Five Passengers from Lisbon, page 16
“I see.” His profile was clear and brown against the thick, pearly curtains of fog. “I gather that Gili claimed to have come to Lisbon in order to join André.”
“Yes, but...”
“How did she happen to tell you? Exactly what brought it on? Do you know?”
“She had borrowed his cigarette case. I saw it and recognized it. It was, oh, very silly, really.”
“Go on,” said Josh inexorably. “What did she say about André?”
She did not want to tell him and she had to. “She said that he had come back to me because I had money—some money, enough, and that he needed money for himself and—she said, for her. It was stupid of me to listen to her.”
“Well,” said Josh reflectively, “Gili is a predatory and unscrupulous little...Well, never mind that. She could be serious, or she could be, trying to make trouble between you. That’s true. The point is do you believe Andre?”
“Yes. He loves me; he needs me. It sounds trite...
“Very,” said Josh suddenly irritable. ‘You’re being childish. You’re seeing yourself as the heroine of some play. Either you love him or you don’t.”
She thought of Mickey, and the way he had looked when he came to her in Marseilles, and said quickly: “I love him.”
Then she felt the almost sickening shock of irrevocability. Words once said cannot be unsaid, no matter how swift, how defiant, or how false they may be.
But she was to marry Mickey, she told herself bleakly. Even if she had tried to take back the words she had spoken, those hasty words, too final, she could not, for Josh, sealing that finality, said abruptly: “All right. That’s that. We’ll get onto another subject. And God knows there are several other subjects at hand. You’ve heard about Urdiola? What do you think of it? Seems reasonable, doesn’t it, that he did it?”
She nodded and Josh smoked and looked with narrowed eyes out into the fog and said suddenly: “Too damned reasonable. A quarrel among the three Portuguese over a diamond, two murders because of it. Oh, yes, it’s reasonable. I was there when Luther identified the diamond. He did so right away, took one look at it and got very red and told the Captain he’d got it from his wife to give to Castiogne for arranging their passage. Did you bribe Castiogne for a passage?”
“No. That is, if André had done so he’d have told me. He arranged everything.”
“You supplied the money?”
“Yes, but no more than enough for our passage and a—a loan to André. Naturally, he hadn’t a cent. He was lucky to be alive.”
“You called it a loan, I suppose, to save his feelings.”
“Why not!” Again for an instant anger caught at her, but it subsided almost at once. She said wearily: “It wasn’t much; only a little over our passage money, which wasn’t much, either. Oh, that isn’t important.”
“Are you sure,” said Josh, “that you aren’t rich?”
“I’m sure. My father died while I was in France. After the war was over his lawyer got in touch with me and sent me some cash. He told me that I’d have enough money if I left the investments he had made as they are; but I’m not rich.” “Not like the Cateses?”
“Heavens, no. Theirs is one of the big American fortunes. Everybody knows that.”
He said reflectively: “Luther said they had nothing with them now but Daisy Belle’s jewelry. They’ve been selling it, he said, piece by piece. He said he’d wondered why the diamond was not found on Castiogne but supposed he had sold it and banked the money in Lisbon or something of the kind. Naturally he wasn’t anxious to tell it, so he didn’t volunteer the information. But then when he saw the diamond there on the table in the Captain’s cabin he didn’t hesitate. I’ll say that for him. And the fact of its turning up in Urdiola’s possession right after Para’s murder does sound bad. I’ve been thinking—suppose Para murdered Castiogne in the lifeboat. Would that have been possible?”
She thought back again, as she had so irresistibly, so many times, to the black, nightmare hours on the Lerida lifeboat. “Yes. Yes, I remember that he bent over Castiogne. I thought he was trying to revive him.”
Josh was looking at her quietly and thoughtfully. “Para then could have killed him and removed the diamond, if he knew that Castiogne had it. Or he could merely have removed the diamond after somebody else murdered him. Is that right?”
She shivered and pulled her coat more closely about her throat. “Anything could have happened that night in that boat, anything.”
