Читать книгу Dangerous Cargo - Footner Hulbert - Страница 9

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On the surface that cruise was like any other cruise in a luxury yacht. High spirits was everybody’s line. Adrian Laghet was the chief entertainer. He always had some new stunt to propose. Nobody had a good time, really. It was like a lot of hysterical children jumping on the thin crust of a volcano. I waited for the explosion.

I used to wonder what was really going on behind Adrian’s calf-like brown eyes, which were too large and emotional for a man’s. He was a very good-looking fellow if you like that sort of thing. He was supposed to be artistic, but there was no evidence that he had ever worked at the arts.

Once when we happened to be the first ones to meet in the lounge for cocktails before dinner, I asked, “Do you find it difficult to be Horace’s brother?”

“Why should I?” he countered, with a swift, hard stare. “Horace is one swell guy!”

“Why, of course!” I said. “But he’s such an overpowering somebody.”

Adrian sounded his loud, empty laugh. “I think it’s a swell job to be Horace’s little brother!” he cried. He twirled around with his cocktail glass in one hand and a canapé d’anchois in the other. “Like the lilies of the field, I toil not, neither do I spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these!”

Such was Adrian’s style.

On the night before we arrived at the island of Curaçao everybody was up in the winter garden, playing some absurd game that Adrian had started. The laughter sounded false and strained and I was fed up. Only Emil and Celia were really enjoying themselves, because the game gave them a chance to touch hands occasionally.

Adele had already slipped away on the pretext of a headache, and at a moment when nobody was looking I beat it, too. I intended to pick up a book in the music-room and go to my cabin to read. The sea was as smooth as a pond.

It was dark in the music-room, and as I put out my hand to turn the switch, I happened to catch an oblique glimpse of Adele through a window. She was coming along the promenade deck outside, and there was something so furtive in her attitude that I instinctively drew back my hand and watched her.

Her head was continually over her shoulder, watching to see if she was observed. Her face was white and strained. She passed my window, going aft, and I crossed the hall and went on through the dark lounge, keeping her in view through the windows.

At the end of the lounge there were windows looking aft. Out on deck near the stern there was a little stairway leading down. It was used only by the sailors. Adele paused with her hand on the rail for a cautious look all around. Then she descended out of sight.

It was my duty to find out what was going on, and I followed without a qualm. I hastened back to the stairway. I looked down. I could see nothing. I took off my slippers and went down in stocking feet.

I was now on what they called the A deck. Aft of all the cabins there was a little open deck from side to side, with a solid screen shutting off a bit of the stern. I think the machinery that turned the rudder was behind this screen. There was a door in it and it was closed, but as the deck was open behind the screen I could hear the murmuring voices there.

I had come right in the middle of a tense scene. I heard Adele’s voice, broken with weeping:

“Oh, Harry, why did you come? Why did you come?”

Then a man growling, “Damn it all, you’re my wife!” I recognized the voice of the sailor that Horace had manhandled on deck.

“But you knew all along what I was going to do. You agreed then.”

“I got to thinking,” muttered the man. “I couldn’t stand it.”

“What good does it do, your coming on board?” she went on. “You will ruin me! And yourself, too. He’ll kill you if he finds out. He’s a wild beast when he’s aroused.”

“He won’t find out if you don’t tell him.”

“You know I won’t do that. But, O God! what torture! Every moment! Every moment! I’ve been sick ever since I learned you were on the vessel. Horace is already wondering what is the matter!”

“Damn Horace!” said the man, thickly. “Damn his soul to hell!”

“Oh, hush!” wailed Adele. “What good does that do?”

“Do you love this man?” he demanded, savagely.

“Love him? I hate him! I hate him! You don’t know what I have to go through!”

“Look!” he said, eagerly. “We’re going to call at one of the islands tomorrow. Come ashore with me. We’ll make our way back to New York somehow.”

