Five Passengers from Lisbon, page 6
Marcia laughed. Suddenly, Daisy Belle’s crispness and directness, the very sound of her flat dry voice seemed to dispel an annoying little cloud. How much did Daisy Belle know about her and about Mickey? How much had those sophisticated, knowledgeable eyes seen and stored away? She said, on an impulse: “You’ve never asked a question, Daisy Belle.”
The older woman glanced at her rather sharply. “About you and André? Why should I?”
“Well, but—there we were, dumped down at that grisly little hotel in Lisbon. Traveling together...”
Daisy Belle laughed shortly. “My dear child, I’ve seen something of the world. You are obviously what you are—a decentish American girl who’s been having rather a rough time of it, somehow. André is obviously what he is, too—a man who has had his own share of”—Daisy Belle paused and caught her breath and said—“of war and horror. Well, then; there you are, both obviously and comprehensibly anxious to get away from Europe, to get home; to straighten out your lives; to resume the kind of life that you and thousands of other men and women ought to have had. There you are—and I like you. What else is there to know? Don’t be a fool. I wasn’t born yesterday. And if it comes to that, what do you know of me and Luther?”
“Everybody knows about you!”
Daisy Belle’s fine profile looked a little grim suddenly against the night. “What do they know?” she said after a moment.
“Why, who you are, all that. You are sort of fabulous, you know.”
Again Daisy Belle did not speak for a moment. Then she said: “You mean—it is rumored that Luther and Daisy Belle Cates, well-known members of the so-called international set, are about to buy a house or sell a house, or back a horse, or get a divorce, or—or any damned bit of nonsense anybody can think up? That sort of thing?”
“Well, yes. Only it doesn’t seem to fit you, now that I’ve known you.”
Daisy Belle laughed shortly. “You can’t imagine me being one of the ten best-dressed women, can you? Well, as a matter of fact, I wasn’t. I only had big dressmaker’s bills. It was all a question of money; Luther had so much, and so had I. You don’t choose your way of living, Marcia; it chooses you. Not that any of that matters now. The point is, how did we get here? At this moment,” said Daisy Belle, her eyes narrow and thoughtful, as if she saw a picture somewhere in the blackness beyond that rosy area of light surrounding them, “at this special instant in history. Well, we were in Paris when the Germans came. We went to the Riviera. After a while the Germans came there, too. They were everywhere..” Her elegant, straight shoulders made a little movement of distaste. “Luther was very ill, for a long time. We stayed with a—a friend; in a chateau in the hills back of Nice. Eventually the war was over and we decided to go to Buenos Aires. So here we are.”
She stopped. It struck Marcia that there was something tentative in her deliberate pause, something expectant.
Marcia said: “It will be good to be at home.”
“Will it?” said Daisy Belle. “Will it? I’m sure I hope so. Well...” She had smoked the cigarette down to the last small end of it; she tossed it abruptly into the sea. “I’m going to find Luther. I do think that this Castiogne person took a very inconvenient time to get himself murdered. Of course Gili could have done it, but I don’t think she did. For one thing she was too scared. But one of the seamen will eventually confess and that will be the end of that.” She patted Marcia’s shoulder once, hard, and walked briskly away.
Marcia started to follow her, remembered that Mickey would expect to find her somewhere on deck and, after waiting a few moments, leaning against the railing, she turned and strolled slowly along the lighted white lane of the deck, forward. Watching, as she strolled, the curling white tops of the waves, and the red and gold glitter of the reflected lights from the ship, listening to the murmur and rush of the ship plowing her sturdy way through the water. And the lulling sound of the sea, the feeling of security, of being on an American ship which was the same as being on American soil, seemed to give her a feeling of recovery of herself. As if the girl she had been, the Marcia Colfax who had set gaily forth on the Normandie so long ago, had disappeared, gone away, been asleep, somewhere; as if another girl had taken her place, a woman rather, who had had to summon the strength to combat terror, and hopelessness and sorrow and cold and sometimes hunger. And now that woman had gone again, and Marcia Colfax herself had returned. It was indeed, as if the night just past had been a climax, a final curtain to a play in which she had played a hard and exhausting role.