“I believe you,” said Josh. “And I think that was when either Para or Urdiola took the diamond. Urdiola’s story could be perfectly true or it could be the unimaginative lie of a very stupid man.” He paused and smoked and said suddenly: “Marcia, was it Urdiola that night? Who tried to murder you, I mean?”
“I don’t know. It was dark and so sudden and dreadful. I don’t know.”
“I’ve got to ask you this, Marcia. Please answer me quite honestly. Have there been any other attempts? Besides the man in the red bathrobe yesterday?”
She hesitated, not wanting to acknowledge it and thus somehow mark its authenticity. But she told him: “Someone tried the handle of the cabin door the same night, perhaps fifteen minutes before I went to André’s cabin and met you on the way, and he and Gili were there. That was all that happened,” she added quickly. “I opened the door to the corridor as soon as I could make myself do it. Nobody was there. It probably was nothing.”
He thought for a moment, turning again, so she could see only his straight, uncommunicative profile. “Yes,” he said finally, “probably it was nothing. And probably whoever was on the stairway yesterday merely wanted to be seen in that disguise. They’ve questioned the real patient, Jacob Heinzer, as exhaustively as they can. It’s very hard for him to speak. But they’ve inquired and they’ve examined his records and so far there isn’t a thing to link him up with anybody on the lifeboat. Colonel Wells says that aside from his wounds he’s all right. I mean no question of nerve strain and battle fatigue or anything of the kind.” He paused for an instant and continued in a rather odd and tight voice: “Does your—André believe that it was Urdiola who attacked him?”
“He said he didn’t know why Urdiola would attack him or me, unless because he thought we knew something of Castiogne’s murder.”
“What do you think about it?”
“It’s the only motive he could possibly have had; but I don’t know what he thought I had seen. And in any case, we are safe now, all of us.”
“Yes,” said Josh. “Well, I shouldn’t count too much on that.”
“What do you mean?”
He would not meet her eyes. “I don’t know. Anything, nothing. Only—listen, Marcia, once before, twice before I’ve said you were in danger. Well, I still think so.”
“But Urdiola is locked up!”
“In spite of that. In spite of everything. I think,” said Josh Morgan his voice suddenly rough, “that you have been in danger ever since an American ship came into view from the lifeboat.”
“Josh...” But the foghorn began again, suddenly and harshly checking her question. She waited and Josh still would not look at her, still stood with his arm against the railing, looking into the fog, looking into nothing as if he were seeing there something clear and definite, something frightening, something that had power, something she could not see. The foghorn stopped and he turned to her. “Now then, we’d better go inside. You’re getting cold.” He put up his hand and touched her hair, very gently, very lightly, with a deeply thoughtful look in his dark eyes. ‘Your hair’s all misted,” he said.
“You must explain. There’s something you know or guess.”
“Marcia,” he said abruptly, “is there anything you guess or know that you’ve not told me?”
His tone was so direct and so grave that she answered almost without knowing she was replying. “There’s nothing I know. But I...” She hesitated, trying to put a very nebulous impression into words.
“What, Marcia? Tell me.”
“Twice—I’m not sure I can make you understand—but twice I’ve had an odd sort of feeling that something was wrong somehow. I mean, not what I’d have expected it to be. So it didn’t fit.”
“Such as what?”
“Well, one time it was with Gili. When she was talking to the Captain. Somehow I’d have expected her to tell the Captain the same story about the Cateses being Nazis that she told us.”
“And didn’t she?”
“No. She looked very quiet and secretive somehow, and didn’t mention it.”
He thought for a moment or two, watching her and finally said: “It’s just as well. I didn’t believe it. It sounded too—I don’t know, too much as if she enjoyed the interest she was creating by the story. Too much Gili,” he said dryly. “But what else was it, Marcia?”
