Читать книгу The Beautiful Derelict - Carolyn Wells - Страница 3

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On the great steamship, plying between New York City and Nova Scotia, Fleming Stone came out of his stateroom and went down the brass-bound staircase.

He paid scant attention to the shifting fog outside; his mind was intent on his Journey’s End and he wanted to reach the metropolis as soon as possible.

But just at present he wanted his breakfast and, reaching the dining-room, drifted into his seat at the Captain’s table.

Captain Gregg welcomed him with a smile, a reception not unusual to Fleming Stone who made many friends because he couldn’t help it.

They discussed the International Yacht Races, then just beginning, and, as the talk drifted to other things, the Captain gave an anxious glance through a porthole and hoped he would not be late in arriving.

“But,” he said, “it’s a fog that is going to lift, I’m sure of that.”

“Let’s hope so,” Stone said; “I want to get home.”

“Got a case on?”

“No, but I fancy I shall find one awaiting me there.”

A steward came to their table. He brought a message from the First Officer, who was on the bridge, requesting the Captain’s presence.

Captain Gregg responded at once, and Stone followed him, with a natural curiosity.

Owing to the fog there were two lookouts, and the one in the Crow’s Nest had telephoned the bridge of a strange and apparently helpless craft nearby.

It was a mystifying scene. The Captain and Fleming Stone, each with a strong glass, studied it. They saw a yacht perhaps forty feet long, or so; sloop-rigged, of beautiful lines, drifting helplessly. The sail was flapping and, perhaps because of the fog, they could see no one on board.

“Have to see about it,” said Captain Gregg laconically, but with a sigh for the consequent delay.

But though they whistled and megaphoned with all the force at their command, there was no response from the pitching boat.

They were out on the high seas, perhaps midway between Nantucket and Montauk Point. Leaving Yarmouth the day before, Stone had hoped to make New York that afternoon and he didn’t at all like this promise of delay.

But the Captain knew his duty, and he ordered the engines stopped and a boat lowered with the necessary crew. The third mate was in command, and Stone asked to be allowed to go too.

“Do,” said Gregg, “and pick up any information you can.”

As the lifeboat rode the choppy waves the fog lifted a little, and there was clearly seen a really magnificent yacht, which Stone declared at once to be a sloop with an auxiliary motor. But she was not moving by sail or motor power, she was aimlessly, helplessly drifting at the mercy of the wind.

With a real thrill Stone looked forward to the explanation of this mysterious condition and stared through a powerful glass as he dimly discerned the figure of a man huddled on the deck. No other human being was visible on board and the detective scented dire disaster.

As the men rowed the lifeboat nearer to the yacht, they shouted through the megaphone but received no response.

As soon as he could do so, Jamison, the third mate, boarded the beautiful vessel and Stone followed at his heels.

On the deck lay a man who, quite evidently, had fallen in some sort of convulsion or had suffered a stroke.

Stone stared at him, noted the contorted position, and noted, too, that he was quite dead. Jamison lifted the stiffened arm and feeling for the man’s heart, found it had ceased to beat.

“Know him?” he said, looking up at Stone.

“No; never saw him before. Do you know the yacht?”

“No; but we can doubtless find her papers.”

“And another man. This chap wasn’t sailing the boat.”

“How do you know?”

“He isn’t togged for it. He’s a visitor. But where’s his host?”

“Here he is,” said the boatswain, who had brought them over. “He’s dead, too.”

“My God!” cried Jamison, “what have we struck, here? A charnel house?”

“Don’t touch him,” Stone said to the sailor, “let me see him. Come over here, Jamison.”

The other dead man was down in the hold.

It was apparent that he was there to start the motor.

“That’s the owner of the boat,” Stone surmised. “But what happened to him?”

The man, a young fellow, was lying before the engine. His head had been hit by some terrible blow and, though his face was but slightly marred, the back of his head showed an enormous swelling.

Jamison looked at his companion.

“Any theories, Mr Stone?”

“No, nor any occasion for them. This is a case for the police.”

“Well, and aren’t you the police?”

“Not exactly. You must make sure there is no other human being on board, dead or alive, and then report to your Captain.”

No other person was found, and Stone took command.

“I am connected with the police, more or less,” he said; “and I advise you, Jamison, to go right back with the Bo’sun to the Nokomis. Make your report to Captain Gregg and tell him I am staying here with one of the crew that brought us over, and if he will send orders, I will do whatever he advises.”

Jamison and the man went off and Fleming Stone found himself alone on the yacht, save for one sailor and two dead men.

They were out on the high seas, with no land in sight.

“Could land be seen if there were less fog?” Stone asked of his only living companion.

