily on Frayle’s arm.
Larkin could hear her heels click on the stairs going down to the lower deck.
Chapter Twenty-four: THE OBLIGING STEWARD
Tacked to a bulletin board just outside the dining saloon was an old sailing chart of the Pacific on which tiny Jap flags pricked out, inch by inch, the slow daily progress of the Kumo-maru toward Honolulu and the Orient. Just below the chart was the Commander’s Noon Report, which read: Position at noon, Lat. 29° 31’ 10” N., Long. 133° 6’ 59” W. Distance run previous 24 hrs., 241 naut. mi.
Descent into the tropics was bringing change to the Kumo-maru and its microcosm. The wind had lost its eyeteeih and grown feeble under the glare of a hot, blue sky. The boisterous sea had subsided, as though awed by its gaudy new tint of ultramarine. Stately piles of clouds, strangely edged with Veronese green, rode the painted horizon. Companion hatches had opened for the steerage hosts, and the foredeck was populated with squatting, gossiping men, the yellow legs of their long underwear showing below their hiked-up kimonos; with women who were continually brewing tea on braziers they had brought up from between-decks; with shaven-headed and lusty-voiced children. The ship’s officers had shed their dark uniforms and bios somed into crisp white ducks. The cabin passengers, too, had unpacked their light-weight clothing—all but William Cuttle of New York, Mr. Cuttle managed to continue wearing his derby and electric-blue worsteds without so much as perspiring or changing the cold, set expression of his recessed eyes or the thin-lipped rigidity of his mouth. Nothing, in fact, seemed to change about Mr. Cuttle except the flower in his lapel.
“I don’t think much of them last cock-and-horse stories you been sending out to the blats,” said Mr. Cuttle, dropping cigar ashes, on his vest.
“That’s too bad, Gumshoe,” said Larkin, planting his shirt-sleeved elbows on the green baize of the dining-saloon table. “Then I wouldn’t read them, if I were you. Serves you right for invading the privacy of a public communications system without even a Senate subpoena.”
“I don’t like what you been writing about me,” Cuttle continued. “For instance—” he read from the back of an envelope, “—here’s something I copied down: ‘Bill Cuttle, New York insurance dick who has mustered himself into service as high-seas one-man homicide squad, after suspecting everyone aboard except himself, is still appropriately very much at sea. Frightened passengers, whose apprehension has been mounting to the verge of panic since the murder of the ship’s surgeon, momentarily look for drastic action from Captain Fujiwara…’”
“What’s wrong with that?” Larkin asked. “You can’t even find out where Frayle got his black eye.”
“He ran into a door in the dark,” Cuttle said.
“Yes, of course. Nine out of ten black eyes come from doors. And Frayle was just making a social call on Dr. Bioki.”
“He was asking the doc for some yellow ointment for his eye,” said Cuttle. “That’s logical, ain’t it?”
“Very,” said Larkin. “So there’s only one possibility left. Dr. Bioki was killed by some disgruntled member of the crew who was treated with iodine instead of argyrol.”
“Nobody from the crew was in the doc’s cabin all afternoon except the steward.”
“Then that settles it. The steward’s your man. He murders the English language. Why shouldn’t he murder the doctor?”
“Smart guy, ain’t you?” said Cuttle. “That all you came to see me about?”
“No,” said Larkin. “I came to tell you again that I want to speak to Jeremy Hood. How much longer, are you going to keep him locked up in the doctor’s cabin?”
“Until I break him down,” said Cuttle. “He’s hiding something. I been in this game long enough to know when a guy is hiding something.”
“What’s he hiding, Gumshoe?”
“I don’t know yet. But I will. I’ll break him down. I can break anybody down.”
“Give me five minutes with him, Gumshoe. I’ll get the whole story for you.”
“You don’t get five minutes with nobody,” Cuttle declared. “The skipper ain’t forgot that you threatened to get his ship tied up in Honolulu, and he don’t trust you. I don’t trust you neither, Larkin.”
