Five Passengers from Lisbon, page 17
It was like a schoolmistress, making quick order of childish chaos. And, like a child, Gili sulkily obeyed. She combed her long hair. Jerking it savagely, she pinned it up, and gave Marcia and Daisy Belle a sullen, brooding look and, as Daisy Belle motioned toward the corridor, again obeyed.
It was difficult though, to sit over a long lunch, listening to the pleasant, animated talk of the nurses at the same table, knowing that Gili sat on the other side of Daisy Belle, eating steadily, saying nothing, but with a look in her green eyes that bided its time.
Do you believe me, Mickey had said, or Gili?
Her fingers still tingled. Gili’s face still showed a reddish mark. Marcia had never slapped anybody in her life before, and she thought gratefully of Daisy Belle, who had put the whole absurd scene on its proper level. It was typical of Daisy Belle to see, to understand, and kindly, promptly and loyally to act.
But she thought also that lunch would never end. It was the second sitting; they had been late. The officers’ tables at the other end of the room were vacant long since; she did not see Mickey, she did not see Josh Morgan, she did not see Luther, she did not see anyone she knew. And when the mess boy finally served them coffee and the remaining little group of nurses trickled out of the room, going back to the wards, she still had no chance to talk to Mickey or to Josh Morgan.
The three women started back to the cabin together, Gili swishing along ahead, still angry, still with that look of latent, biding fury in every motion she made. Daisy Belle, her fine long face very troubled and tired-looking, stopped for a moment in the nurses’ lounge as they passed it and came out with an armload of magazines.
“There’s nothing else to do,” she said, answering Marcia’s glance. “And, my dear, don’t talk to Gili now. Don’t, just yet, talk to André. Wait. Time,” said Daisy Belle Cates with a queer note in her voice, like sorrow, like regret, “time is a gentleman.”
Daisy Belle, of course, had heard everything Gili had said. But Daisy Belle did not know of the crumpled roll of gauze in her pocket.
So she left Daisy Belle at the door of the cabin. She said something, anything about going on deck, about exercise. Daisy Belle put one hand upon her arm and then quietly relinquished her hold. “Very well,” she said. “You know best.”
Marcia, walking slowly along the warm, brightly lighted passageways, reminded herself that she must be very careful. She must stay where there were people. She must not be alone, not for a moment. But she would find Josh Morgan.
She didn’t. He was not in the lobby on B deck, or in the busier lobby on A deck; he was not in his cabin, for she inquired of an obliging young sergeant who took her there and knocked on the door and opened it, showing an empty cabin with Josh’s cap and coat slung on the bed. She could not find him and, not wanting to see Gili again, not wanting to talk to Daisy Belle and see the knowledge in her eyes, no matter how understanding that knowledge was, she went to the nurses’ lounge and sat there pretending to read. Actually she was aware only of that limp roll of gauze in her pocket, and of Gili.
Do you believe me, Mickey had said, or Gili?
It was like a merciless, nagging refrain.
And the gauze, of course, was evidence. Since she could not find Josh, as she wished to do, the obvious course was to give it to Captain Svendsen.
It was later than she had realized. The lights were on now everywhere and the fog was creeping again into the ship, as it did somehow at night.
She’d not wait longer for Josh. She looked for him, nevertheless, as again she went through the lobby and up the stairs.
And when she knocked on the door with its gold-lettered sign—Captain Lars Svendsen—and it opened, Josh was there.
He sprang up when he saw her and came toward her. The Captain, sitting at his desk, put down his pipe and rose. Colonel Wells was there too and turned to watch.
Josh said “Hello” in a matter-off-act tone. The Captain said courteously: “Come in, come in...” Colonel Wells smiled impersonally and politely.
The Captain went on: “I’m glad you came, Miss Colfax. Colonel Morgan has been trying to make me believe that you are in danger. I don’t mean that I have ever doubted your belief that you were half strangled the first night you were on my ship, but I did think it might have been due to your overwrought nerves. Now then, as you know the thing is over, thank God, we’ve got Urdiola and a sound case against him. You know all about that?”
