Dangerous Cargo (3 page)

When you are introduced to a lot of new people at the same time you only
get your bearings by degrees. I found myself beside a lovely young girl with
a modest, timid air that was almost unbelievable in this day and generation.
She told me that she had lately graduated from a convent in France. This was
Celia Dare, Horace Laghet’s fiancée. It seemed rather a shame.

Her mother was a beautiful woman still on the sunny side of forty.
Everybody called her Sophie. In contradistinction to her daughter, she was
very much in the know. Her bright touched-up eyes darted this way and that,
full of calculation. I suppose she thought she had done very well by the
girl.

The third woman was Mrs. Holder, or Adele. She was a beauty of what used
to be called the Dresden china type, with that exquisite fragility that
appeals so strongly to men, particularly of Horace Laghet’s sort. It often
goes with a hearty appetite.

Amongst the men I should have recognised Adrian Laghet anywhere as
Horace’s brother. He was tall and had the same cast of features, though an
entirely different character was suggested. Adrian was soft.

Already at thirty-two his waist measure was approaching that of his chest.
He was the social light of the family.

Emil Herbert, the pianist, was an attractive young fellow, blond, quiet in
manner, but with the fine, resolute eye that bespeaks a master of his trade,
which Emil was. Apart from music, however, he was nothing but a shy boy. I
caught him glancing sideways at the girl beside me.

Under the influence of the masterly cocktails there was a lot of talk and
laughter. Superficially it had the look of a good party, but it was not so. I
really had not been amongst them two minutes before I could feel the strain.
The eyes in those smiling faces were guarded and uneasy. All those smart
people seemed to be encased in glass armour.

Tall, slender, and casual, Mme. Storey, amongst the other women, looked
like a cardinal bird amongst tame canaries. Her smile was perfectly
good-humoured and inscrutable. I felt enmity in the room, but among those
glassy smiles I could not locate it.

Horace Laghet seemed to get his pleasure out of insulting everybody. That
was his idea of humour. When he brought his brother up to introduce him to
Mme. Storey, he said: “This is little Adrian, who will kiss your hand, and do
a little song and dance, or paint a little picture, or what you will!”

A loud laugh greeted this. Horace’s cracks naturally were sure of a big
hand. I could see by Adrian’s eyes that it flicked him on the raw, but he
swallowed it.

Horace, indifferent to what anybody might think, bore himself in a loverly
fashion towards the beautiful Adele—a contemptuous lover. This made me
feel more than ever sorry for the girl he was supposed to be engaged to.
Celia didn’t seem to mind. Perhaps she was too inexperienced to realise what
it meant. I wondered what her mother was about. Willing, I suppose, to
overlook anything if she could only take the rich Horace into camp.

The yacht was under way and I went to one of the windows to watch the
panorama of the city moving by. It was hard to believe that we had already
cut loose from all we knew. The East-side waterfront is far from beautiful,
but I felt a sudden love for the old town, and heartily wished myself ashore.
Moment by moment I liked our situation less. Adele joined me at the window.
She said lightly: “I wonder if it will show any change when we come
back?”

“Who can tell?” I said. And to myself I added: “Will we show any change
when we come back? And will we all come back?”

“Just the same, I’m glad to get away for a while,” Adele went on, with her
meaningless professional-beauty smile. “Life in New York is so wearing!”

She was very beautiful. I wondered if there were any real feelings under
that perfect mask. I presently found out.

A sailor came walking along the deck outside. I saw him before Adele did.
I was struck by his appearance, because he didn’t look like a common sailor,
but like a member of the younger country-club set who had been hitting it up;
a clean-cut young man who was getting a little blurry. He didn’t know anyone
was watching him. There was a possessed look in his eyes such as you see in
one who goes along the street muttering to himself.

When he saw me, he dropped his head and assumed the slouch of a common
fellow. He went by us with his head down. I heard Adele gasp, and her slender
fingers closed around my wrist like a vice.

“Please…please,” she stammered, “come downstairs with me.”

I followed her wonderingly through the door into the stair hall. She was
careful to keep her back turned to the others in the room. Her knees were
giving under her. Yet when Horace called out: “Where are you going, Adele?”
she sang out gaily: “Back in half a moment.”