But now it was done, the curtain down forever.
She reached the bow and could look down on the fo’c’sle, its capstans and ventilators looming ghostly in the light with sharp black shadows. The deck roped off in sections in the daytime to provide specified deck spaces for patients, and nurses and doctors and ship’s personnel, was now clear so she could walk entirely around the ship. She rounded the bow and emerged on the port side and another long strip of clean white deck, brightly lighted, stretched ahead of her. About midway along it she paused to lean against the railing and watch the red and gold glitter of light reflected from the shiny black waves. The air was fresh and cool on her face; she pulled her coat around her throat. Even the coat, thick and comfortable and warm, was like the blessing of her own land. By the very act of dressing in the nurse’s uniform and chucking away the shabby, worn clothes she had had on the Portuguese boat, she had stepped back into her own identity, back to the Marcia Colfax who was really herself.
That, of course, was fanciful; and she wouldn’t think of things that were now in the past.
She wouldn’t, in fact, think of the previous night.
But she did, of course. The furiously pitching lifeboat, the cold, the despair, and a man who had been murdered in that tiny boat, while all of them were facing a death that had seemed certain.
But Daisy Belle and Mickey must have been right in believing that one of the seamen had’ done it—crazed, as Mickey said, by fear, or holding so deep a grudge that it superseded and held sway above the fear of death itself. A deep grudge indeed, thought Marcia with a kind of horror. Yet she had seen human emotions on a strange and horrible rampage. She knew, everyone knew now, that such things could happen.
Daisy Belle with her cool knowledge of the world was right. Mickey was right. One of the seamen would confess.
The wind was lessening but the sea was definitely heavier.
On the bridge Captain Svendsen in a heavy coat, with his cap pulled down and shading those shrewd, deep-set eyes, peered into the darkness for a while and then went in to study the barometer and the weather reports. Unless he was greatly mistaken, the wind would soon drop off altogether and they would run into fog and Captain Svendsen hated fog. He never left the bridge in a storm or in fog; he had food sent to him. If it was a bad storm or a long stretch of fog, he lived mainly on coffee and cigarettes while his ruddy face took on a grayish tinge and large gray pockets came around his eyes. He sighed now, wearily; fog it would be, no question of it. And hundreds of lives in his care.
And this complication of a murdered third officer of a tiny Portuguese cargo boat was an added care. He could put all the people from the lifeboat under guard, of course; one of them must have murdered the fellow. But there was, of course, that annoying question of time, and opportunity and rigor mortis; none of the Magnolia’s staff or personnel could have done it; yet in sheer justice he must have another talk with the medical commanding officer.
He wished momentarily that he had not seen the rockets of distress and the lifeboat; and then, because he was a decent and honest man and besides had the etiquette of the sea engraved not only on his heart but in his bones, he hurriedly retracted that thought. He’d have to do the best he could, and just at the moment the fog was the main thing, and the sick and wounded soldiers he must get home as fast, as comfortably, as safely as it could humanly be done. Alfred Castiogne would have to wait.
Otherwise everything about the ship was in its usual orderly groove. The engine rooms were lighted and busy, the sick wards settling down for the night. The radio had been turned off and lights at the various portholes were dimmed as the nurses went about, seeing that their rows of patients were comfortable, checking the orders given by the doctors for each ward, reading the charts, following out every detail of the careful and unrelaxing routine. The ship had grown very quiet.
Marcia, however, still leaning against the railing, was so engrossed in her own thoughts that she did not hear the rapid footsteps of a man coming along the deck aft until he had almost reached her. Then she whirled, thinking it was Mickey.
It was not Mickey; it was, instead, Colonel Morgan. He wore a long army overcoat and a cap pulled low over his face, so she did not recognize him until he stopped for a second under a light near the companionway. Then he seemed to recognize her and came on toward her. “Miss Colfax? I thought that was you.”