She moved her head in acknowledgment. Something about her look, her silence, suddenly seemed to strike Josh as wrong. She was aware of his sharpened attention and the little frown that suddenly came between his eyes. The Captain said: “But I don’t mind telling you, Miss Colfax, that it would help if you can identify Urdiola as your assailant. Can you do that?”
She shook her head. She started to speak and stopped and took the gauze helmet from her pocket.
Josh understood first and sprang forward to her side and took the roll of gauze from her hand. He swore and held it so they could see it and then put it on the Captain’s desk. “See that...See that...” he cried almost incoherently and was back at Marcia’s side, his hand on her shoulder, compelling her to look at him, compelling her to speak. “Tell us what happened. Tell us—hurry...”
But she had not realized how unsubstantial a story it was until she told it and saw the Captain’s face, fixed and hard as granite. Colonel Wells coughed and lighted a cigarette and said nothing. The Captain waited for a moment, tapping his pipe absently on the arm of his chair, eyeing her with those bright, shrewd, hard eyes. Finally he said in a dry voice: “Very interesting, Miss Colfax. Exactly when did this occur?” She told him.
“And you actually saw no one?”
“No. But that was on the floor.”
He glanced at the gauze heap impatiently. Colonel Wells came over to the desk, picked up the gauze, looked at it, said: “Inexpertly made. No nurse or doctor made that,” and put it down again.
The Captain said: “Urdiola is locked up. The patient, Jacob Heinzer is naturally not under guard, but I expect we can check on his whereabouts. I’ll try. In the meantime, though, are you perfectly sure anyone was really there?”
Before she could reply, Josh Morgan said suddenly: “Captain, I’m afraid I’m guilty of withholding some evidence.” “What’s that, Colonel?” The Captain’s bleached eyebrows were suddenly heavy and threatening.
“The fact is, sir, the Cateses couple have been accused of collaboration with the Nazis. And, if the story is right, Castiogne knew it.”
“Castiogne! You mean that you think he tried to blackmail Cates? But Cates said he gave him the diamond for passage bribe. Cates said...”
“Right, sir.”
“Wait.” The Captain touched a bell and gave quick orders to the boy who appeared. “Get hold of Mr. Cates and his wife. Get them both here. Now then, Colonel Morgan, exactly what do you mean?”
As if he knew that she was willing him not to tell it, Josh would not look at Marcia. He stared instead very intently at the end of his cigarette while he told Gili’s story, almost word for word, exactly as she had told it.
The Captain listened and, as Josh finished, began to pace the cabin angrily. “Why didn’t you tell me before now?”
“Because I didn’t believe it.”
The Captain paused briefly to shoot him an angry—and troubled—look. “And you do believe it now?”
“I believe that Marcia is in grave danger,” said Josh obliquely.
As he spoke, the boy returned and ushered Daisy Belle and Luther together into the room. And immediately Marcia thought they guessed; and that, therefore, incredible though it was, it was true.
Daisy Belle did not look at Marcia. Marcia was thankful for that. The Captain cleared his throat. “Close the door,” he snapped, and the boy who had brought them ducked out into the passage and closed the door firmly.
Daisy Belle said quite clearly to Luther, looking up into his tired, pale face: “I was right, Luther—I was right.” She took his hand in her own and suddenly, like a child, her face crumpled and she began soundlessly to cry.
Josh brought a chair and she sat down in it automatically. The Captain said: “What’s this story? What’s this...? Look here, Cates, why did you give that diamond to Castiogne?”
Luther took a long unsteady breath. Then he moved to stand behind Daisy Belle. He looked down and said: “You were right, dear. I ought to have told them before. All right...”
He put his hand upon her shoulder, lifted his worn, lined face and said steadily: “I gave the diamond to Castiogne to pay him for securing our passage, as I told you. That was true. But there is something else—something my wife and I ought to have told you, perhaps. But we had hoped to forget it, eventually. It is not pleasant.”
