Читать книгу The Road to Bagdad - George Fort Gibbs - Страница 8

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Camilla went into her stateroom, closed and locked the door but did not switch on the light. Instinct, perhaps, or the atmosphere of intrigue in which she had passed the evening, gave her a feeling that she was involved in an affair that was best suited to the darkness. She sat on the edge of her bed, looking out of the French window and listening. Familiar sounds—the room steward fussing around with his dishes, the heavy tread of a deckhand of the mid-watch going the rounds, the ship’s bell striking twice. She looked at her watch—one o’clock. She had never been able to understand why the bell should strike twice for one o’clock. The sounds of footsteps approached, passed, and vanished—all mysterious errands, it seemed, until she remembered they were only the night-owls on their way to and from the smoking-room before the bar closed. Murmurs and a hysterical giggle from a deck chair near-by where Janet Priestly, the school-teacher—who was seeking adventure for the first time in her life—sat with Vincent Torelli, learning to love in Italian.

Camilla heard Miss Priestly’s final squeal of protest as she rose at last and went to her stateroom. There was singing in the bar, Slim’s voice trying to do a sentimental ballad. Then a kind of half silence, the swish of water alongside, the sounds of the ship as she plodded steadily into the East, the East that Slim held in such contempt, the East that Ronald Barker had made so peculiarly his own.

She was not altogether satisfied with the results of her own astonishing adventure. She was a little bewildered still and could not think of the future with any assurance. By the future, she meant to-morrow and the next day. She wasn’t at all certain that something oughtn’t to be done at once about putting a guard over the cabin of her adventurous friend who seemed to go through life very lightly, with such a fine contempt of danger. His stateroom was not very far off, in the next companionway, and she looked out of her door more than once before a final glance up and down the decks.

Then the sound of whispering voices again, men’s voices, the same voices that had alarmed her before, a bit farther away on the deck, beyond the shuffleboard where she could just see their shadows against one of the life-boats....

Without planning, but moving instinctively, she got into her evening wrap again and went out into the corridor. Rallying her courage she ran along the gangway by Ronald Barker’s cabin and peered out on deck. The shadows on the life-boat were still there but the voices were more muffled than before. She stepped out on deck and approached the group. They turned their backs to her, huddled together, and looked out to sea. But their conversation stopped when she passed them going on to the forward end of the promenade.... When she returned they had disappeared. Just three harmless passengers having a last cigarette before turning in? Perhaps, but her anxiety refused to let her think so.

It was not until she went into the corridor again that she realized the risk she had taken on the deserted deck. And now, the danger over, her footsteps turned instinctively aft to the bar where Slim’s singing of “Mandalay,” though hideous, was masculine, friendly, and comforting.

The sight of her two friends gave her still more comfort, for Slim sat telling Michael Gay in lusty tones that “’er petticoat was yaller and ’er little cap was green” while Michael tapped out the cadences on the table with a sympathetic digit.

Camilla stood for a long moment framed in the doorway before they saw her. Then they rose apologetically and asked her to join them. But social conversation was not in her mind.

“Slim, I want you to go up to the Captain with me,” she said in a rush of words, without preamble. “You, too, Michael.”

Explaining as they went, Camilla led the way up the after companion ladder to the upper deck and so forward to the Captain’s quarters, a large cabin under the bridge, serving as an office with sleeping-room adjoining. Captain Simpson was just taking a nightcap with his first officer whose watch it was.

With her eyes sparkling and her breath coming rapidly she must have made a very pretty picture, for the two men bowed her in with her companions and offered a drink.

But Camilla was already telling her story in brief, broken sentences—of the conversation she had overheard a few nights ago and of the belief that Ronald Barker was not safe aboard the Orizaba without a guard over his stateroom at night. From smiling incredulity at her fears, they found her sincerity at last compelling.

“You’d better not let Mr. Barker know. I don’t want him to think I’m meddling in his affairs.”

