Murder On “B” Deck Read online

  Murder on “B” Deck

  A Walter Ghost Mystery

  Vincent Starrett

  To My Brothers

  Stanley

  Harold

  Robert

  with the

  author’s love

  Chapter One

  It was still three quarters of an hour to midnight when Mollock, attired in conventional black, reached the long pier at the foot of West Nineteenth Street and shouldered his way toward the gangplank of the Latakia. In rapid succession he said, “Hello, Bill!” to three different Williams of his acquaintance and dodged their restraining talons. His own party had been waiting for him for nearly an hour.

  He was a bit tired of it all, really. There was a nightmarish quality about the episode, so often repeated, that was beginning to prey upon his patience. It seemed to Mollock that he had been doing this sort of thing almost as far back as he could remember—hustling into his theatre clothes, leaving a comfortable set of rooms, and tearing downtown in a taxi to see a couple of idiots off to Europe. Of course, they all had to leave at night, he reflected bitterly: it was the proper racket. He was, he told himself, beginning to be very weary of these hectic midnight sailings, with their inevitable farewell parties and their inevitable headaches the morning after. The same chattering, pushing throngs of revellers, the same scurrying, luggage-laden stewards, the same old Bills and Ethels cluttering the piers and decks and dining rooms. It was beginning to be a nuisance.

  He had seen Johnson off on Tuesday, Woodberry on Thursday, and here he was again on Sunday (of all days) hurrying on the same senseless errand, except that this time it was his sister and her husband who required a farewell kiss and a farewell handshake before they could properly push off. Not that he had kissed Johnson’s wife—nor Mabel Woodberry either. God forbid! And, of course, his sister was different. But it was a mystery why so many of his friends and relatives had determined to sail for Europe in the same week; and why—granting their right to sail—they insisted upon celebrating the departure as if they were pugilists or prima donnas. He was tired of lugging baskets of fruit, novels, boxes of candy and whatnot, from hotel to liner. He was tired of stupid conversations and absurd adieus. He was tired of a lot of things. When he sailed for Europe, vowed Dunstan Mollock earnestly, it would be without ostentation.

  Would he ever be able to get away himself? he wondered. It was, of course, ridiculous that a novelist of his distinction never had seen Europe.

  At the edge of the pier, against the guard rail, a cluster of men and women with serious faces burst suddenly into song. He stopped in surprise. Unlike a majority of the others on the pier, they were dressed neither for dinner nor for the theatre. They were singing a hymn: “God Be with You Till We Meet Again!”

  A man of middle age who looked like the late William Jennings Bryan, was leaning over the ship’s rail and listening; a missionary, no doubt, bound—second cabin —for a heathen field: possibly England, thought Mollock hopefully. The salvationists were led by a stern-faced woman with white hair and steel-rimmed spectacles. The jackdaws and peacocks stopped to listen, too, pleased by the divertissement.

  “In His arms securely fold you.

  God be with you till we meet again.”

  It was curiously incongruous and, in its way, good literary material. Mollock mentally docketed it and pushed onward. A few feet farther along a burly fellow of the low comedian type was arguing furiously with a uniformed official of no importance, the subject of the debate seeming to be the burly individual’s baggage. The man’s face was familiar and Mollock instinctively sidestepped. He was not looking for familiar faces. He knew altogether too many people as it was. Reaching the gangplank, he mounted rapidly to the first deck, dodged another Bill without being seen, traversed two crowded promenades and stairways, and at length discreetly knocked upon the panels of a stateroom numbered 67, behind which a significant cork had just popped.

  At the interruption, four men and three women crowded in the room cocked their heads sidewise. The brother-in-law of the latecomer paused, his thumb in the throat of a bottle. “That you, Duns?” he called, and opened the door with his free hand. “Where the hell have you been? We’ve been waiting for you for an hour.” He closed the door. “When do you think this boat sails?—next week some time?”

  “Aren’t you terrible, Duns!” added his brother-in-law’s wife. “Sit over here beside me and don’t move until I tell you to.”