His voice stopped. Daisy Belle patted the hand on her shoulder and ignored the streaming tears on her cheeks. Luther went on: “You see, my wife and I, during the years when France was occupied were”—he swallowed hard so his corded, thin throat worked but his faded blue eyes did not waver—“we were what you could call Nazis. What everybody will call Nazis. We had to live in the home of someone who proved to be a Nazi. An old acquaintance, who offered us a refuge. We did not then know what he was; we had already taken food and shelter. But circumstances were such that, even after we suspected, we continued to take what we thought we had to have. There is no excuse for us. We realize that.”
Daisy Belle cried suddenly: “It was not your fault, Luther. It was mine. You had to have drugs; you had to have digitalis. I thought you were dying.”
“Don’t, my dear.” His thin hand pressed down upon her shoulder. “Since Castiogne’s death we began to think that, in some possible way the fact could have a connection with the murders. So we had talked of telling you the truth. And it does not matter, you see, because,” said Luther with sudden dignity, “in any case we can never forgive ourselves and our own weakness. We can never really forget that we’ve taken food and coal and medicine from bloody and shameful hands.”
There was again a long silence in the cabin. Colonel Wells turned abruptly and stared out over the fo’c’sle. The Captain drummed on the table with his pipe. Josh Morgan did not move. Finally the Captain said gruffly: “Why do you think it had a connection with the murder?”
“I don’t know,” said Luther simply.
“According to the story I’ve heard, Castiogne knew that you had done this. Did he try to blackmail you?” asked the Captain bluntly.
“No. As we told you the diamond was—well, a bribe. We saw him in Lisbon. He said he could arrange it for money. We had no money, so we gave him the diamond. And he got our passage.”
There was another silence; then the Captain said suddenly: “Thank you. You may go.”
With unbroken dignity they left. Daisy Belle, passing Marcia, stopped for an instant beside her chair and touched her lightly with her hand. “My dear,” she said. “Don’t look like that. It’s all right.”
The door closed upon them. Colonel Wells unexpectedly and loudly blew his nose and the Captain looked at him angrily.
And Josh said suddenly: “All right. But I tell you Marcia’s in danger. And I don’t see...” He stopped, stared at the floor, suddenly seemed to take a resolution and strode over to the Captain. “There’s one more thing, sir. The man traveling with Miss Colfax is not André Messac. I knew André Messac. He was my close friend. This man is a former concert pianist. I have seen him and heard him play many times. His name is Michel Banet and...”Josh’s voice went on as hard and harsh as iron, “His hands show marks of torture which he says he received in a German prison. In fact, however, I believe him to be a fleeing Nazi war criminal.”
The cabin seemed to Marcia to darken and tilt. The Captain’s face, purple and swollen-looking, seemed to tilt with it. She heard him shout: “Why haven’t you told me this before? Why...?”
She heard Josh’s answer too, quite steady and firm: “For a good reason, sir. A good reason...”
Even in the crazy tilting room she heard them giving orders, demanding André Messac. But they meant Mickey Banet—Mickey Banet—Mickey Banet...
The name droned through her senses like a hammer, over and over and over.
It was, however, forever too late to ask questions of Mickey Banet.
He was found on deck. He was unconscious. He had been shot apparently with a service revolver, and died shortly after, although everything possible was done to save him.
Before he died he rallied briefly and made a curious and terrible statement. A woman, he said, had shot him.
In the same full, deceptively strong voice he told them that he would explain it all later.
It was, however, the last thing he said.
It was about that time that a young second lieutenant who had been a member of one of the armed searching parties reported to his immediate superior the loss of the revolver which had been issued to him.
16
Anyone could have taken the revolver.
The young lieutenant had been assigned night duty. The revolver had been taken some time during the afternoon while he slept. Any number of people had gone along the passageway outside the quarters he shared with six others; naturally the door had not been locked. He had placed it beside his bunk; he admitted he was a sound sleeper. Although his superior officer had some words to say on the subject, it was not really a censurable act, and in any case it was spilled milk.