He had been walking rapidly; his voice indeed seemed breathless and uneven. He paused beside her at the railing and fumbled in a pocket with his uninjured hand and drew out a package of cigarettes.
“I think I’ll have another smoke before turning in,” he said more evenly. “Will you join me? I’d like to talk to you for a moment, if you don’t mind.”
5
He-was wearing a uniform with Air Corps insignia. His coat was flung loosely around his shoulders. His face was shaded somewhat by his cap, but she caught the brief smile he gave her as he held out cigarettes.
“As a matter of fact”—he shifted the cigarettes, opened a lighter expertly with his left hand and held the flame for her cigarette—“as a matter of fact, I’m not supposed to be here. I’m a patient, you know. And at this hour every patient is tucked away and accounted for. But they give me a little extra leeway because I drew a two-bunk cabin and the other bunk is empty. Or rather my eagles drew it; the rank, not the man. Besides, the ship is not as heavily loaded this trip as she has been up to now. And then I’m what is called ambulatory. That is, I can walk around and don’t require a nurse’s care. One of the doctors sees me every day.” He slid the lighter into his pocket; his coat swung like a cape over his broad shoulders. He looked down at her and then leaned against the railing again and said: “Looks as if we’re running into fog after the storm. A good thing it wasn’t last night. Your rockets might never have been seen.”
It was curious how familiar he seemed to her, yet she was sure she had not known him. It was rather as if she had always known that she would know him some time. And that, of course, was absurd. Nevertheless, she found herself leaning against the railing too, companionably, holding the cigarette he had lighted for her in her hand. He added quickly, as if he regretted introducing a topic which must inevitably hold horror for her: “But that’s luckily in the past. I assumed from what Captain Svendsen said that you lived in Paris for some time.”
Had Captain Svendsen set him to question her, spy out any secrets she had? If so, he’d find nothing. She said: “Yes, that’s true. I was there when the war began.”
He smoked for a long moment, staring out toward the black sea and sky, somewhere in the dark distance where they met. Finally, he said: “I was in Paris then. But of course, as Captain Svendsen said, it’s a big city! There were several million other people in Paris that fall, too. Still, the little American colony was pretty close. You often knew about other people from home. Especially...” He put his cigarette to his lips and the glow lighted his face “...especially after the war actually began. Who were some of the people you knew best? Americans, I mean.”
“Why, I...” She hesitated; yet probably it was actually quite in order, and quite American; the old business of finding mutual friends. In any case it didn’t matter. She replied literally: “Not many, really. The war began so soon and most of the Americans went home as soon as possible. The friends with whom I was traveling went home almost at once. Of course there were some other people...” Smoking, slowly, she dredged names and faces out of her memory, casual acquaintances all of them, all but forgotten in the intervening time. He listened to each name rather intently, so again the thought crossed her mind that Captain Svendsen might have asked him to question her, with a view to proving her own identity.
If so, however, he was not doing it very expertly or very objectively, really. It was more as if he had some obscure yet personal motive of his own.
Yet that was not likely; it was, in fact, extremely unlikely. She dismissed it abruptly. And when she’d finished the little unimportant roll call, he said merely: “The good old business of it’s a small world doesn’t seem to fit in this case, does it? Of course I recognized the Cates name. Any school child would know that!” He laughed shortly and put his cigarette to his lips. “André Messac is not a common name.”
Mickey must have returned to the deck by now. She glanced over Josh Morgan’s shoulder, but the deck was empty and white. She replied: “It is not an uncommon name.”
“No? Well.” He smoked for a moment, and added: “Was he around Paris that first winter?”
“Yes. But then the Germans came.”
He seemed to wait for a moment, as if for her to add to that. When she didn’t, he said finally: “It’s queer, really, to accept the fact that the war in Europe is over. I can’t, yet. I know it with my mind, but I feel...” Again he paused, looking out into the darkness beyond the rim of light close to the ship, and then said, in a different, harder voice: “I feel as if there are still things to do.”
