The Caine Mutiny (44 page)

“What is it?” called Queeg irritably. The captain sat in his swivel chair, the balls rolling swiftly in one hand hung over the back. The Negro Rasselas stood against the bulkhead, his hands behind him, showing all his gums in a smile, sweat dripping off his nose.

“Pardon me, Captain,” said Willie. “Voles and Farrington are here.”

“Who?”

“The new officers, sir-”

“Well. About time, too. Kay. I have no time to see them now. Send ‘em to Maryk. Tell him to quarter them and so forth.”

“Aye aye, sir.” As Willie turned to go his eyes met Rasselas’. The Negro gave him the beseeching dumb look of a calf being led down the road on a rope. Willie shrugged and went out.

At noon the captain sent for Maryk. “Kay, Steve,” he said-he was reclining on his bunk-“everything’s going exactly as I figured, so far. The steward’s mates are telling the truth. I know how to handle those black apes, I’ve done plenty of it in my mess-treasurer days. You can rule them out as suspects.”

“That’s fine, sir.”

“Scared the living hell out of them, I’m afraid, but that’s good for their souls every now and then.” The captain chuckled. Scaring the steward’s mates had put him in a pleasant humor. “So far as anyone taking Whittaker’s key goes we can rule that out, too. He slept in his clothes, and it was chained to his belt. And he’s a light sleeper.
I
found that out.” Queeg glanced at the exec with sly triumph. “Now then. That narrows the case to where we can begin working on it, hey?”

Maryk kept his eyes respectfully on the captain’s face, and stood at attention-resolved not to utter a word unless forced to.

“Tell you a little story, Steve. Dates back quite a ways to peacetime. Had a little mystery like this aboard a destroyer, the
Barzun
, back in ’37, when I was a lowly ensign, in charge of general mess. Matter of a discrepancy of five pounds of cheese in the cook’s accounts. Cheese wasn’t in the refrigerator, and it hadn’t been cooked, or served in sandwiches, or anything. I proved that. Just vanished in thin air, like these strawberries. Well, the exec pooh-poohed it, and said, ‘Forget it, Queeg,’ but as you know, I’m kind of a stubborn cuss. Through devious inquiry and bribes and one thing and another I found out that a big sloppy chowhound named Wagner, a snipe, had made himself a wax impression of the cook’s key one night while he slept, and got himself a duplicate key, and was chowing up in the wee hours of the morning every chance he got. Made him confess, and he pulled a BCD at a summary court- I got myself a nice little letter of commendation in my promotion jacket, too, but that’s neither here nor there, though for an ensign in those years that meant plenty in the way of promotion credit- Well. Get my point?”

Maryk smiled vaguely.

“All we have to do now,” said Queeg, “is find out which bright boy on the
Caine
has made himself a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox. That shouldn’t be hard.”

Maryk said, after a long pause, “You assume, sir, that that’s what happened?”

“I am not
assuming
a goddamned thing,” snapped the captain in sudden irritation. “You can’t assume anything in the Navy! I
know
someone’s made a duplicate key. All other possibilities have been eliminated, haven’t they? What do
you
say-that the strawberries just melted into thin air?”

“Well, I’m not sure what to think, sir-”

“Damn it all, Steve, a naval officer is supposed to be capable of following simple logic. I have just taken great pains to prove to you that there is no other possible solution.” Thereupon the captain repeated the entire chain of reasoning which he had developed in the interview. “Now then, did you follow me that time?”

“I followed you, sir.”

“Well, thank heaven for small favors. Kay. ... Now, here’s the next step. Call the crew to quarters. Tell them every man is to write out a statement describing all his movements and whereabouts between the hours of 11 P.M. last night and 3 A.M. this morning, name two men who can substantiate his statement, and swear to the truth of it when he hands it in to you. All statements to be in by 1700 today, and on my desk.”