“In that case,” Larkin said, “I’ll leave you alone with your doubts, Cuttle. I’ve got work to do.…”
“Just keep me out of it,” said Cuttle.
“Same to you,” said Larkin.
He returned to his stateroom which was on the lee side and stifling. He stripped off his shirt and tied a towel around his neck to catch the perspiration that dripped from his chin! He tried for the tenth time to start the electric fan over the sofa berth. After a few rusty revolutions the blades squealed and stopped. For twenty minutes he went to work with a nail file and tube of vaseline and finally goaded the fan into reluctant action, complaining noisily as it stirred up half-hearted eddies of tepid air. All this, Larkin knew, was not-too-subconscious subterfuge to keep from sitting down to his typewriter.
Since the murder of Dr. Bioki, Beasley had been burning up the air waves with more and more demands for copy. The Seven Seas clients were having a field-day with an exclusive story bottled up in mid-Pacific. Larkin had a mental picture of two hundred cable-desk men digging up all the good old short headline words: Death ship … Girl spy … Jinx liner … Rich beauty.…
Rich beauty! Of course Dorothy would go on being an heiress in the newspapers, even after her revised personal history started to appear serially, because the word fitted so well in crowded headline type. And Dorothy’s personal history was what Larkin was writing.
“Dorothy Bonner’s Own Story …” As the pages began to litter the floor of the cabin, Larkin wondered if his story read too much like a brief for the defense. He was building her up as an intelligent girl in revolt against the occupational disease of the very wealthy: Boredom. He was not deliberately seeking an alibi for her guilt—if she were guilty of traffic in naval secrets; he was merely explaining it as a quest for self-expression and excitement that had led into dangerous alleys. And he was doing his worst with Charles Frayle, too, sparing no adjectives in making him into a pageone character. A shrewd, glamorous soldier-of-fortune whose dimpled smile had played havoc with the women and politics of four continents; a blond Svengali whose debonair recklessness had fascinated the Poor Little Rich Girl Who Was Tired of Stuffed Shirts.…
God, it was hot! And Larkin was woolly-mouthed from the nervous succession of cigarettes that he consumed in geometric progression to the number of pages he yanked from his typewriter. He reached behind him and punched the bell.
“Steward,” he said, when the door opened, “can you get me a Tom Collins that doesn’t taste like this ship smells?”
“Dekimasu” said the steward.
“Hurry it up,” said Larkin, “and don’t be stingy with the ice.” He did not look up from his typewriter, but he was nevertheless aware that the steward continued to stand expectantly in the door.
“Tommu Corrinsu,” said the steward. “Yes. Can make. Not so good as Hoteru des Bergues et des Nations, butto bettah as Hoteru Beau Rivage.”
This time Larkin looked up—abruptly. The steward’s French pronunciation had startled him by its excellence. He knew, of course, that the Japanese find French quite friendly to the tongue and palate trained to their own unaccented language, much more friendly than English. But he was startled, nonetheless.
“What,” he demanded, “do you know about the Hotel des Bergues?”
The steward lowered his eyes and looked at the floor like an embarrassed girl. “You do notto know me, Mistah Rah-kin?” he asked softly.
Larkin studied the impassive Oriental face of the steward. It was like a hundred other Oriental faces Larkin had seen, and meant nothing to him. He was not yet an accomplished physiognomist as far as Oriental features were concerned. He could tell a Cantonese from a Northern Chinese, but that was about all.
“No, steward,” said Larkin. “I do not know you. In fact, I don’t even know your name.”
“Name,” said the steward, “is Sato. Sweeto name. In Ingurish meaning ‘sugah.”
“I think I can restrain myself from calling you ‘Sugar,’” Larkin said. “And I still don’t know you.”
“I know you, Mistah Rah-kin.”
“Really. How long have you known me, Sato?”