She glanced at him quickly; his mouth looked stern and hard; the one hand that lay on the railing had doubled up suddenly into a fist. “I don’t know what you mean. The war in Europe is over.”
“Yes, yes, of course. You realize that Captain Svendsen asked me to come to his quarters in order to discover whether or not I knew you.”
“Yes. That is, I supposed so. Because of the murder.”
Colonel Morgan’s shoulders lifted in a quick, easy shrug. “He probably hoped to check your account of yourself. I know about the murder—it isn’t supposed to be known, of course—but that’s due to my eagles too. Later I—well, I got to thinking we had met somewhere.”
“I don’t think so.”
“No...No, I must be wrong.”
It was an odd little interview: Mickey would be waiting. She’d better return to the other side of the deck to the place where he had left her and would expect to find her again. She moved away from the railing and without a word Colonel Morgan fell into pace beside her. And, smoking, began to chat about the ship. The food...”Steak,” he said, “and milk that you’d swear was not twenty minutes from a cow. And eggs.” The doctors, the nurses. “They’ve been in combat, most of them. Under fire off the invasion beachheads. Taking men direct from battle, loading them, operating all day and all night, all three operating rooms going, working at top speed. You’d think, to hear any of them talk, that the patients are the only heroes. Fact is, there’s not a nurse or a doctor on this ship who’s not, quite simply and honestly, a hero.”
He laughed a little as if to cover the depth of feeling in his words, and shrugged his shoulders to adjust his coat. They reached the bow and the deck seemed to rise to meet them at every step. And as they turned, with the sea air strong in their faces, an unexpected small thing happened. The ship thrust into a wave with a sudden heavy motion. Marcia made an unsteady step, wavered, reached for a bulkhead which was too far to touch and Colonel Morgan caught her in his free arm. Caught her closely to him and held her for an instant or two there in the darkness while the ship seemed to hold herself steady, riding the wave. His hard warm cheek brushed her own; his arm was tight and strong, so he seemed to be, just for that fraction of time, the only safe and unmovable thing in the night. Then he laughed a little again and said, but rather unevenly: “Okay?”
“Quite—thanks.” Her own voice was uneven too. She pulled herself away although his arm held her, but lightly then until she was steady and balanced. He said: “It’s always tough going around the bow. Better hang onto my arm.”
She slid her arm through his; she felt a little confused, which was silly. Neither of them spoke. It was darker as they rounded the bow and, as so often in the night at sea, there was the strong sense of being alone and very small in an immensity of darkness. They emerged onto the other side of the deck and Mickey was not there. They reached the door into the main lobby and Colonel Morgan said rather abruptly: “I’d better get back to my quarters before I’m sent back. Coming in?”
“Not just yet. I’m waiting for André.”
Something flickered in his face, under the bright floodlights; yet actually there was no definable change in expression. “Well, I’ll see you again, I hope. It’s swell to talk to an American girl again. Good night, Miss Colfax.” He smiled, touched his cap in a little friendly salute and disappeared into the lighted passageway of the ship.
She’d wait a few moments more for Mickey and then go down to the cabin.
The ship was quiet and asleep by then. The fog was perceptible now, gray wreaths floated at the edge of the area of light surrounding the ship and reflected a wavering red and gold haze. The Magnolia plowed sturdily ahead through the fog and the heavy waves, carrying her load of men, intent upon her errand of mercy. The fog-horn far above her sounded a mournful blast. She started and then realized what it was. She could not be sure, but as the mist thickened it seemed to her that the ship’s pace slackened a little—a safety measure, no doubt, in this low visibility.
Still Mickey did not come.
Gradually the chill night air and the fog crept through the heavy coat Marcia was wearing. She turned her back to the railing, watching the lighted doorway for Mickey. Thinking once how strange it was to find herself there, on that lighted ship, so full and packed and safe inside, its decks so white and empty, a floating, rosily lighted little hospital going its steady way through the sea and the night.