She went stumbling down the stairs. I heard her murmuring to herself: “Oh,
my God! What am I going to do?” She clung to the post at the bottom,
white-faced and shaking. In a moment she opened her eyes and said with a
ghastly attempt to laugh it off:

“What must you think of me?”

“You are not well,” I said.

“Yes…yes,” she said eagerly. “It was so hot upstairs. I thought I was
going to faint.”

I said nothing. Feeling, perhaps, that her excuse was rather lame, she
went on: “I have a bad heart, you see, and naturally one doesn’t want a man
to know it. If you had not come with me Horace would have followed, and…and
his eyes are so sharp!” A terrible shudder went through her thin body.

“Come to my cabin sand get a spot of brandy,” I said.

When she had swallowed the brandy she began to chatter. “I feel all right
now. It was nothing at all. Nothing. So silly of me! Dear me! I hope I’m not
going to be a bad sailor!” And so on. But her eyes were still sick with fear.
She went to the mirror and rubbed a little rouge into her cheeks, then turned
her head this way and that, gazing into her face with the most penetrating
anxiety. I suppose that face meant everything in the world to her. It was all
she had.

She entered the winter-garden with a gay rattle of talk. “Horace, when are
you going to show us the vessel? I can’t wait until I see the swimming-pool.
It’s all perfectly marvelous! Like Aladdin’s cave afloat!”

In my mind I could still hear that desperate voice murmuring: “Oh, my God!
What am I going to do?”

MME. STOREY’S first task was to acquaint herself with every
part of the yacht, and to make friends with everybody on board. We wandered
around in the guise of an innocent curiosity.

Captain Grober was an enigma. A fine-looking, sailor-like German of the
bristly-haired type, he was most polite. But we could never get him to
unbend; his grey-blue eyes held no more expression than those of a fish. One
had to admit that his position on board was a difficult one. He had always
commanded big liners, where his word was law at sea, but now he was under the
shadow of the owner.

The under-officers, all young Germans, took their cue from the Captain.
Polite and wooden, it was impossible to make friends with them. On the other
hand, the engine-room staff was mostly Scotsmen. The chief, McLaren, was a
grand old fellow whom I always delighted to talk to when I could catch him on
deck.

It was not a happy ship. Horace was brutal and overbearing with the crew.
American sailors will not stand for it. As Horace’s guests, we shared in his
unpopularity. Once as we sat on deck he passed nearby, looked down into the
well-deck over the rail and passed on. We heard a growling voice from below:
“Huh! thinks he’s the Lord God Almighty! But he ain’t immortal! He ain’t
immortal!” Mme. Storey arose and looked over the rail, but the speaker was
gone.

Among the friends we made was Jim, a gnarly old fellow with white hair.
His principal duty was to wipe down the white-painted walls on deck. Thus he
was nearly always somewhere about our quarters and we could talk to him when
we pleased.

Another man we liked was Les Farman. We came upon him sitting on a bitt on
the forward deck making a bag out of a piece of sail-cloth. He was a
magnificent physical specimen with steady blue eyes and firm mouth. Mme.
Storey stopped and looked at him in pleasure. He stood up in instinctive
politeness, but he was not in the least afraid of her. Indeed, there was a
hint of fun in his eyes. He knew his own worth. And that charmed her.

We talked for a while. When she suggested that he seemed somewhat above
his station, he answered coolly that he had a master’s papers. Having had
trouble with his owners (he did not say of what nature), he had found it
impossible to get another ship during such hard times, and had been glad to
sign as a seaman on the
Buccaneer
.

Just because those two men were so square and decent, Mme. Storey would
not attempt to use them as spies on the rest of the crew.

I was never able to point out the sailor whose appearance had so terrified
Adele. Apparently he was keeping out of our way.

On our third day at sea Mme. Storey and I were pacing the deck after
lunch. It was already warm as we steamed south, and all the doors and windows
were open.

