Shivers for Christmas (26 page)

There was a long silence, broken only by his heavy breathing, and by the measured tapping of Sherlock Holmes’s fingertips upon the edge of the table. Then my friend rose and threw open the door.

‘Get out!’ said he.

‘What, sir! Oh, Heaven bless you!’

‘No more words. Get out!’

And no more words were needed. There was a rush, a clatter upon the stairs, the bang of a door, and the crisp rattle of running footfalls from the street.

‘After all, Watson,’ said Holmes, reaching up his hand for his clay pipe, ‘I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies. If Horner were in danger it would be another thing; but this fellow will not appear against him, and the case must collapse. I suppose that I am commuting a felony, but it is just possible that I am saving a soul. This fellow will not go wrong again; he is too terribly frightened. Send him to jail now, and you make him a jail-bird for life. Besides, it is the season of forgiveness. Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and its solution is its own reward. If you will have the goodness to touch the bell, Doctor, we will begin another investigation, in which, also, a bird will be the chief feature.’

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Edgar Wallace (1872–1932) was a most prolific writer of popular fiction with countless mystery novels, short stories, plays, and non-fiction articles to his name. ‘The Buoy That Did Not Light’ was originally published in the
Grand
(companion magazine to the
Strand
) in January 1923, and later appeared in his collection
The Steward
(1932).

‘W
hat’s that word that they use to describe an airplane that can come down on the sea or the land? (It was the steward inquiring.) Amphibian! That’s it. It was the name our old captain gave ’em. In the days when I was steward on board the old
Majestic
—you remember how she killed a stoker every voyage—there used to be a crowd that worked its way across twice a year—the only crowd I ever knew that mixed it.

‘Amphibians are rare. A man either works ships or he works towns. If a ship’s gang works a town at all, it is with people they’ve got to know on board ship. Somebody said that a ship is like a prison, with a chance of being drowned. It is certainly a bit too restricted for people who want to sell gold bricks, or have had a lot of money left to them to distribute to the poor, providing they can find the right kind of man to give it away. The point I want to make is this: that the ship crowd and the land crowd very seldom work together, and if the land people
do
travel by sea, they’ve got to behave themselves, and not go butting in to any little game that happens to be in progress in the smoke-room. The ship crowd naturally do not go to the captain or the purser and complain that there is an unauthorized gang on board eating into their profits. The case is settled out of court; and when you’ve real bad men travelling … Well, I’ve seen some curious things.

‘There was a fellow, quite unknown to me except from hearsay, called Hoyle. He was a land man in a big way. Banks and bullion trains and post cars were his specialty, but there was hardly a piece of work he couldn’t do if there was money to it.

‘If he’d kept to land work, where by all accounts he was an artist, he’d have been lucky. You can’t properly work both. I’ve had that from some of the biggest men that ever travelled the sea. What my old skippers called “The Barons of the Nimble Pack” work in a perfectly straightforward manner. All they need is a pair of hands, a pack of cards, a glib tongue and a nut. Sometimes they use more packs than one, but there is no fanciful apparatus, no plots and plannings, guns, masks or nitroglycerine. It’s a profession like doctoring or lawyering—peaceful and, in a manner of speaking, inoffensive. When a land crowd comes barging into the smoke-room they’re treated civilly so long as they’re travelling for pleasure. Otherwise … Well, it’s natural. If you’re poaching a stream you don’t want people throwing half-bricks into it. There’s only one sensible way of being unlawful when you’re poaching, and that is to poach.

‘I’ve seen a bit of amphibian work and I’m telling you I don’t want to see any more. In the year 19— we went out of Southampton with a full passenger list, the date being the 21st of December, and we carried to all appearance as nice a passenger list as you could wish to meet. Mostly Americans going home, though there was a fair sprinkling of British. We had a couple of genteel gangs on board—fellows who never played high or tried for big stakes, but managed to make a reasonable living. Tad Hesty of Pittsburg ran one, and a London fellow named Lew Isaacs managed the other. I think he was a Jew. A very nice, sensible fellow was Lew, polite and gentlemanly, and I’ve never heard a complaint against him, though I’ve travelled a score of voyages with him.