  The room was hot and stuffy. Through rifts in the tobacco smoke Mollock saw the grinning features of Thornton and Crane and their wives and the rather handsome face of a stranger. They were all jammed together like anchovies or people in an elevator. He brought out his watch. “Just ten o’clock,” he observed with jovial mendacity. “An Englishman’s word!”

  “It’s eleven-twenty,” said his sister severely, “and the boat sails at midnight. In ten minutes the first bugle will blow for ‘All ashore.’”

  “Well,” said Mollock, “I’m here. Sorry I was late. You might give me a drink, Todd, if there’s anything left.”

  “You don’t deserve it,” grumbled Todd Osborne, handing him a glass. “You don’t mind drinking out of a tumbler, I hope.” The bridegroom was officiating as bartender at the washstand.

  A cry of consternation burst from Mrs. Osborne. “Oh, I beg your pardon! You haven’t met Mr. Underwood, Duns. Kirby Underwood. My brother, Dunstan Mollock.”

  “Not really?” cried Mollock, rising. “‘At the ringing of the curfew Kirby Underwood must die!’” He shook the other’s hand heartily. “My dear man, you’re in all the anthologies.”

  Underwood laughed. “I’m glad to know you at last, Mr. Mollock. I’ve admired your stories for ever so long. But wasn’t it Basil Underwood who had to die?”

  “Basil it was,” agreed Mollock. He touched his glass to the other man’s and tossed off the contents as if it were water. After all, the idea was to get politely intoxicated, utter some maudlin platitudes, then call a cab. “Repetición, Todd! Have we time for another?”

  A sudden bugle had begun to shrill in the passages. His brother-in-law looked at his watch.

  “Just,” said Arthur Crane. “That’s the first bugle. There’ll be another in fifteen minutes, and that’ll be the last.”

  Osborne nodded and hastily refilled the tumblers from a second bottle. He was determined to make an event of the affair, if it were possible. He had had trouble enough getting the champagne.

  “I’m not going to wait for the second,” announced Thornton in his heavy bass. “The second bugle, I mean. Suppose our watches are slow and this is the second one! Gimme a Dromedary, someone.”

  “We’d all be carried off, that’s all.” Mollock laughed as the ludicrous notion struck him. “Still, there’s no sense in cutting it too fine.” He offered the stout man his cigarette case.

  “We’d have to go back with the pilot,” squealed May Thornton. “We’d have to go down a rope ladder!”

  Her husband shuddered.

  “Oh, I suppose we could get off at Quarantine,” supposed Crane, who knew nothing about it.

  They were all talking at once, and it developed that there were, in point of fact, several ways of getting back to shore, supposing they were all to be carried away. Todd Osborne seemed dubious.

  “Well,” began Thornton, “I’ve got an important engagement tomorrow.” He rose heavily to his feet. The strident bugle was still sounding up and down the corridors.

  “In the city?” asked Mollock swiftly. He laughed—a little boisterously. In fiction, business men were forever having engagements in the city. Lord, but the room was getting close! This was certainly no way to be drinking champagne. It was extraordinary the way it hit one. The cigare
ttes didn’t help either.

  Osborne raised his tumbler. “All right,” he said. “Here’s to everything!” He looked furtively at his brother-in-law and drew Underwood to one side. “See that Duns gets off the boat safely, will you?” he asked in a low voice. “He’s all right now, but a little liquor goes a long way with him. He’s beginning to feel it. When he gets out of hand it takes a regiment to control him. Once he’s on the dock he’ll be all right. The police can handle him there.”

  Underwood was surprised. He hesitated. An odd expression appeared for an instant about his eyes. “All right,” he promised. “I’ll take care of him.” He hesitated again. “Well, good luck, Todd, and a happy voyage to you and Mrs. Osborne.”

  “Repetición!” clamoured Mollock, steadying himself against a chairback. “Bon voyage! God be with you till we meet again!” In a voice of drama he added: “Repeticián!” It was the one word he had learned in Mexico.

  “No,” said his brother-in-law, “you’ve had enough. Anyway, you’ve all got to get off. Good-bye, Duns! Good-bye, Arthur! Good-bye. Wait a minute and we’ll all go on deck. The air won’t hurt any of us.” He slipped an arm through Mollock’s, snatched the author’s overcoat from the couch, and with his wife on the other side preceded the party through the door. “Have you got his hat and stick, Mavis?”