“He has promised me the Emeritinsky diamond. It’s worth a hundred thousand dollars.”

“To hell with it! Do you want to drive me crazy?”

“I won’t go.”

“You’ve got to go!”

A thin hard note crept into Adele’s voice. “I won’t go and you can’t make me! ... This is our one chance to make a stake. If I passed it up, you would be the first one to blame me when we went broke again. We’ve got to have money. How are we going to live?”

There was a silence, then the man’s voice, humbled, indicating that he had given in. “But you do care for me, don’t you?”

“You know I do!”

“All right,” he said. “If you’ll just let me see you once in a while, I’ll keep quiet.”

“How can I do that?” mourned Adele. “Think of the risk! O God! this is awful!”

I stole away back up the stairs. I could not tell how suddenly this scene might end. If the door opened, there I was. Anyhow I had learned the nature of the situation. That was enough for the moment.

I returned to the winter garden. The noisy game—or another game—was still in progress. I let Mme. Storey know that I wanted to speak to her privately. When she was able to get away we went down to the promenade deck. On the stairway we met Adele coming up. She had brightened up her complexion, and passed us with a sweet, insincere smile.

Out on deck, as soon as I had started to tell Mme. Storey what I had overheard, she said:

“Come on, let’s try to intercept him on his way back to his quarters.”

Forward of the promenade deck and below it there was a space between the owner’s part of the ship and the fo’c’s’le that they called the well deck. There was a ladder leading down from the promenade. We descended it, and waited at the foot while I told the rest of my tale. There was nobody around.

A door opened aft, and our sailor came out of it. He was passing us without paying any attention when Mme. Storey said, softly:

“Holder!”

He jumped as if he had received a stab, and turned a terrified face. He tried to recover himself, but it was too late.

“Were you speaking to me?”

“No use trying to bluff it out,” said Mme. Storey. “Your talk with your wife just now was overheard.”

“Spying!” he snarled.

She ignored it. “You and I have got to have a little talk.”

“You’ve got nothing to do with me!”

“If you act ugly,” she said, coolly, “I shall have to tell Horace Laghet that you are on board this vessel. You can figure out what that will mean.”

He said nothing. His chin went down. I could hear him breathing fast.

“I don’t want to be a party to a killing,” she went on. “You’d better come to my suite and talk things over.”

“Not allowed in that part of the vessel,” he growled.

“You have just come from there. If you are with me nobody will question it.”

He shrugged and followed us. It was after midnight and we met nobody in the corridor. At a sign from my employer I locked the door of our sitting-room after we had passed in. She said:

“Put up your hands!”

He stared at her open-mouthed, and did not obey until he saw that she had taken a small automatic from the drawer of the table and was playing it. Then his hands went up fast enough.

“Search him, Bella.”

I took a gun from his hip pocket. It was the only weapon he had on him. I handed it to Mme. Storey and she threw both guns in the drawer and closed it.

“You’re better off without it,” she said, smiling. “Sit down and relax. Smoke a cigarette. I am not your enemy. In fact, I’m sorry for you, though you appear to have got yourself into this mess. Well, we usually do.”

He sat down, staring at her sullenly. He couldn’t make her out at all. He lit a cigarette in trembling fingers. One could see the promising boy he had been with his nice eyes, and thick, wavy hair brushed straight back. Probably spoiled by his mother.

“You and Adele are not divorced,” said Mme. Storey.

“No,” he growled.

“Were you living together up to the time she sailed?”

“Off and on.”

“When Adele told you she was going to make this cruise you didn’t object.”

Holder was silent.

“Then why have you started to kick up a dust now?”

His muttered answer was the same he had given Adele—“I got to thinking.”

“What started you thinking?”

“Aah! what’s the use of all these questions?” he blurted out.

“Somebody is using you as a tool,” said Mme. Storey, calmly, “and I want to find out who it is.”

This was evidently a new thought to him. He stared at her with distended eyes, but said nothing.

