The Blind Barber (20 page)

These were the details that had faded from Morgan’s mind, but such was the dynamite placed in the hands of Mr. Curtis Warren along with an imperial-quart of Old Rob Roy. It would, perhaps, have been wiser to give him a Bradshaw or a volume of sermons; but the moving finger writes, and, having writ, moves on; and, besides, philosophical remarks on this question have already been made. After Peggy had bidden him a tearful good-bye, and Morgan and Valvick had shaken hands with him, they went up in a thunder-fraught mood to see the captain.

“Honest, now,” said Valvick rather broodingly, as they crossed the boat-deck in the sunlight that Warren was forbidden to see, “do you t’ank we are right, or iss dere a mistake? Dat wass no yoke, what dey tell us. If dey say dere is nobody missing, den ay don’t see how dere is somebody missing. Maybe we talk about a murder and dere is no murder.”

“I tell you we’re right!” snapped Morgan. “We’re right, and it’s got to be proved somehow. First thing, I’ll tackle Whistler in as cool a frame of mind as I can. I’ll challenge him to get that blood on the razor and in the berth tested. The ship’s doctor can do it, or maybe Dr. Kyle … ”

“Kyle?” said Peggy, staring at him. “But Dr. Kyle—”

“Will you get your mind off that tedious joke?” said Morgan, wearily. “Let’s dispose of it once and for all. Don’t you realise that Kyle is the one person on the whole ship who can’t possibly be guilty?”

“Why?”

“Because he’s the one man who’s got an alibi, old girl. Look here, Skipper. You’re pretty sure your friend with the toothache, the Bermondsey Terror, is honest; aren’t you?—all right. And what did he say? He said that he didn’t lose sight of Kyle’s door all night; that he heard the row on deck from the beginning … Wait a bit. You didn’t know about that, did you, Peggy?” He rapidly sketched out the Bermondsey Terror’s information, and also gave Valvick the evidence of the Perrigords. “So what? The Blind Barber stole the rest of that film and killed the girl while the row was going on out on deck. Nobody went in or out of Kyle’s door all night. So how did Kyle get out and back? It won’t wash, I tell you.”

“It’s you that’s the blind one, Hank,” she informed him, scornfully. “He needn’t have been in his cabin at all, need he? Alibis! Bah! What’s the good of an alibi. They always turn out to be fakes, anyway.”

Morgan gestured.

“All right. It’s easily settled. We’re going into action at once, and by the Lord we’re going to prove our case. Here’s a commission for you, Skipper. Go down and see your friend the Bermondsey Terror and question him. Also see the cabin steward and make any inquiries you think of … ”

“Now?” asked Valvick, scratching his head.

“Now. We’ll prove it one way or another. To continue,” he said to Peggy, as the other muttered a few reflections and lumbered off. “I’ll tackle Whistler about that blood. I’ll swear it’s human blood; and, if it is, we can safely point out to him that nobody could have lost so much and still show no sign of being hurt this morning. Nobody, old girl! Then we’ll make the whole round of the ship ourselves, if necessary. And we’ll show ’em.”

He looked rather malevolently about the boat-deck, which was crowded and noisy. Warren’s triumphal progress to the brig had taken place belowdecks and by a devious way, but the news was already flying, so that there was a note of shrillness in the clatter of talk. Somnolent figures in deck chairs, set out to dry themselves under the sun, were sitting up from their rugs; a game of shuffleboard had been suspended and two deck-tennis players came up to the net for a conference. The ship’s reigning belle—there is always one—had stopped her professional smiling, her beret pushed over one ear and a cigarette half-way to her mouth, and was bending to listen in a whispering group of admirers. She stood on a raised platform by a lifeboat, her gaudy green scarf blowing against the sky. Far above their heads, on one of the three vast black funnels that showed a faint stain of smoke, the liner’s whistle emitted a sudden hoarse
Whooo!
as though it were giving an alarm. A suggestion of lunch was now in the air. There was a good deal of laughter. Morgan scowled.

They found Whistler getting his cabin set to rights and being particularly rough on the steward.

“I won’t discuss it,” he said, “any more. Maybe I was hasty. I won’t say I wasn’t. But I acted within my rights, and I’ll let that young drunkard or lunatic stop there until I damned well get ready to let him out. We’ll say nothing of his story. But take a look around my cabin, just
look
at it, and then tell me whether I didn’t do the right thing.” He thrust out his jaw, the good eye narrowed in his battered face, and the gold stripes on his sleeves gleamed as he jammed his fists on his hips. But there was something curiously conciliating about him. “Come now!” he said suddenly. “We’re alone. There’s no need for you to defend your friend. What’s the truth of the matter?”