“Might make out Martha’s Vineyard, er maybe Nantucket. I don’t rightly know jest whur we air.”

He relapsed into taciturnity and sat staring out to sea, as motionless as the two lifeless passengers.

With his usual efficiency, Stone began taking notice and making notes of conditions.

He paid little attention to the yacht itself, though he fully appreciated its great beauty and value. But that would be taken care of. He wanted to learn all he could of the events that had taken place and discover some explanation of the tragedy.

He examined first the body of the man down in the hold. A young chap, perhaps twenty-six, or so, in his shirt-sleeves and wearing no hat.

He must have been sailing the boat, for the sail, though flapping, was still unfurled, and the engine not yet turned on. He lay on the floor, obviously having dropped where he stood. Felled by a blow? Surely; what else? Hit on the back of the head? Of course—the fine young face showed only minor bruises. He was, then, facing the engine, struck from behind and killed by the ferocious blow.

A handsome young fellow, dark hair and eyes, and a face roughened and tanned by a summer spent on his yacht. Somehow Stone felt sure it was his yacht, and he went up the steps to the deck and into the roomy cabin, to hunt for the papers. There was a small safe, but it was locked; so, beyond the fact that the name of the yacht was the Hotspur, little knowledge could be gained.

The Hotspur, as a name for a spanking yacht, seemed quite appropriate to the young man who lay dead in its hold. The boyish face looked as if given to smiling, and Stone even imagined it told of a daredevil nature.

But he knew better than to read temperament from a dead face, a source too likely to give erroneous information.

He went back on deck to look at the other victim to tragedy of some sort. This man was older than the one in the hold and, it would seem, had died from some internal disorder. It appeared to Stone that he must have fallen from his deck chair, in a spasm of agony. If he had been seized with a sudden severe cramp, his contorted body might have fallen like that.

And yet, quite possibly, the man might have been dead in his chair and thrown off it forcibly, by reason of the yacht tossing at the mercy of wind and wave.

Stone looked at his hands. Well-kept, white hands, not at all like the hands of a sailor or yachtsman. A man, apparently nearing forty, with a face suggestive of a wise, cynical nature. Medium height, slender, well-groomed and garbed in the most modern and well-made clothing.

Calmly and with deft handling Stone felt in the man’s pockets and brought out a wallet, which soon gave up the information that it belonged to one Elkins Van Zandt of New York City.

He did not open the letters it contained, feeling that he was not yet definitely certain there had been any crime committed, or that he was justified in close investigation.

He sat down on the deck chair that the man, he felt almost sure, had fallen from, and looked around the yacht. Every fitting, every appointment, was of the finest and in the best of taste.

What did it mean, these two dead men on this beautiful boat, these two inexplicable deaths out here on the high seas?

Through his mind passed a hazy memory of the Marie Celeste. But that ill-fated craft was found uninhabited and unmanned.

No, the conditions were not much alike. There, the departure of all humanity from the vessel seemed to imply willingness to go, or else coercion. Here, the perpetrators of the crime, if crime there was, had disappeared, leaving their victims behind.

But were they victims? Had there been crime? A seemingly unanswerable question, thus far, and therefore a problem after Fleming Stone’s own heart.

Ratiocination was called for.

First, could the idea of a third party be eliminated? Could these two men alone be responsible for this state of things?

Could one of them have killed the other and then himself committed suicide? Too easy! Of course he could.

The man on the deck could have gone down into the hold, could have seen the other there, starting the motor, could have hit him with a heavy weapon and killed him. Could then have gone back up to the deck and have taken poison to put himself out of the way.

Complicated? Not specially so; no more than the procedure of many murders.

Also, the killer need not have killed himself, but died of some illness or accident.

One of Fleming Stone’s special detestations was theorizing without sufficient data. He, therefore, at this point told himself that he was not theorizing at all, merely trying to reconstruct the affair.

But the task of reconstruction was exceedingly difficult.

The older man was not only slender and of light weight, but had no strength of muscle observable and his small-featured, unaggressive face showed no pugnacious tendencies.

Stone felt he could not see this man brutally murdering his companion and then killing himself.

But, he further ruminated with a sigh, strange and inexplicable actions take place in connection with a murder.

And beside, who was there to say there had been any murder?

Accident, as a solution, seemed equally without definite evidence. Had the young man been killed by some heavy weight falling on his head, where was the weight? If the elder man had been thrown from his chair by a heavy sea, why the twisted, spasmodic position and clenched hands?

In both cases rigor mortis was present, and Stone gave over the medical investigation to look for something more subtly indicative.