“Somebody’s been after you,” she suggested. “Got you all stirred up.”

He shook his head. “Nobody ever said anything.”

“Then it was a letter, an anonymous letter, signed Well-Wisher or something like that. Good old Well-Wisher!”

“God! How did you know that?” he said, staring.

“I am merely following out a process of deduction,” she said, with a shrug. “This letter asked you as a man and an American if you were willing to stand for your wife going on a cruise in Horace Laghet’s yacht. It told you what other men would think of you. It suggested that if you had a spark of manliness in you, you’d put a stop to it.”

From the frightened look that appeared in his eyes it was evident that she had hit on the truth, or close to it.

“Such letters always run true to form,” she went on. “It suggested that you ship aboard the yacht so you could see what went on ...”

“That was the second letter,” he muttered, forgetting himself.

“Oh, there were two!” said Mme. Storey. “Sort of follow-up system. I suppose the second letter told you just where to go, what to say, what name to give. Told you everything would be made easy for you, very likely. Told you you had friends who wouldn’t see you wronged!”

His hangdog look confessed that she was right.

“And you fell for it!”

“I was like a crazy man,” he muttered. “I couldn’t help myself.”

“What happened after you got aboard?” she asked.

“Nothing. I was treated like anybody else.”

“Who approached you? What proposition has been made?”

“Nobody. Nothing.”

“Where did the gun come from?”

No answer from Holder.

Mme. Storey took the gun out of the drawer and examined it. “You got this after you came aboard.”

“Well, I found it in my bunk,” he muttered. “There was a box of shells with it.”

“And you were glad to get it,” she suggested. “You didn’t trouble much where it came from.”

No answer.

“Sooner or later you would have shot Horace Laghet?”

“Well, that’s my business,” he growled.

“You would certainly have shot him that first day when he attacked you if you’d had the gun then.”

He scowled and twisted in his seat.

“And what would have happened afterwards? You would have gone to the chair, or at least to prison for life, and somebody would have reaped a golden harvest from Horace Laghet’s death.”

Holder said nothing.

“What do you propose to do about it?” she asked.

Like a child, he took refuge in his stubborn silence.

“Are you willing to put yourself in my hands?”

“What do you want to do?” he asked, suspiciously.

“Arrange for your passage from Curaçao back to New York.”

“And leave her with him?” he growled. “I’m only flesh and blood!”

“You’ve got to face realities!” said Mme. Storey. “If you don’t go ashore tomorrow, and stay ashore, I’ll have to tell Horace Laghet who you are. That’s my job.”

There was no answer.

“Adele isn’t worth it,” she said, softly.

He hung his head.

“You know it,” she murmured, compassionately, “but you’re in hell just the same.”

A spasm of intolerable pain twisted his face. His endurance snapped. “Ah! What is it to you?” he snarled, jumping up. “You think you have me on the grill, don’t you? Good sport to sit there and watch me squirm! I know women ... Well, to hell with you! To hell with you! I won’t leave this vessel without my wife, and that’s flat!”

Mme. Storey shrugged and spread out her hands.

Holder’s voice scaled up hysterically: “Go ahead and tell Laghet!” he cried. “Tell him! Tell him! I have plenty of friends aboard. The crew is with me. They’re men, not dogs. And if Laghet lays a finger on me they’ll mutiny. Do you know what that means? Mutiny! It will sweep you all overboard! If you know what’s good for you, you’ll be the one to go ashore tomorrow. I’ve warned you now! Go ashore and stay ashore, if you ever want to see New York again.” Shaking and gasping, he turned and rattled the door.

“Let him out,” said Mme. Storey, quietly.

I unlocked the door and he ran down the corridor. I turned and faced my employer.

“You dare not tell Laghet,” I said. “Holder has the whip hand over us. What can you do?”

“It appears to be up to Adele,” she said, smiling enigmatically. “I will go and talk to her.”