They could hear the breath whistling from his nose.

“Does this mean, Captain,” said Peggy, after a pause in which she seemed taken aback, “that you really don’t think Curt is mad, after all? Oooh, you villain! After you ordered those nasty men to
manhandle
and,” she gasped, “and mistreat—”

“I want the truth, madam. The truth, that’s all. In my position—”

“I say, Captain,” said Morgan, after another pause in which Whistler shut his teeth hard, “does this mean something new has happened?”

“Why should it?”

“Oh, I only wondered … ” He was looking quickly round the cabin, searching a clue, and then he saw it. Rolled into a wad at one side of the wardrobe lay what looked very much like a sheet tied round stained blankets. “So,” said Morgan, “do you mean to tell us a steward saw something queer about the cabin next to Curt’s? And went in and found the berth full of bloodstained sheets? And then reported to you? Excellent. Here’s the razor that was used in the killing.” He took it out of his pocket and laid it on the table, while Whistler stared at him fixedly. “Now everything is fine. All you’ve done is accuse the wrong man of being a liar and a lunatic, and locked him up under guard. If old Sturton can only get you convicted of criminal negligence to the extent of fifty thousand pounds, the officials of this steamship line will be in an even better humour.”

As a matter of fact, he was (despite himself) feeling sorry for the old mackerel. A persistent voice told him that the whole mess was their own fault. All that made him wild was that circumstances seemed conspiring to prevent belief in something he still fiercely felt to be true.

“
Murder!
” said the captain, in a sort of gulp. “Murder! You have the nerve to stand there and talk to me of murder when there’s nobody not accounted for on the whole ship? Where’s the murdered person? … And don’t try to talk to me about what my superiors will think. I put that young lunatic in confinement for an offence against discipline. That’s all. An offence against discipline, and that’s my right. My word is
law
, and any maritime court—”

“It would make a good story, though,” the other pointed out, “printed in the newspapers. Impassioned Defence of Captain Whistler. ‘The Dastardly Villain Set on Me with a Bug-powder Gun.’ That also would gratify the Green Star Line. Yes, it would. In your eye.”

The captain seemed slightly awed.

“
Isn’t there any justice?
” he inquired suddenly, and looked rather blankly about the cabin. “In all God’s green earth, isn’t there any justice? What have I done to deserve this?”

It was only the beginning of a genuinely powerful, if rather pathetic, oration, for which there was undeniably some justification. It was pitched in a rather Biblical strain. Captain Whistler pointed out and enumerated his afflictions. Masked foreigners, he said, attacked him with stilettos and bottles. Uninsured jewels belonging to ?!£&/! viscounts were stolen while murdering thieves posed as Harley Street doctors at his table. Blood-stained blankets and razors mysteriously appeared in the cabins; women vanished but did not vanish; the nephews of eminent American administrators first went mad and gibbered of bears and geography then ran amok with bug-powder guns, tried to poison him and finally threatened him with razors. Indeed, an unprejudiced listener would have decided that the situation aboard the
Queen Victoria
was past hope. An unprejudiced listener would have said this boat had been chosen for the annual convention of the Ancient Order of Sorcerers, and that the boys must have been showing off a bit. Captain Whistler said it was too much. He said he was a strong man, but he would rather be thrown to the sharks.

“I know it, Captain,” Morgan agreed, uncomfortably, when the typhoon began to die and the skipper went to pour himself a drink with shaking hands. “And, believe it or not, we feel as badly about it as you do. So the first thing we must do—”

“There is nothing to do,” said the other, with finality, “except maybe get drunk.”

“ … is to join forces and start to unwind this tangle. So here’s a guarantee of good faith. We’ll go with you to Sturton and clear you absolutely. We’ll say we saw you suddenly struck down without a chance to defend yourself; for all you know, it may be true … ”

“You’d do that?” demanded the skipper, sitting up. “I was damned if I’d ask a favour of you, but if you would—could … man, I’ll do anything. I’ll even let that madman out of the brig.”

Morgan reflected. “As a matter of fact,” he said, hesitantly, “for the next few hours I’d rather you didn’t.”

“H
ANK
!” said Peggy. But she stopped.