“Well, it’s my affair more than yours now, Miss Dean,” Simpson said. “I’ve got orders from the Company to put Mr. Barker safely ashore at Alexandria and I’m going to do it. As for his knowing about this business, he ought to be tickled pink to have a good-looking girl like you so anxious for his safety.”

Michael and Slim stood rather sheepishly while Simpson gave the orders.

He had hardly completed them when a muffled sound of shots and a clatter of broken glass came from somewhere below.

With the excitement of the group rushing out of the Captain’s suite, there were other sounds, calls from men of the watch on deck, as Camilla, between Slim and Michael, ran down into the A-deck saloon where a few of the passengers in various degrees of negligée assembled, asking questions.

“Just some drunken idiot having target practice at one of our electric bulbs,” Simpson said.

“Are you sure?” asked Janet Priestly, who had hoped that at least a murder would be added to this most marvelous of evenings. “Hasn’t anybody been shot?” she added in a tone that sounded like disappointment.

“Everything’s all right, Miss Priestly. You can go to bed and get your beauty-sleep. If anything else happens I’ll see that somebody wakes you up.”

Miss Priestly wrapped her dressing-gown tightly about her, dignity become embonpoint.

“This is a hell of a joint,” she muttered. “I came out here expecting to see a murder and a real riot and all I get is just a drunk shooting at electric bulbs. Might as well be in the Loop in Chicago.”

The excitement among the passengers diminished as Camilla went with Janet to talk things over. Slim and Michael followed the Captain down the corridor toward Ronald Barker’s stateroom. He met them at the open door where some of his neighbors stood inquiring. “No damage, Mr. Barker?” the Captain asked.

“None at all. Some silly ass out on deck having target practice. Woke me up, just the way it did the rest of you.”

“But it’s your window that’s broken, Mr. Barker.”

Slim glanced out of the window and examined a piece of window glass on the carpet. It was a corrugated glass that would let in light but not vision.

“Funny thing, Mr. Barker,” he said. “How do you account for the fact that splinters of the glass have fallen outboard on the deck, instead of inside the cabin?”

“So they have! Quite remarkable! You mean that some one must have fired from the inside of the stateroom.”

“Sure thing,” Slim said. “The impact of a heavy bullet—it would take some of the glass with it.”

Captain Simpson sat on the bed, listening and watching.

“You’d better tell the whole story, Mr. Barker,” he said quietly.

So, omitting Camilla’s share in the adventure, Mr. Barker told what had happened. He had been warned of a possible attempt on his life aboard the Orizaba. He had not believed in his danger at first but after he had turned in he found himself thinking how easy it would be for some one on the outside to take a pot-shot at him through the half-open French window and get away before the alarm. So he switched off the ceiling light, made as good an imitation as he could of a sleeping figure in his bed by stuffing coverlid and underclothing under the blankets, then turned the bed-light in its box so that it was dim and lay on the lounge hidden from the deck outside. Perhaps his informant had been mistaken. He was just getting drowsy when the silhouette of a head darkened the window. Then everything happened very rapidly. He wasn’t sure that the silhouette meant mischief until he saw the glint of light on a gun barrel. He fired quickly, while the silhouette fired also, aiming at the huddle under the bed clothes.

“I didn’t aim—I just thought I’d like to frighten him,” Barker said, “and I must have hit the glass beside his head.”

“That’s a pity,” the Captain said dryly. “You ought to have made a better job of it.”

Barker went over to the bed and showed where two bullets had gone through the pillow and the neck-band of one of his best shirts. “Pretty close that,” he said.

“Sure thing,” Slim gasped. “And here’s where the bullets went through the head of the bed. That guy must have been practising in a shooting-gallery.”

“To-morrow we’ll find the bullets and after that, maybe the gun itself.”

Now that the affair was over Ronald Barker showed a disposition to drop the case. “I don’t think he’ll be likely to try it again, especially if you’re going to post a watch outside.”

“It’s all my fault, Mr. Barker,” Simpson went on apologetically. “Knowing about you I might have suspected something in a ship’s company made up like this one is. But I’m going through it with a fine-tooth comb before we reach Naples.”