Unless by mere chance some witness came forward, it was almost hopeless to try to discover who had taken it. It could have been, as they knew from the beginning, anyone on the ship.
Except the Portuguese seaman, Urdiola. He was still locked up. Obviously he could not have shot Mickey Banet, either. He was not, however, absolved, for there still remained the diamond, and the extremely sound case against him in the matter of the murder of the other two Portuguese.
While it was difficult to believe that the murder of Mickey Banet had no connection with that of the two Portuguese seamen from the Lerida there was at the same time no way of dismissing the diamond in Urdiola’s possession, except to accept the story he told as a true one, which on the face of it did not seem likely.
At the same time it seemed most unlikely that there were two murderers on the ship.
Also, in the case of Mickey Banet’s death, there was not even an attempt on the part of Colonel Wells and Captain Svendsen to establish alibis on the part of the other Lerida passengers; that too was obviously a hopeless undertaking. The time of the shooting was uncertain, limited only by the time when the young second lieutenant had gone to sleep, which was immediately after his lunch, and the time when Mickey was found, which was about dusk.
The doctors believed it had occurred at least an hour before he was found; they could say little more than that. No one apparently had happened to visit the particular section of the deck where he was found (toward the stern, in the shadow of the rank of lifeboats, as a matter of fact, very near where he had first been attacked) during the afternoon. Again because of the fog the decks had been forbidden; they were cold, wet and slippery.
From that portion of the deck the sound of the shot might not have been heard, in any case. There were ventilators near and the sound of the motors which drove fresh air through the ship would have muffled it. Probably, however, he had been shot during one of the intervals while the foghorn was sounding. At any rate, no one had heard the sound, or at least had reported it.
The revolver which the young lieutenant had lost was not found. The other revolvers which had been issued to those small searching parties were immediately collected and examined. There were not many of them and none had recently been fired. They were reissued and again the watch was doubled.
A search was made for the missing revolver but, it too, was a hopeless inquiry. If one of the Lerida passengers had it naturally it would not be hidden in the cabins they occupied and there was all the rest of the ship and hundreds of hiding places for so small an object. Nobody, however, really believed that it was still on the ship; not with the gray, deep Atlantic to hide it forever from mortal eyes—as the ocean had already hidden, everyone felt sure, the knife that had stabbed Castiogne, the knife that had slashed at Para.
It was, of course, a different pattern of murder, and that again suggested that Urdiola might have killed the two Portuguese, but that someone else had killed Mickey Banet. It also suggested that that person could have been, as Mickey Banet had said, a woman.
It was hard to believe that a woman could have had the strength and the terrible courage to stab the burly strong young third officer, Castiogne. It was almost impossible to believe that a woman could have walked up behind Manuel Para and quietly and deftly slashed his throat.
But a woman could have held and aimed that revolver and pulled the trigger, leaving Mickey presumably dead.
It must have been, they reasoned, a shock to the murderer to hear that he was not dead, that he had even briefly revived. If so, however, that person did not betray the frightful suspense by any word or look. It would have been instantly observed, for the Lerida passengers at the Captain’s orders waited together in the officers’ lounge.
It was a long and horrible wait. The red-covered chairs were damp and chill to the touch. No one read the magazines on the long table. It was like waiting in a hospital reception room to hear the news from a sick bed. Eventually, while they waited, Josh and Colonel Wells came to tell them briefly that he had died.
Neither of them, however, told them, then, what Mickey’s last statement had been. They stayed only a moment and went away again.
Among the four people in the lounge there was very little expression, either of relief or regret, at the expected news. Gili sat huddled on a sofa, her long, streaked hair shading her face, and neither moved nor spoke. Luther, looking ill and tired to death himself, put his drawn face in his hands and kept it there so long that Daisy Belle went to him with an anxious inquiry in her eyes.
“Are you all right?”