“Yes, you see how it is,” nodded Morgan, after some thought. “When we thought the captain wouldn’t listen to reason, we’d have blown the wall down to get him out. But if we do have co-operation—have we, Captain?”

“To the water-line, man.”

“Then it may be much the best thing to leave him where he is for the moment. He’s thoroughly comfortable, and we have a breathing-space while he’s in a place where he can’t possibly get into trouble. At least,” Morgan amended, rather doubtfully, “I don’t
see
how he can get into trouble. The whole thing was in your attitude, Captain. If you’d like us to talk to Sturton now, we’re ready.”

They met storm signals at the door of the peer’s large and rather elaborate suite of cabins on B deck. The door to the drawing-room was on the latch, and they penetrated into a stuffy finery of curtains drawn at the portholes, gilt furniture disarranged, and an array of medicine-bottles sprawled round a chaise-longue on which Sturton had evidently taken his hitherto sea-sick rest. Whether his recovery had been due to smooth weather or the loss of the emerald they did not know; but he had definitely recovered. From behind the door of the bedroom rose a dry, quick, high-pitched voice in a sort of pounce.

“ … and take a radiogram. Ha. Now. ‘Messrs. Kickwood, Bane and Kickwood, Solicitors.’ … Spell it? Damn it, Miss Keller, you spell it the way it’s pronounced: K-i-c-k-w-o-o-d, Kickwood. Ha. ‘31B King’s Bench Walk.’ Or is it 31A? Why can’t these confounded lawyers make up their minds? How should
I
remember their infernal addresses? Wait a minute, wait a minute … ”

The door popped open in the gloom. A lean figure in a shabby grey dressing-gown, with a worsted plaid shawl wrapped round its shoulders, stared at them. Even indoors it wore a broad-brimmed black hat, and the greyish face underneath had so queer a look, in the midst of Lord Sturton’s costly trinkets strewn about the drawing-room, that it reminded Morgan of one of those pictures of wizards in an Arthur Rackham illustration. Also, Morgan wished somebody would open a porthole.

The figure said, “Hah!” and stalked over. It was observable that before this man Captain Whistler looked exactly as Warren had looked before Captain Whistler.

“Well?” said Lord Sturton. “I’m waiting, I’m waiting.” He took a thin finger and thumb and flicked at one of his side burns. “Have you got that emerald?”

“If you’ll only be patient, sir,” replied Whistler, as though he were trying to swell himself out with affability and be his public beaming self, “I—ha-ha! Of course we shall get it.”

“Then you haven’t got the emerald. Very well. Why don’t you say so?”

“I only wished to say—”

“Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish! Answer me, yes, or no. If you haven’t got the emerald, why are you here?” Sturton shot out his neck.

“It was about that little matter we were discussing—ha-ha!” returned Whistler, with a broad gesture of paternal friendliness. “You know I said, your Lordship, that I could bring witnesses to show I had behaved within my duties. You said I was responsible—”

“So you are, so you are. I have your signed receipt. Here.”

“The great line of which I have the honour to be one of the senior commanders has always wished, your Lordship, to avoid unpleasantness,” began the captain, in a rolling voice. “However, having its best interests at heart … ”

“Pfaa!” snapped the other, suddenly sitting down against the back of the chaise-longue and hunching his shawl round his shoulders. “Why don’t you say what you mean? You mean that you’ve been caught fair and square; but what you want is a sporting run. Eh? Eh?”

“That, your Lordship, is putting it harshly … ”

Sturton thrust his finger out of the shawl and pointed. “I’ll give it to you. Damn no man without proof. Bible says so. Prove it to me; no damage suit. There.”

Morgan got the impression that he immensely enjoyed being arbiter of somebody’s official head; that it tickled a nerve of perverted humour under his dry ribs. He could humour a whim—but the whim had to have its compensations. Morgan realised that, with this sharp-eyed old lad questioning, a lie had to be good. Well, he should be beaten. In a way, Morgan thought, that was incentive enough to save Whistler’s bacon! Sturton was leaning back, hugging the shawl round his head. On the table at his elbow was a curious trinket of his own: a Mandarin-head that would wag on its pedestal, and had two rubies for eyes. At intervals he would reach out and set it wagging.

“Well?” he said, abruptly. “Anything to say?”

“A while ago, your Lordship, you intimated to me—as I told this lady and gentleman—that, if I could offer you the proof I said I could,” Whistler cleared his throat, “you would not—ah—”