“It happened just after you had talked to me on deck and then gone inside. I remember that. I was lying back in the chair, thinking about the whole thing, really; about nothing in particular except perhaps Gili and the things she had said to me about André. But I can’t think of any special thing; it was only that all at once I felt as if I—well, as if I’d missed some turning in a road that I ought to have recognized. As if”—she used the simile that had entered her own thoughts—“as if I knew a picture, but that something in the picture was suddenly crooked and wrong. Oh, I know that makes no sense.” She broke off, annoyed at her own clumsiness and ineptness. But Josh’s face was very thoughtful. He repeated: “Something wrong in the picture. Something...” he stopped.
For a long time, minutes it seemed to her, he just stood there motionless, as if he’d forgotten her existence. And then quite suddenly he moved and looked at her with bright, intent eyes that still did not seem to see her and took her arm. “I think I see what you mean,” he said and whirled her around. “You’ll have to go inside. You’re cold. Your hair’s all wet. Now...” They reached the lobby and everywhere was warmth and cheer and people, and he said, quite cheerfully himself: “Now mind what I told you, Marcia. I’ll see you later....”
He vanished abruptly toward the stairway, so abruptly that she stared after him, puzzled. Then she turned again toward the cabin, slowly, thinking over the long conversation she’d had with him. The long and somehow very final conversation. For he had accepted her decision about Mickey completely; there was no doubt of that. It was in his manner, in his impersonally friendly tone, in everything about him.
So that was in the past.
She reached the little cabin, which was empty, the bunks neatly made up. She went to the port and gazed out for a long time into the fleecy gray; it was as if the ship made no progress, as if life itself had stopped.
Only it hadn’t, she realized presently. It would go on, and on and on. But forever without Josh. Forever without another moment of the real kind of life she had touched for an instant, there on the deserted deck in Josh’s embrace, and had failed to grasp. The rest of it would be forever unreal, a sequence of shadows.
She did not know exactly when she realized that someone had entered the shadowy cabin behind her. Quite gradually, however, the fact telegraphed itself to her senses. Someone was in the cabin; someone stood between her and the door; someone who had entered very softly, very stealthily, without her knowledge.
15
The hard, terrible hands that had gripped her there at the railing on the dark deck seemed to reach out again toward her.
She did not move. She could not move, she could not turn, she could not speak. Even if she could have forced her stiffened throat to scream wildly for help, it would not have mattered, for the foghorn began again, roaring over the ship, hurling itself back from the fog, effectually drowning any sound, any cry for help she might have made.
Somehow, though, the sound itself set her free from that first moment of paralyzed recognition. Her mind was racing. It seemed important first not to let whoever stood behind her know that she was aware of that furtive presence. Only thus could she hope to avoid a physical struggle which could have only one conclusion; she knew that instinctively. And next she must think of some expedient, some way to escape. The foghorn stopped.
Actually, the thing she did she had not planned to do. It was a quick, instinctive impulse. She spoke. She called out clearly and evenly: “Daisy Belle—did I leave my toothbrush in the bathroom? Look, will you?”
Daisy Belle, of course, was not in the bathroom. Nobody was there. The door was slightly ajar. But if whoever stood in that cabin with her could not see, quite, into the bathroom, if whoever was there believed her, believed that someone else was near, believed that she was not alone...
Her heart, her breath, everything about her seemed to have stopped. There was no sound, only the dying echoes of the foghorn filling the cabin, pressing against her ears, shutting out other sounds.
And then nothing. No rustle, no sound, no door closing, no motion of any kind.
Somehow, when that silence and feeling of emptiness persisted long enough she turned.
No one was there.
The cabin was empty and, as she had thought, the bathroom door only slightly ajar. Anyone standing about in the center of the cabin could not have seen that no one was in the small room.
Certainly no one was there now or anywhere.
Her heart was beating hard again, her breath coming painfully in hard gasps as if she’d been running.
A small hump of something white lay on the floor. She walked toward it and stared down.
It was a bandage, made of gauze, twisted and turned, so it made a rather crude sort of helmet.
