The After House by Mary Roberts Rinehart (dark books to read TXT) 📕
McWhirter it was who got me my berth on the Ella. It must have been about the 20th of July, for the Ella sailed on the 28th. I was strong enough to leave the hospital, but not yet physically able for any prolonged exertion. McWhirter, who was short and stout, had been alternately flirting with the nurse, as she moved in and out preparing my room for the night, and sizing me up through narrowed eyes.
"No," he said, evidently following a private line of thought; "you don't belong behind a counter, Leslie. I'm darned if I think you belong in the medical profession, either. The British army'd suit you."
"The - what?"
"You know - Kipling ide
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When Burns gave me the key to the captain’s room Charlie Jones had reached the other end of the long cabin, and was staring through into the chartroom. It was a time to trust no one, and I assured myself that Jones was not looking before I thrust it into my shirt.
“They’re - all ready, Leslie,” Burns said, his face working. “What are we going to do with them?”
“We’ll have to take them back.”
“But we can’t do that. It’s a two weeks’ matter, and in this weather -”
“We will take them back, Burns,” I said shortly, and he assented mechanically: -
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Just how it was to be done was a difficult thing to decide. Miss Lee had not appeared yet, and the three of us, Jones, Burns, and I, talked it over. Jones suggested that we put them in one of the life boats, and nail over it a canvas and tarpaulin cover.
“It ain’t my own idea,” he said modestly. “I seen it done once, on the Argentina. It worked all right for a while, and after a week or so we lowered the jollyboat and towed it astern.”
I shuddered; but the idea was a good one, and I asked Burns to go up and get the boat ready.
“We must let the women up this afternoon,” I said, “and, if it is possible, try to keep them from learning where the bodies are. We can rope off a part of the deck for them, and ask them not to leave it.”
Miss Lee came out then, and Burns went on deck.
The girl was looking better. The exertion of dressing had brought back her color, and her lips, although firmly set, were not drawn. She stood just outside the door and drew a deep breath.
“You must not keep us prisoners any longer, Leslie,” she said. “Put a guard over us, if you must, but let us up in the air.”
“This afternoon, Miss Lee,” I said. “This morning you are better below.”
She understood me, but she had no conception of the brutality of the crime, even then.
“I am not a child. I wish to see them. I shall have to testify -”
“You will not see them, Miss Lee.”
She stood twisting her handkerchief in her hands. She saw Charlie Jones pacing the length of the cabin, revolver in hand. From the chartroom came the sound of hammering, where the after companion door, already locked, was being additionally secured with strips of wood nailed across.
“I understand,” she said finally. “Will you take me to Karen’s room?”
I could see no reason for objecting; but so thorough was the panic that had infected us all that I would not allow her in until I had preceded her, and had searched in the clothes closet and under the two bunks. Williams had not reached this room yet, and there was a pool of blood on the floor.
She had a great deal of courage. She glanced at the stain, and looked away again quickly.
“I - think I shall not come in. Will you look at the bell register for me? What bell is registered?”
“Three.”
“Three!” she said. “Are you sure?”
I looked again. “It is three.”
“Then it was not my sister’s bell that rang. It was Mr. Vail’s!”
“It must be a mistake. Perhaps the wires -”
“Mrs. Turner’s room is number one. Please go back and ask her to ring her bell, while I see how it registers.”
But I would not leave her there alone. I went with her to her sister’s door, and together we returned to the maids’ cabin. Mrs. Turner had rung as we requested, and her bell had registered “One.”
“He rang for help!” she cried, and broke down utterly. She dropped into a chair in the chartroom and cried softly, helplessly, while I stood by, unable to think of anything to do or say. I think now that it was the best thing she could have done, though at the time I was alarmed. I ventured, finally, to put my hand on her shoulder.
“Please!” I said.
Charlie Jones came to the door of the chartroom, and retreated with instinctive good taste. She stopped crying after a time, and I knew the exact instant when she realized my touch. I felt her stiffen; without looking up, she drew away from my hand; and I stepped back, hurt and angry - the hurt for her, the anger that I could not remember that I was her hired servant.
When she got up, she did not look at me, nor I at her - at least not consciously. But when, in those days, was I not looking at her, seeing her, even when my eyes were averted, feeling her presence before any ordinary sense told me she was near? The sound of her voice in the early mornings, when I was washing down the deck, had been enough to set my blood pounding in my ears. The last thing I saw at night, when I took myself to the storeroom to sleep, was her door across the main cabin; and in the morning, stumbling out with my pillow and blanket, I gave it a foolish little sign of greeting.
What she would not see the men had seen, and, in their need, they had made me their leader. To her I was Leslie, the common sailor. I registered a vow, that morning, that I would be the common sailor until the end of the voyage.
“Mr. Turner is awake, I believe,” I said stiffly.
“Very well.”
She turned back into the main cabin; but she paused at the storeroom door.
