褐衣男子15

 (Anne’s Narrative Resumed) 

It was on the night of the Fancy Dress dance that I decided that the time had come for me to confide in some one. So far I had played a lone hand and rather enjoyed it. Now suddenly everything was changed. I distrusted my own judgment and for the first time a feeling of loneliness and desolation crept over me.

I sat on the edge of my bunk, still in my gipsy dress, and considered the situation. I thought first of Colonel Race. He had seemed to like me. He would be kind, I was sure. And he was no fool. Yet, as I thought it over, I wavered. He was a man of commanding personality. He would take the whole matter out of my hands. And it was my mystery! There were other reasons, too, which I would hardly acknowledge to myself, but which made it inadvisable to confide in Colonel Race.

Then I thought of Mrs. Blair. She, too, had been kind to me. I did not delude myself into the belief that that really meant anything. It was probably a mere whim of the moment. All the same, I had it in my power to interest her. She was a woman who had experienced most of the ordinary sensations of life. I proposed to supply her with an extraordinary one! And I liked her; liked her ease of manner, her lack of sentimentality, her freedom from any form of affectation.

My mind was made up. I decided to seek her out then and there. She would hardly be in bed yet.

Then I remembered that I did not know the number of her cabin. My friend, the night stewardess, would probably know. I rang the bell. After some delay it was answered by a man. He gave me the information I wanted. Mrs. Blair’s cabin was No. 71. He apologized for the delay in answering the bell, but explained that he had all the cabins to attend to.

“Where is the stewardess, then?” I asked.

“They all go off duty at ten o’clock.”

“No—I mean the night stewardess.”

“No stewardess on at night, miss.”

“But—but a stewardess came the other night—about one o’clock.”

“You must have been dreaming, miss. There’s no stewardess on duty after ten.”

He withdrew and I was left to digest this morsel of information. Who was the woman who had come to my cabin on the night of the 22nd? My face grew graver as I realized the cunning and audacity of my unknown antagonists. Then, pulling myself together, I left my own cabin and sought that of Mrs. Blair. I knocked at the door.

“Who’s that?” called her voice from within.

“It’s me—Anne Beddingfeld.”

“Oh, come in, Gipsy girl.”

I entered. A good deal of scattered clothing lay about, and Mrs. Blair herself was draped in one of the loveliest kimonos I had ever seen. It was all orange and gold and black and made my mouth water to look at it.

“Mrs. Blair,” I said abruptly, “I want to tell you the story of my life—that is, if it isn’t too late, and you won’t be bored.”

“Not a bit. I always hate going to bed,” said Mrs. Blair, her face crinkling into smiles in the delightful way it had. “And I should love to hear the story of your life. You’re a most unusual creature, Gipsy girl. Nobody else would think of bursting in on me at 1 a.m. to tell me the story of their life. Especially after snubbing my natural curiosity for weeks as you have done! I’m not accustomed to being snubbed. It’s been quite a pleasing novelty. Sit down on the sofa and unburden your soul.”

I told her the whole story. It took some time as I was conscientious over all the details. She gave a deep sigh when I had finished, but she did not say at all what I had expected her to say. Instead she looked at me, laughed a little and said:

“Do you know, Anne, you’re a very unusual girl? Haven’t you ever had qualms?”

“Qualms?” I asked, puzzled.

“Yes, qualms, qualms, qualms! Starting off alone with practically no money. What will you do when you find yourself in a strange country with all your money gone?”

“It’s no good bothering about that until it comes. I’ve got plenty of money still. The twenty-five pounds that Mrs. Flemming gave me is practically intact, and then I won the sweep yesterday. That’s another fifteen pounds. Why, I’ve got lots of money. Forty pounds!”

“Lots of money! My God!” murmured Mrs. Blair. “I couldn’t do it, Anne, and I’ve plenty of pluck in my own way. I couldn’t start off gaily with a few pounds in my pocket and no idea as to what I was doing and where I was going.”

“But that’s the fun of it,” I cried, thoroughly roused. “It gives one such a splendid feeling of adventure.”

She looked at me, nodded once or twice, and then smiled.

“Lucky Anne! There aren’t many people in the world who feel as you do.”

“Well,” I said impatiently, “what do you think of it all, Mrs. Blair?”

“I think it’s the most thrilling thing I ever heard! Now, to begin with, you will stop calling me Mrs. Blair. Suzanne will be ever so much better. Is that agreed?”

“I should love it, Suzanne.”

“Good girl. Now let’s get down to business. You say that in Sir Eustace’s secretary—not that long-faced Pagett, the other one—you recognized the man who was stabbed and came into your cabin for shelter?”

I nodded.

“That gives us two links connecting Sir Eustace with the tangle. The woman was murdered in his house, and it’s his secretary who gets stabbed at the mystic hour of one o’clock. I don’t suspect Sir Eustace himself, but it can’t be all coincidence. There’s a connection somewhere even if he himself is unaware of it.”

“Then there’s the queer business of the stewardess,” she continued thoughtfully. “What was she like?”

“I hardly noticed her. I was so excited and strung up—and a stewardess seemed such an anticlimax. But—yes—I did think her face was familiar. Of course it would be if I’d seen her about the ship.”

“Her face seemed familiar to you,” said Suzanne. “Sure she wasn’t a man?”

“She was very tall,” I admitted.

“Hum. Hardly Sir Eustace, I should think, nor Mr. Pagett——Wait!”

She caught up a scrap of paper and began drawing feverishly. She inspected the result with her head poised on one side.