Such as the patient in the red bathrobe, with the bandaged face and holes for eyes might have worn.
Only it was not a real bandage. It had not been a patient.
And Josh had been right.
Without rhyme or reason, without any basis of motive or cause, he was right.
She must tell Josh. She must tell the Captain. Yes, that was it. Report it to him.
Urdiola was locked up and charged with murder.
Who then had come like that into her cabin? Who had made and worn and, in escaping, dropped that disguising helmet which lay now so limp and so horribly convincing?
Josh had been right.
But she did not go at once to the Captain. Instead she locked the cabin door. She sat down in the chair under the port and looked at the twisted tangle of white gauze. Who could have worn that, and why?
She was still there when much later Daisy Belle and Gili returned to the cabin. They returned together and she heard their voices as one of them tried the door and then knocked. Otherwise, she thought, in a kind of spell of horror, she could not have moved to open the door. But Daisy Belle’s crisp sensible voice was incredibly comforting and reassuring. She got up and on her way to the door picked up the gauze helmet.
The touch of the thin material in her fingers was convincing, too; she hated to touch it. She rolled it up tightly, put it in the pocket of her coat which still hung over her shoulders and opened the door.
“Why did you lock the door?” said Daisy Belle, more as an exclamation than a question. She snapped on lights abruptly and the cabin leaped from its dim gray shadow to light under which Daisy Belle looked tired and old and with sharp lines on her thin brown face. Gili crossed to the bunk and stretched out with the lazy indolence of a cat upon it and said nothing, but only gazed at the bunk above her with enigmatic, narrowed green eyes. She said nothing, in fact, until Daisy Belle said briskly that it was time for lunch and she’d wash up first and disappeared into the bathroom. Then Gili instantly roused. She swung her long handsome legs around and sat up.
Gili said: “You talked to him! You talked to Mickey!” She shook back the long blonde lock of hair that hung over her face and cried: “You with your fine lady ways. And your money. Don’t answer. I don’t care. Why do you suppose Mickey wanted you if it wasn’t for the money he could get out of you! Listen...” Her hands curled hard around the mattress, and she leaned forward, her eyes narrow and furious. “Listen. I could tell you that I heard you call him Mickey; that that’s how I knew his real name. I could tell you that I—borrowed his cigarette case, that I saw it and picked it up and used it. I could tell you that I said everything I said just to tease you. Or to make you angry with Mickey so you’d give him up. I could tell you anything like that. And you’d believe me.”
“Gili, be quiet. Gili...” It was as if those clawing strong hands were tearing down a wall, shredding a hard woven fabric.
Gili cried, drawing her mouth back from her teeth as if she were at bay herself, not Marcia. “But I’m not going to. Do you understand? I’m not going to give him up to you. He doesn’t need you now. He’s got everything he wants from you. He’s through with you. He belongs to me. You with your smugness and your money—that doesn’t matter. You can’t have him.”
Mickey had said: “Do you believe me or Gili?” Marcia remembered that as clearly as if again, he had spoken the words in her ears. She said: “I don’t believe you.”
“You think I’m lying!” Gili put back her head so the blonde ends of her hair flung outward savagely and laughed and cried: “Lying! About Mickey and me! Lying...” She stopped laughing. She sprang to her feet and across the room and her hands were reaching out like strong white claws toward Marcia and Marcia slapped her face. Hard, along one cheek.
Gili stopped. Marcia’s hand tingled. Daisy Belle was in the bathroom doorway, staring.
Gili’s hand went slowly to her jaw. She said: “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Marcia hadn’t thought so, either. She looked at Gili’s reddened cheek with dismay and a certain sense of shock but without even a twinge of apology. Daisy Belle said briskly: “Best thing in the world for hysterics! Now then, let’s go to lunch.” She put her hand on Marcia’s shoulder and turned her toward the door. She said to Gili: “You’d better come too. Pin up your hair. We’ll wait. Hurry.”