  “Give them to me, Todd,” protested Mollock. “This is ridiculous, Mavis. What’s the matter with you? I’m all right.”

  “Of course you are, old chap,” said his sister. “Let him alone, Todd. Come on,” she added, “let’s go on ahead.”

  Following the flow of traffic toward the exits, they emerged at length upon the lower deck and leaned for a few moments over the rail. The cool air was refreshing after the champagne and the stuffy stateroom. On the pier the jackdaws and peacocks were still strutting. There was still twenty minutes before midnight. Lines of stewards and baggage hustlers were filing on board at both ends of the ship, and from the chaotic appearance of things the liner would be lucky if she ever got away.

  “Well,” said the novelist, at last, “have a good time, Sis. Todd’s a good fellow, and I don’t think you’ll regret anything. Of course, he can’t be with you all the time and you can’t expect him to be. There’s his business to think of. Has he got his plus-fours, all right?”

  His sister laughed. “I suppose so. He was looking for his third pair last night. Are they necessary?”

  “They’re imperative,” said Mollock. “I have never been to Europe, but there are two rules of the sea that everybody knows. The best-looking girls get off the ship when it sails; and the first thing the men do, when they unpack their bags, is to climb into plus-fours. Particularly,” he added, “if they have never played golf.”

  She laughed again, glancing at the giggling young women leaving the vessel. “You’re not very complimentary to your sister.”

  “The rule has its exceptions,” he smiled. “Lucky fellows who are making this voyage. Wish I were one of them.”

  “So do I, Duns,” she answered a bit wistfully; and in the little silence that followed they heard the voice of Kirby Underwood proclaiming that he had found them.

  The rest of the party came up noisily and Underwood slipped an arm through that of the novelist. “All ready?” he asked.

  “I suppose so. So long, Todd! All kinds of luck. Good-bye, Sis! Don’t forget to write me how you like Paris.”

  He shook hands with Osborne and took his sister into his arms for a moment. The Thorntons and the Cranes, with handkerchiefs ready to wave, were already halfway to the pier—cautious citizens!

  Underwood and Mollock descended together and stood for a few minutes at the guard rail of the dock, looking upward. Then, with a final flourish of their sticks, they turned away toward the elevators.

  It occurred to Mollock that his companion was worried about something. He stole a glance at him. Underwood was looking at his watch. Possibly the fellow was worried about his train to Little Neck or Glooster or some place. The decent thing to do was to offer him a shakedown for the night. Halfway along the pier, however, Underwood was hailed by a knot of men, and stopped with a murmured apology.

  “You don’t mind if I leave you here?” he asked.

  “Not at all,” said the novelist, relieved. “I’m going straight home and to bed as quickly as I can get there. Happy to have met you, old man. Look in on me sometime, if you care to. I’m at the Wyoming Arms.”

  He yawned, shook hands, and started on again alone. When he had gone a dozen yards he shivered and struggled into his overcoat; and when he had done that he slipped a hand into his side pocket, said “Damn!” with great vigour, and stopped short.

  The lurid novel that he had planned to leave with his sister, his very latest and one that she had particularly wanted for the voyage, was exactly where he had placed it earlier in the evening. It was in his pocket.

  The author of Footsteps of Fear cursed himself whole-heartedly. The volume—an advance copy of which he now held—would not be on sale for several weeks, either in London or in Paris, and it would be at least a fortnight before he could get it to his sister by mail. There was only one other alternative. He looked quickly at his watch. There was still time to leg it back to the ship and escape before the thing began to move. In point of fact, there was plenty of time. The final bugle had sounded only a short time before as he and Underwood had descended the gangplank.