Every time we passed the door of the music-room we could hear Emil Herbert
softly playing Chopin. We could see little Celia Dale sitting in a big chair
behind him with tears in her eyes, and smiling at us through them. It was
about the only moment of the day when the child could escape from her
argus-eyed mother. Presently we met Horace himself, black-browed and
scowling, strolling with a cigar. “Rosika,” he said at once (all formality
had been dropped by this time), “I want a talk with you.”

His overbearing manner always brought a wicked smile to Mme. Storey’s
face. “Well, I can spare you ten minutes,” she said.

“Do we have to have this creature along?” he said, with a hard glance in
my direction. It was supposed to be a joke. I didn’t care.

“Oh, why not?” said Mme. Storey.

He gave in sullenly, and led the way up to the sundeck, where he had a
sort of den aft of the officers’ quarters. It was a beautiful little room
with red leather chairs, sporting prints on the walls and an honest to God
fireplace.

Horace mixed himself a whisky and soda. Mme. Storey and I declined. “What
do you think of the situation?” he growled.

“I don’t think anything of it,” she said. “I lack information.”

“How about the crew?” he asked. “I’ve seen you going about amongst
them.”

“What is the Captain’s history?”

“Surely you don’t suspect him!” said Horace, staring.

“I didn’t say I did. He seems perfectly correct.”

“He used to be captain of the
Koenigen Louise
.”

“Oh, the big liner that burned in the stream at Bremerhaven.”

“Not his fault,” said Horace. “He wasn’t even aboard at the time.”

“There was an ugly story going around that she was burned for the
insurance. She had never paid expenses, you see.”

“Even so,” said Horace. “Certainly it wasn’t the Captain who got the
insurance…I bank on him,” he went on. “He’s got twenty-five years of good
seamanship behind him. I consider myself lucky to get him for a little vessel
like this.”

Mme. Storey said nothing.

“Apart from the yacht, we don’t touch anywhere,” Horace went on. “What
possible reason could he have for wanting me out of the way?”

“I don’t know,” she said mildly. “I’m not accusing him. Only asking for
information…He brought his own officers aboard?”

“Yes, his navigating officers. Everybody else was hired in New York.”

“By him?”

“Yes; but in consultation with my attorney. I may tell you that when I
received my first warning two weeks ago, I fired the whole crew on a caprice,
and hired another. The record of every man aboard has been investigated.”

“I doubt if it is in the fo’c’s’le that the source of danger is to be
looked for,” said Mme. Storey.

Horace stared angrily, but said nothing.

“Murders, roughly, divide themselves into five classes,” she remarked.
“Firstly, there is the killing committed in a sudden passion. That is out,
because this plot has been cooking for two weeks or more. Secondly, there is
the murder induced by jealousy…Have you wronged any man by taking his girl
from him, Horace?”

He suspected that she was making fun of him. “No,” he said shortly.

“Then that’s out. Next there is the motive of fear. Has any man got cause
to fear you?”

“No,” he said with a hard grin. “I’ve already done my worst to them. I’m
out of the market now.”

“Fourthly, there is revenge,” she went on. “But revenge is the motive of
primitive natures only. Except among gangsters, murders for revenge are rare.
That brings us to the last and most prolific cause of murders.”

“What’s that?”

“Murder for profit.”

“Who on earth is there who would profit by my murder?” he said
scornfully.

She did not answer directly. “When are you going to be married?” she
asked.

“What’s that got to do with it?” he said. “…There’s no hurry. I’ll marry
when I get around to it.

“Hm!” said Mme. Storey.

“Isn’t she a little darling!” he said with a cynical smile. “So modest and
gentle! The perfect wife! Almost unheard of nowadays.”

“If you’re not ready for marriage why get engaged?”

“I want to make sure of her. She’s unique. Sophie is taking care of her
for me. Sophie won’t let the bloom get rubbed off my peach.”

“Sounds Turkish to me,” murmured Mme. Storey.

“Hey?” he demanded.

“Nothing…Have you made a will?”

“Sure.”

“Is Adele Holder mentioned in it?”

“Well, upon my word!” he said, darkening with anger.

“I told you I should have to ask all sorts of questions,” said Mme. Storey
calmly.

“Yes, she is,” he said sullenly. “For fifty thousand only.”