‘“Felix,” he said to me one day, “moderation in all things is my motto. Nobody was ever ruined by taking small profits. A man who loses a hundred dollars or twenty pounds doesn’t squeal. Touch him for a thousand, and the pilot boat comes out looking like an excursion steamer, it’s that full of bulls. A hundred dollars is speechless, Felix. It may give a tiny squeak, but it apologizes immediately afterwards. A thousand dollars has a steam siren, and ten thousand dollars makes a noise like a bomb in a powder plant.”

‘He and his two friends used to share the same cabin. One was always dressed quiet and respectable, and never went into the smoke-room at all. He used to sit up on the deck, reading a book and getting acquainted with the serious-minded people from the Middle West, or the North of England mill-owners who think they’re sporty because they own a couple of greyhounds that get into the second round of the Waterloo Cup.

‘Lew was on very good terms with the Pittsburg crowd, and I’ve seen them drinking together and exchanging views about the slackness of trade and the income tax and things of that kind, without any ill word passing between them.

‘A ship isn’t out of port twenty-four hours before a steward knows the history of everybody on board; and the smoke-room steward told me that there was nobody else on board but the Pittsburg crowd and this man Lewis and his friends. In fact, it looked so much like being such a quiet voyage, that only the little cards warning passengers not to play with strangers were put up in the smoke-room. If the Flack gang had been travelling, we’d have put up the usual warning with four-inch type.

‘I had eight state-rooms to look after. No. 181 to 188, F Deck. A Chicago man had one, a Mr Mellish, who was a buyer at a St Louis store, was another, a young English officer—Captain Fairburn—attached to the British Embassy had another and the remainder were booked by Colonel Roger Markson for his party. There was the colonel, a tall, solemn-looking man, his wife, who was younger than him, and always seemed to be crying in her cabin, his son, a slick young fellow, generally dressed to kill, and there was Miss Colport.

‘Personally, I don’t take much notice of a passenger’s personal appearance. I judge ’em by their hair-brushes. There’s woodens, generally missionaries or fellows like reporters whose passage is paid by somebody else; there’s ivory backs (the captain’s was ivory) and silver backs and horn backs, with now and again a gold back. Gold backs are usually on their honeymoon. I can’t remember whether this Miss Colport was an ivory or a silver. Maybe she was silver, for she was Markson’s secretary and he’d got her in London, where she was stranded and anxious to get home. Not that she had any friends in New York. By all accounts she came from the west and went to London to take up a position as stenographer to an uncle, who first went broke in the rubber slump and then died.

‘I knew she was a good-looker long before I saw the trouble she was making with the British Embassy. This captain used to be up hours before breakfast waiting for her on deck. Whether they knew or did not know one another before they came on board, I can’t say. I should think not. On board ship you get an introduction from the after combing, as they say. The colonel and his son had breakfast in bed for the first day, for the
Beramic
is a cow of a ship, and she’d roll in a saucerful of milk.

‘Anyway, somebody must have given them the word that their young lady secretary was getting acquainted with the British Army, for the second morning out young Markson (Julius by name) told me to call him at seven. And about five minutes after he’d climbed to the upper deck Miss came down, looking very pink in the face and not a bit pleased.

‘Julius was mad about the girl. Used to follow her about like a tame cat or a wild tiger, whichever way you look at it. What first got me thinking was a bit of a conversation I heard between him and his father one afternoon when I was polishing the brasses in the alleyway.

‘“I’ve got a few words to say to you, Julius,” said the colonel. He had a growling, complaining voice at the best of times, but now it was like a file on granite. “If you get any pleasure out of making up to that girl, you’re entitled to get it, so long as you’re not too serious. I’ll do all the serious stuff in that quarter.”

‘“She’ll skip to Denver as soon as she lands,” said Julius sulkily. And something in his voice told me that they were not father and son. I don’t know what it was, but I jumped to that conclusion and I was right.

‘I heard the colonel laugh, and it was the sort of laugh that has a bark to it.