  He turned and walked rapidly back in the direction from which he had come, and suddenly saw Kirby Underwood, or a man who looked exceedingly like him, walking also toward the ship. At the sight he hastened his own steps. It would be amusing, he reflected, if Underwood, too, had forgotten something. There would be no time to inquire, however; and anyway the man ahead of him was also hurrying. He was turning in toward the ship. By George, there was something almost furtive in the fellow’s demeanour—the way he kept looking back. He was obviously making for the second-cabin gangplank, though. In the circumstances, he could hardly be Underwood.

  Mollock broke into a trot. Explaining his predicament to the official at the foot of the first-cabin runway, he clattered up the plank, dodged a group of suspicious officers at the head, and wriggled through the press of passengers toward the proper deck and the stateroom numbered 67.

  There was no response to his knock and he tried the door and found it locked. His heart sank. A pretty kettle of fish, this was! But surely they could not have gone far. They would be at the rail, no doubt, looking down upon the crowds. He hastened to the promenade and pattered up and down behind the watchers, looking for a familiar back. There were many familiar backs, but none proved to be the right one.

  Frantic, he plunged downward to the lower deck, taking the stairs recklessly, and resumed his quest along new alleys. Stray stewards began to look after him with suspicion. With relief he noted that the gangplank was still pointed diagonally downward, its base still firmly pressed upon the pier. Tardy groups of farewell-sayers still lingered at stair foot and rail, their eyes shrewdly cocked toward the exits. Apparently there was still time. Sooner or later there would be a general alarm and he would be able to leave with the hindmost.

  He mounted to the upper deck and pelted along the shoreward aisle. He plunged downward again, and with sudden inspiration sought again the locked stateroom, still indubitably locked. He recklessly stopped gold-braided officers and inquired for Todd Osborne as if that obscure citizen were a foreign potentate. The gold-braided officers looked at him with profound interest and advised him to leave the ship at once.

  The sense of nightmare began to steal over him again. He felt cautiously for his back pocket, through his coat tails, and slipped into a small lateral passage. In the shadows at the end of this cul-de-sac he brought out his flask and had a healthy nip of bootleg Scotch. Then again he resumed his peregrinations. It began to look, however, like a futile quest.

  Wearily he worked back toward the central stairway, along a strange corridor, and came suddenly upon a
man engaged in the simple act of unlocking a cabin door. Hearing him coming, the man turned and there was an outcry.

  “Mollock!” exclaimed the stranger.

  The tired searcher caught at the man’s arm and looked for a moment into his eyes. “Good Lord, Walter,” he said, “is that you?”

  The other grinned ferociously. He was an appallingly ugly man of about Mollock’s own age, which was thirty-seven. His ugliness was so unusual that it made his appearance almost fascinating. His eyes were remarkable.

  “To think of running into you here, Duns,” said the ugly man. “I’ve been wondering about you for five years. Come in and have a drink. I had no idea you were making the trip; but then, I never read the passenger list.”

  “I’m not on it,” smiled the novelist unhappily. “I’ve got to get off in a minute.” He snatched at his watch and his voice became a smothered shriek. “Good God, Walter! It’s almost midnight. I’ve got to get off! Have you seen my sister? You remember her—Mavis? I came back to give her a book, and—but I can’t wait! I’ve got to run.” He shoved the volume into his friend’s hands and turned. “She’s on board. Her name’s Osborne. She’s going to Europe on her honeymoon.”

  He took to his heels and fled, leaving his astounded friend gazing alternately at a pair of flying soles and an octavo volume on the bright jacket of which appeared the significant title, Footsteps of Fear.

  The author of the volume, running like a hare, turned two corners at random, collided with a white-robed stewardess, and ran down an elderly gentleman emerging from a lavatory. Somewhere beyond him a voice began to call commands. At the same instant a piercing whistle split the outer darkness and under his feet the great liner seemed to stir and throb. Beneath her keel he seemed to hear the churning and grinding of tons of water, and in a fearsome flash of imagination he saw the whole Atlantic stretch between him and the shore.

  He ended his flight at the open door leading to the promenade. Before his eyes the dock was moving away, slipping slowly backward into the night. Somewhere ahead and behind he heard the snorting and fuming of fussy tugs. On the moving pier a blur of faces bobbed and grimaced. The cackling good-byes of the multitude seemed to rise in hideous mockery of his plight.