Urban knocked and came in, carrying a penciled despatch. “Visual from the beach, sir,” he said, nervously feeling at his tucked-in shirt. The captain read the despatch and passed it to Maryk. It was orders for the
Caine
to leave Ulithi that afternoon to escort the
Montauk
, the
Kalamazoo
, and two damaged destroyers to Guam.

“Kay,” said Queeg. “All departments prepare to get under way. We ought to have some fun on this trip for a change, what with our little detective work to do.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Maryk said.

“At this point, Tom, we can use a little of your silver tongue,” said the captain. He was at his desk, the crew’s statements spread out in disorderly heaps before him. Keefer was leaning with his back to the door. It was nine o’clock of the following morning, and the
Caine
was steaming smoothly through an oily doldrums calm in the screen of the damaged ships. “Sit down, Tom, sit down. Park yourself on my bunk. Yes, it’s breaking wide open, just as I figured,” the captain went on. “I’m practically certain I’ve got my bird. It all adds up. Just the man who’d pull such a stunt, too. Motive, opportunity, method-everything clicks.”

“Who is it, sir?” Keefer perched himself gingerly on the edge of the bunk.

“Ah hah. That’s my little secret, for a while. I want you to make a little announcement. Get on the p.a. system, will you, Tom, and say-putting this in your own words, you know, which is a hell of a lot better than I can do-tell ’em the captain knows who’s got a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox. The guilty party gave himself away by his own statement, which is the only one in the whole ship that doesn’t check and-well, then say he’s got till 1200 to turn himself in to the captain. If he does it’ll be a lot easier for him than if I have to make the arrest. ... Think you can get all that across?”

Keefer said dubiously, “I think so, sir. Here’s about what I’ll say.” He repeated the substance of the captain’s threatening offer. “Is that it, sir?”

“That’s fine. Use exactly those words, if you can. Hurry up.” The captain was in a glow of smiling excitement.

Willie Keith, with the OOD’s binoculars around his neck, was prowling the starboard wing, squinting up at the sky. The smell of stack gas was strong on the bridge. The novelist approached him and said, “Request permission to make an announcement, by order of the captain-”

“Sure,” said Willie. “Come here a minute, though.” He led Keefer to the aneroid barometer affixed to the rear of the pilothouse. The needle on the gray dial inclined far to the left at 29.55. “How about that,” said Willie, “on a nice quiet sunny blue day?”

Keefer pushed out his lips judiciously. “Any typhoon warnings?”

“Steve’s got ’em all plotted in the charthouse. Come take a look.”

The two officers unfolded and scanned a large blue-and-yellow chart of the Central Pacific. There were three storm tracks dotted in red on the chart, none of them within hundreds of miles of their position. “Well, I don’t know,” said Keefer, “maybe a new one cooking up around here. They’re in season. Did you tell the captain?” Willie nodded. “What did he say?”

“He didn’t say. He went ‘ugh’ at me, the way he does nowadays.”

Keefer went into the pilothouse, pressed the talk lever of the p.a. box, and paused a moment. He said, “Now hear this. The following announcement is made by order of the captain.” Slowly and distinctly he repeated Queeg’s message. The sailors in the pilothouse exchanged narrowed glances, and resumed their vacant stares.

Queeg waited in his cabin all morning. Nobody came. At a quarter past twelve the captain began sending for various members of the crew, sometimes singly, sometimes by twos and threes. A new summons boomed over the loudspeakers every fifteen or twenty minutes. The procession of cross-examinations went on until four o’clock; then Queeg called for Maryk and Keefer. When the officers came into the cabin they found Jellybelly undergoing questioning. The yeoman’s fat white face was expressionless. “I’d tell you if I knew, sir,” he was saying. “I just don’t know. I slept all through it-”

“My observation,” said Queeg, hunched in the back-tilted swivel chair, rolling balls in both hands, “is that the ship’s yeoman generally can find out everything there is to know on a ship. Now I’m not saying you know anything. I’m not telling you to squeal on anybody. I’m just saying that I’d like very much to approve your application for chief yeoman’s school at San Francisco. Once this mystery is cleared up, the culprit punished, and the summary court typed up and all that, why, I think I’ll be able to spare you, Porteous. That’s all.”