“It is curious that you heard nothing,” she said slowly. “You slept with this door open, didn’t you?”
“I was locked in.”
She stooped quickly and looked at the lock.
“You broke it open?”
“Partly, at the last. I heard -” I stopped. I did not want to tell her what I had heard. But she knew.
“You heard - Karen, when she screamed?”
“Yes. I was aroused before that, - I do not know how, -and found I was locked in. I thought it might be a joke - forecastle hands are fond of joking, and they resented my being brought here to sleep. I took out some of the screws with my knife, and - then I broke the door.”
“You saw no one?”
“It was dark; I saw and heard no one.”
“But, surely - the man at the wheel -”
“Hush,” I warned her; “he is there. He heard something, but the helmsman cannot leave the wheel.”
She was stooping to the lock again.
“You are sure it was locked?”
“The bolt is still shot.” I showed her.
“Then - where is the key?”
“The key!”
“Certainly. Find the key, and you will find the man who locked you in.”
“Unless,” I reminded her, “it flew out when I broke the lock.”
“In that case, it will be on the floor.”
But an exhaustive search of the cabin floor discovered no key. Jones, seeing us searching, helped, his revolver in one hand and a lighted match in the other, handling both with an abandon of ease that threatened us alternately with fire and a bullet. But there was no key.
“It stands to reason, miss,” he said, when we had given up, “that, since the key isn’t here, it isn’t on the ship. That there key is a sort of red-hot give-away. No one is going to carry a thing like that around. Either it’s here in this cabin - which it isn’t - or it’s overboard.”
“Very likely, Jones. But I shall ask Mr. Turner to search the men.”
She went toward Turner’s door, and Jones leaned over me, putting a hand on my arm.
“She’s right, boy,” he said quickly. “Don’t let ‘em know what you’re after, but go through their pockets. And their shoes!” he called after me. “A key slips into a shoe mighty easy.”
But, after all, it was not necessary. The key was to be found, and very soon.
Exactly what occurred during Elsa Lee’s visit to her brother-in-law’s cabin I have never learned. He was sober, I know, and somewhat dazed, with no recollection whatever of the previous night, except a hazy idea that he had quarreled with Richardson.
Jones and I waited outside. He suggested that we have prayers over the bodies when we placed them in the boat, and I agreed to read the burial service from the Episcopal Prayer Book. The voices from Turner’s cabin came steadily, Miss Lee’s low tones, Turner’s heavy bass only now and then. Once I heard her give a startled exclamation, and both Jones and I leaped to the door. But the next moment she was talking again quietly.
Ten minutes - fifteen - passed. I grew restless and took to wandering about the cabin. Mrs. Johns came to the door opposite, and asked to have tea sent down to the stewardess. I called the request up the companionway, unwilling to leave the cabin for a moment. When I came back, Jones was standing at the door of Vail’s cabin, looking in. His face was pale.
“Look there!” he said hoarsely. “Look at the bell. He must have tried to push the button!”
I stared in. Williams had put the cabin to rights, as nearly as he could. The soaked mattress was gone, and a clean linen sheet was spread over the bunk. Poor Vail’s clothing, as he had taken it off the night before, hung on a mahogany stand beside the bed, and above, almost concealed by his coat, was the bell. Jones’s eyes were fixed on the darkish smear, over and around the bell, on the white paint.
I measured the height of the bell from the bed. It was well above, and to one side - a smear rather than a print, too indeterminate to be of any value, sinister, cruel.
“He did n’t do that, Charlie,” I said. “He couldn’t have got up to it after - That is the murderer’s mark. He leaned there, one hand against the wall, to look down at his work.
And, without knowing it, he pressed the button that roused the two women.”
He had not heard the story of Henrietta Sloane, and, as we waited, I told him. Some of the tension was relaxing. He tried, in his argumentative German way, to drag me into a discussion as to the foreordination of a death that resulted from an accidental ringing of a bell. But my ears were alert for the voices near by, and soon Miss Lee opened the door.
Turner was sitting on his bunk. He had made an attempt to shave, and had cut his chin severely. He was in a dressing-gown, and was holding a handkerchief to his face; he peered at me over it with red-rimmed eyes.
“This - this is horrible, Leslie,” he said. “I can hardly believe it.”
“It is true, Mr: Turner.”
He took the handkerchief away and looked to see if the bleeding had stopped. I believe he intended to impress us both with his coolness, but it was an unfortunate attempt. His lips, relieved of the pressure, were twitching; his nerveless fingers could hardly refold the handkerchief.
“Wh-why was I not - called at once?” he demanded.
“I notified you. You were - you must have gone to sleep again.”
“I don’t believe you called me. You’re - lying, are n’t you?” He got up, steadying himself by the wall, and swaying dizzily to the motion of the ship. “You shut me off down here, and then run things your own damned way.” He turned on Miss Lee. “Where’s Helen?”
“In her room, Marsh. She has one
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