The man in the hold had fallen on his side, almost at full length, and from the uppermost trouser pocket Stone drew forth a cigarette case. It was a swagger one, of black onyx and bearing a monogram in tiny diamonds. The letters were W. B. or B. W. A handkerchief, in the same pocket, showed the same two letters.

Stone did not turn the body over, but went up the hatchway and to the cabin. Fairly good-sized, and done up in simple good taste, Stone found in it some suggestive hints. On a table was a photograph of a lovely girl, and the plain silver frame bore the initials, B. W. Across the corner of the picture, in a dashing handwriting, was the legend, “Barry from Jane.”

So now, Stone thought, contentedly, he had the names of those so far involved, except the surname of the unfortunate young man in the hold. Doggedly, he clung to his belief that he was the owner of the yacht, and the Barry of the silver photograph frame. And his last name began with W. These details, however, were unimportant, as they would all be learned when the safe was opened. What Stone was trying for was some possible explanation for the whole strangely staged affair.

He felt no hesitation as to looking in cupboards and drawers in quest of clues. A detective of the old school, he was yet fully abreast of and sometimes ahead of what are known as modern methods; but he never scorned a real clue, or one that seemed such to him.

Yet he opened no letters or what looked to be private papers. Time enough for that when it had been discovered that there was a crime problem to be solved.

Yet his long experience in detective work made him feel sure that there had been foul play, and that no arguments for accident would hold water.

The obvious solution would be the presence of a third party who had killed one or both of these men. And for traces of this hypothetical murderer Stone hunted eagerly.

And found nothing.

Sherlock Holmes once said that no human being could enter a room and go out of it again without leaving some trace of his presence.

This, Stone had disproved time and again, as any logical reasoner will readily believe.

Yet though a room might be entered and left without evidence, it would be a pretty hard matter to board a yacht, murder two able-bodied men and put off again without leaving any trace or hint of an intruder’s presence.

But none could he find. No footprints on the deck seemed to mean anything. No cigarette stubs or spilled tobacco gave hint of an assassin.

Barry had been smoking a cigarette, of the same kind the case in his pocket held. It lay on the floor beside his dead body.

Mr Van Zandt had been smoking a pipe, an ordinary briar, which now lay on the deck beside him. There was no spilled tobacco; if there had been, the winds had swept the deck clean of it.

Stone’s thoughts turned to the time element.

The first of the International Yacht Races had taken place the day before, and a logical assumption was that these two men had been out to see it. Somebody, Stone assumed, had come aboard and killed both. Perhaps two or three men came. For it seemed quite sure there had been no struggle. The rug, a soft fine plaidie that hung over the back of the deck chair, was still smoothly folded and undisturbed. A newspaper lay on the deck beside the chair, neatly folded at the second page.

There was no real reason to deduce murder here. If Mr Van Zandt had fallen from his chair in a convulsion, it could as well have been caused by a stroke or other illness as by foul play.

Stone’s thoughts pursued no sequence. He looked everywhere, saw everything, yet noticed no two facts that seemed to have any connection with one another or with the tragedy.

In the cabin were two clocks. One had stopped, but the other was still going and showed the time to be nine-thirty, which was just about right, by the detective’s impeccable timepiece.

When had these men started out, and from where? Quite evidently they were not on a cruise, for no signs of food were seen. Some tinned meats and biscuits were in a small cupboard, and a similar cupboard held a choice lot of things to drink. But no corkscrew, no used glasses were visible, and if they had eaten or drunk all had been cleaned up thoroughly.

Stone, noting the freshness of their shirts and collars, their smoothly brushed hair and their closely shaven faces, admitted to himself that death must have come to them very soon after they started. But it would mean a daybreak start that would give time for them to be murdered and reach their present stage of rigor mortis by nine-thirty! They had not been on the yacht all night, that was certain; for if that were so, they must have had some sort of breakfast, and there was no sign of coffee or bacon. Nor yet any set table or used dishes. In fact, this marvellously designed and perfectly built yacht was not living up to its own possibilities. Were there no stewards or waiters? No crew or sailor? Or, were these conditions part of the mystery?

Had the underlings killed their masters, and then fled with some especially valuable loot? For it was not a clean-up robbery. Small appointments and trinkets of value were in the cabin. A silver box on the table contained small bills and loose silver coin, doubtless convenient change for occasional shopping.

All of which was futile musing.

Stone still tried reconstruction. But it was all so contradictory.

If the two men had boarded the yacht that morning—oh, how stupid! Fleming Stone, shamefacedly to himself, went back to the deck and picked up the newspaper there. It bore yesterday’s date and it was a Newport paper.