‘“Have I paid her passage to New York to have her skip anywhere?” he asked. “She’s going to be very useful. Min’s getting past her work. Colport is the woman I’ve been looking for …”

‘That’s all I heard, but I knew that “Min” was Mrs Roger Markson, because I’d heard him call her that lots of times. I had a good look at her after that. She was a woman just over 30, who used to make up a lot. I began to understand why her eyes were always red and why she was so scared-looking when the colonel spoke to her. I knew, of course, that she was too young to be the mother of Julius. At first I thought that she was the colonel’s second wife. Now I guessed that none of the three was related. It’s a wicked world.

‘The next day was Christmas Eve, and some queer things happened. It was in the morning that the deck steward met me and asked me to take Mrs Markson’s wrap to her.

‘I took it up and found them leaning against the rail opposite the smoke-room door. Julius was there, scowling at the captain and Miss Colport, who were sitting together, talking.

‘Just as I was putting on the lady’s wrap, Lew Isaacs came out of the smoke-room. I was standing behind the lady, looking over her shoulder, and I caught one glimpse of his face. His expression didn’t exactly change as he looked at her. I don’t know how I’d describe it … I think it must have been his eyes that lit, but he took no further notice and strolled down the deck with his hands in his pockets and his cap on the side of his head.

‘“Good God!” said the colonel. “I didn’t know he was on board.”

‘As I fixed the wrap I could feel Mrs Markson tremble.

‘“He works this line,” she said. “I told you in London …”

‘“That will do, steward,” said the colonel, and I had to go away at a moment when, as you might say, the story was getting interesting.

‘It was a heavy day for me, and heavier than I expected, owing to Santa Claus.

‘We always do our best to amuse passengers, and on this Christmas Eve a grand fancy-dress ball was arranged, which seemed to be passing off without anything unusual happening. Lew Isaacs spent the evening in the smoke-room playing bridge for a dollar a hundred, and the Pittsburg crowd had got hold of a man in the movie picture business, and was listening admiringly to all he was telling them about the way he won four thousand dollars from another fellow. This movie picture man was one of those kind of people you meet on board a ship, who are often sober.

‘Well, the fancy-dress ball came off, and about eleven o’clock, when people were getting noisy, at what I call the streamer and confetti stage, a Santa Claus with a big sack on his back and a bundle of presents in his hand, went along all the alleyways, into every cabin he found open, and left a little cellular doll—celluloid, is it? You can buy them for a penny. A little doll without any clothes on except a bit of ribbon, with “A merry Christmas” printed on it. I saw him; lots of other stewards saw him; the purser saw him and wanted him to have a drink, but no, he said he had a lot to do, and he was right.

‘Of course there was trouble in the morning. Nobody who has lost a pearl stick pin or a pair of ear-rings or a gold watch and chain or a cigarette case, is going to be satisfied with a two-cent doll in exchange. That old Santa Claus had cleared out every cabin of its valuables, and there were few people on board who enjoyed their Christmas dinner. The fortunate thing, from the stewards’ point of view, was that everybody had seen this jolly old gentleman with white whiskers, and one or two had slapped him on the back. They were all anxious now to slap him almost any place, so long as they could lay hands on him. Every steward on board, all the ship’s officers, and some of the engineering officers, spent Christmas Day making a thorough and systematic search of all the cabins. Naturally, the first people to be suspected were the stoke-hold staff. I say “naturally” because it is a popular idea among ships’ officers that, if anything is pinched, it is a stoker that did it. Then the third-class saloons were searched, bags and boxes were opened; then finally—and it was the first place they should have looked—they had a tour of inspection of the first-class accommodation.

‘One of the first persons they sent for was Mr Lew Isaacs.

‘“Now, Isaacs,” said the first purser, “you know what happened on the ship last night. I want you to help me. You needn’t tell me that you and friends were playing cards in the smoke-room, and that all your crowd was there, because I know that. Who else is on board?”

‘“If I never move from this carpet, Mr Cole,” said Lew very earnestly, “I have no more idea who did this job than an unborn child. I am not saying,” he went on, “that if there was a gentleman on board engaged in that kind of business, I should give you his name, because my motto is ‘live and let live’. But it so happens that there isn’t anybody that I know. When I heard about this you could have knocked me down with a feather,’ he said. ‘Naturally, it’s not to my interest to make people suspicious and tighten up their wads, and I consider that, from my own point of view, the voyage has been spoilt, and every particle of enjoyment has been taken out of it.”