A flicker of interest enlivened the yeoman’s dull eyes. “Aye aye, sir,” he said, and left.

“Kay, boys,” the captain said zestfully to the officers. “Now we close in.”

“Going to make the arrest, sir?” said Keefer.

“I certainly am,” said Queeg, “as soon as we check for one more bit of evidence. That’s where you two come in. It’s going to take a bit of organizing.”

“The crew expected an arrest at noon,” said the exec.

“Always good to keep ’em guessing. The next thing we’ve got to do-the last thing, actually-is find that duplicate key. And how do you gentlemen suggest we do that?” Queeg grinned from one officer to another. “Pretty tough, you think, hey? Well, here’s what we’re going to do. It’s three simple steps. Step one. We’re going to collect every single key aboard ship, tagged with the name of the owner. Step two. We’re going to make an intensive search of the ship and a personal search of everybody to be sure we’ve got all the keys. Step three. We test all the keys on the wardroom padlock. The one that opens it, well, the tag on it gives you the name of the guilty party.”

Keefer and Maryk were dumfounded. The captain glanced at their faces and said, “Well, any questions? Or do you agree that that’s the way to go about it?”

“Captain,” said Keefer cautiously, “I thought you told me this morning you knew who stole the strawberries.”

“Of course I do. I spoke to the man this afternoon. He lied in his teeth, of course, but I’ve got him nailed.”

“Then why not arrest him?”

“There’s a little matter of evidence if you want a conviction,” Queeg said sarcastically.

“You said his statement gave him away-”

“Of course it does. Logically. Now all we need is the key itself.”

“Sir, do you realize there may be a couple of thousand keys on the ship?” said Maryk.

“What if there are five thousand? Sort ’em out, it’ll take maybe an hour, and you’ll only have a few hundred that could possibly fit the padlock. You can check one a second, sixty a minute, that’s one thousand eight hundred keys in half an hour. Anything else bothering you?”

The exec rubbed his hand over his head, took a deep breath, and said, “Sir, I’m sorry, but I don’t think the plan has any chance of working. I think you’ll upset and antagonize the crew for nothing-”

“And why won’t it work?” Queeg looked down at the rolling balls.

“Tom, do
you
think it’ll work?” Maryk turned to the gunnery officer.

Keefer glanced sidewise at Queeg, then threw a wink at the exec and shook his head. “I don’t know how it can hurt to try it, Steve.”

“I’d like to know your objections, Mr. Maryk,” said Queeg through his nose.

“Captain, I don’t know where to begin. I don’t think you’ve thought it through. Why-first of all, we don’t know there
is
such a key-”

“Let me interrupt you right there.
I
say there is, therefore for your purposes there is-”

“All right, sir. Assume there is. Assume this search starts. There are a hundred million holes and ducts and cracks and boxes and crannies on this ship where a key could be hidden. It could be tossed over the side. The chances of our
finding
it are nil. And as for a man handing it in to you with his name tagged on it, do you think anyone would be that crazy?”

“The world is full of crazy people,” said Queeg. “Frankly, since you’re talking to me as though I were a goddamned idiot, I
don’t
think he’ll hand it in. But I think he’ll hide it and we’ll find it, which’ll prove my case. As for dropping it over the side, don’t worry, he’s not going to do that after all the trouble he had getting it-”

“Sir, you could hide a key in the forward fireroom and I could search for a month and not find it, just in that one space-”

“All you’re saying is you’re not competent to organize a thorough search, and I guess maybe you’re right. Therefore
I
shall organize the search-”

“Captain, you said a personal search of all hands, too. That means stripping the men-”

“We’re in a warm climate, nobody’ll catch cold,” said Queeg, with a giggle.

“Sir, let me ask you, with due respect, is it worth doing all this to the crew for a quart of strawberries?”