Now, then, had they brought along that paper this morning because they started too early for the daily paper to reach them, or because there was some program or data about the races that they wanted; or had they, after all, been on the boat all night?

No, for aside from their very recent shaves the little bathroom on the boat was in the most tidy order. Nobody had used that lavatory that morning, it showed a cleaning up done by skilled fingers, not the hasty slicking over that a well-meaning guest might give.

Nor had the beds been used. Two tiny staterooms and some comfortable-looking berths were of immaculate whiteness and in perfect order.

No, the men couldn’t have been on board over night . . . unless, again came thought of the mythical steward who callously murdered two men, put the yacht in apple-pie order and went his way. Perhaps he was not alone. A seaman of sorts and a small boat might be missing from the yacht, for all Fleming Stone knew.

It was too vague. No self-respecting detective would be silly enough to build up a house founded on such very shifting sand.

What relation did the two dead men bear to one another?

He had sorted them as the owner of the yacht and his guest. And it seemed plausible, for Barry, the rich young chap who sported a jeweled cigarette case, was far more likely to own this boat than the older and apparently less wealthy man who sat on the deck.

And it was Barry who went down to start the motor because the fog and the lack of wind did not make for pleasant sailing.

And the girl’s picture on the table in the cabin was inscribed to Barry, not to Elkins Van Zandt.

All right then, Barry Somebody owned the boat. He had started out that morning, taking with him as guest Mr Elkins Van Zandt . . . and—the rest is silence, Stone told himself, ruefully.

A longish shelf of books ran along one wall of the cabin.

Stone approached it without any great hopes, for though it is a favorite theory among detectives that, shown his books, you can deduce a man’s character, it is often a hazy and sometimes a false deduction.

And a man with a pleasure yacht frequently selects his very small library with an eye single to the guests he expects to entertain.

The books on the Hotspur were clearly chosen purely for entertainment. The newest romances were there; also some best sellers of the season before. There were the newest detective stories and a few older and better ones; a fair showing of recent light verse and some older and realer poetry. A sprinkling of books about other lands and a dash of psychology.

Altogether a lot that Stone approved of. There was, too, a row of historic and romantic cruises, a subject which interests adventurous spirits, and among these the detective was surprised to see “The Cruise of the Marchesa,” an old and out of print volume, really hard to come by.

He took it down from its shelf and riffled the leaves, noting the attractive pictures and maps.

The sailor who was with him, and who was restlessly moving about, caught sight of a page and seemed to recognize the picture.

“I bin there,” he volunteered, placing a big, stubby forefinger on a map of the Malay Archipelago.

“Stay long?” asked Stone, laconically, not at all anxious to hear the reply.

“A while. There were Americans there, too.”

“Living there?”

“No, tourists, more like. But a private crowd, a big one.”

Stone said no more, but looked over the book a few moments, and then returned it to its place.

“You a detective?” asked the man, whose name, Stone found out by inquiry, was Zeb.

“Zebulon or Zebedee?” asked Stone.

“Dunno; jest Zeb. You a detective?”

“Yes, are you?”

“Not a reg’lar. But sometimes I see things.”

“See them now, then.” Stone was standing with his back to the large center table on which was the portrait of “Jane,” and a number of other things.

“Shut your eyes,” Stone said, “and tell me everything that is on this table behind me.”

Zeb began bravely, but after he had mentioned the silver-framed picture and perhaps half a dozen more things, he gave out entirely.

“I guess that’s all, sir,” he said.

“You do? Now you look at them, and I’ll list them.”

Stone moved away from the table, leaving it in full view of Zeb, but entirely out of his own vision.

Without a pause, he mentioned every object on the table, listing them almost precisely in the order they lay.

Then he turned, to see Zeb staring with amazement.

“The first thing to learn, Zeb, if you really have an interest in detective work. Why did you remember the lady’s picture? Because it is the biggest thing on the table?”

“No, sir—not exactly. More because she’s the Captain’s sweetheart.”

“Guessing, Zeb, guessing; that won’t do. Just because it’s the only picture of a lady in evidence, you mustn’t jump to a conclusion.”

“’Tain’t guessing, sir. The proof is right there ’fore our eyes. Look at it!”

Stone gave the man a comical glance and said, “You’re right, Zeb, it’s there.”

“You see it, sir?” cried the man eagerly.

“Yes, of course. There are the large finger prints of a man on the silver frame. While everything else is spick and span clean. Our young captain wouldn’t pick up the picture of any one but his sweetheart, to look at closely. Not his sister or cousin.”

“That’s what I meant, sir. And if you look close on the glass you can see where he kissed it.”

“Zeb, you’re an able seaman, but I vow you’d make an abler detective!”