“A very good likeness of the Rev. Edward Chichester. Now for the etceteras.” She passed the paper over to me. “Is that your stewardess?”

“Why, yes,” I cried. “Suzanne, how clever of you!”

She disdained the compliment with a light gesture.

“I’ve always had suspicions of that Chichester creature. Do you remember how he dropped his coffee-cup and turned a sickly green when we were discussing Crippen the other day?”

“And he tried to get Cabin 17!”

“Yes, it all fits in so far. But what does it all mean? What was really meant to happen at one o’clock in Cabin 17? It can’t be the stabbing of the secretary. There would be no point in timing that for a special hour on a special day in a special place. No, it must have been some kind of appointment and he was on his way to keep it when they knifed him. But who was the appointment with? Certainly not with you. It might have been with Chichester. Or it might have been with Pagett.”

“That seems unlikely,” I objected, “they can see each other any time.”

We both sat silent for a minute or two, then Suzanne started off on another tack.

“Could there have been anything hidden in the cabin?”

“That seems more probable,” I agreed. “It would explain my things being ransacked the next morning. But there was nothing hidden there, I’m sure of it.”

“The young man couldn’t have slipped something into a drawer the night before?”

I shook my head.

“I should have seen him.”

“Could it have been your precious piece of paper they were looking for?”

“It might have been, but it seems rather senseless. It was only a time and a date—and they were both past by then.”

Suzanne nodded.

“That’s so of course. No, it wasn’t the paper. By the way, have you got it with you? I’d rather like to see it.”

I had brought the paper with me as Exhibit A, and I handed it over to her. She scrutinized it, frowning.

“There’s a dot after the 17. Why isn’t there a dot after the 1 too?”

“There’s a space,” I pointed out.

“Yes, there’s a space, but——”

Suddenly she rose and peered at the paper, holding it as close under the light as possible. There was a repressed excitement in her manner.

“Anne, that isn’t a dot! That’s a flaw in the paper! A flaw in the paper, you see? So you’ve got to ignore it, and just go by the spaces—the spaces!”

I had risen and was standing by her. I read out the figures as I now saw them.

“1 71 22.”

“You see,” said Suzanne, “it’s the same, but not quite. It’s one o’clock still, and the 22nd—but it’s Cabin 71! My cabin, Anne!”

We stood staring at each other, so pleased with our new discovery and so rapt with excitement that you might have thought we had solved the whole mystery. Then I fell to earth with a bump.

“But, Suzanne, nothing happened here at one o’clock on the 22nd?”

Her face fell also. “No—it didn’t.”

Another idea struck me.

“This isn’t your own cabin, is it, Suzanne? I mean not the one you originally booked?”

“No, the purser changed me into it.”

“I wonder if it was booked before sailing for some one—some one who didn’t turn up. I suppose we could find out.”

“We don’t need to find out, Gipsy girl,” cried Suzanne. “I know! The purser was telling me about it. The cabin was booked in the name of Mrs. Grey—but it seems that Mrs. Grey was merely a pseudonym for the famous Madame Nadina. She’s a celebrated Russian dancer, you know. She’s never appeared in London, but Paris has been quite mad about her. She had a terrific success there all through the War. A thoroughly bad lot, I believe, but most attractive. The purser expressed his regrets that she wasn’t on board in a most heart-felt fashion when he gave me her cabin, and then Colonel Race told me a lot about her. It seems there were very queer stories afloat in Paris. She was suspected of espionage, but they couldn’t prove anything. I rather fancy Colonel Race was over there simply on that account. He’s told me some very interesting things. There was a regular organized gang, not German in origin at all. In fact the head of it, a man always referred to as ‘the Colonel’ was thought to be an Englishman, but they never got any clue as to his identity. But there is no doubt that he controlled a considerable organization of international crooks. Robberies, espionages, assaults, he undertook them all—and usually provided an innocent scapegoat to pay the penalty. Diabolically clever, he must have been! This woman was supposed to be one of his agents, but they couldn’t get hold of anything to go upon. Yes, Anne, we’re on the right tack. Nadina is just the woman to be mixed up in this business. The appointment on the morning of the 22nd was with her in this cabin. But where is she? Why didn’t she sail?”

A light flashed upon me.

“She meant to sail,” I said slowly.

“Then why didn’t she?”

“Because she was dead. Suzanne, Nadina was the woman murdered at Marlow!”

My mind went back to the bare room in the empty house, and there swept over me again that indefinable sensation of menace and evil. With it came the memory of the falling pencil and the discovery of the roll of films. A roll of films—that struck a more recent note. Where had I heard of a roll of films? And why did I connect that thought with Mrs. Blair?

Suddenly I flew at her and almost shook her in my excitement.

“Your films! The ones that were passed to you through the ventilator? Wasn’t that on the 22nd?”

“The ones I lost?”

“How do you know they were the same? Why would any one return them to you that way—in the middle of the night? It’s a mad idea. No—they were a message, the films had been taken out of the yellow tin case, and something else put inside. Have you got it still?”

“I may have used it. No, here it is. I remember I tossed it into the rack at the side of the bunk.”

She held it out to me.

It was an ordinary round tin cylinder, such as films are packed in for the tropics. I took it with trembling hand, but even as I did so my heart leapt. It was noticeably heavier than it should have been.

With shaking fingers I peeled off the strip of adhesive plaster that kept it air-tight. I pulled off the lid, and a stream of dull glassy pebbles rolled onto the bed.

“Pebbles,” I said, keenly disappointed.

“Pebbles?” cried Suzanne.

The ring in her voice excited me.

“Pebbles? No, Anne, not pebbles! Diamonds!”