The Blind Barber

this unknown girl staggered in, badly hurt. We knew somebody had hit her, so we rushed out to see whether we could find the assailant. While we were on deck we heard your yell—'

('Not bad for a start,' thought Morgan uneasily. 'Steady now.')

'I see,' said the captain. 'And where were you then?'

'Eh?'

'I said,' repeated the captain, looking so curiously like the headmaster at old St. Just's that Morgan shivered a little, 'where were you when this alleged unknown woman came in? You weren't in your cabin. I looked in there and 1 know.'

'Oh! Oh! I see! No, of course not,' Warren answered, with some heat. 'Naturally not. We were in the empty cabin next door.'

'Why?'

'Why? Well — er — well, it was just an idea, you see. A kind of idea I had. I mean,' said Warren, his wits clicking out words desperately in the hope of finding the right ones, 'I mean, I thought it would be a good idea. Anyway, we were there, damn it! You can ask any of them. They were sort of taking care of me…'

'Taking care of you,' repeated Captain Whistler heavily. 'And what were you doing there?'

'Well, we were sitting on the floor playing Geography. And then we heard the door to C deck open, and this girl who was attacked started calling my name. I don't know who she is; I only saw her once before,' pursued Warren, acquiring greater assurance and fluency as he hurried on, 'and that was in the wireless-room, when I got the cablegram about — euh! — I mean, when I got the cablegram— about the bears, you see.'

'What bears?'

Warren's jaws moved. He glanced wildly at Morgan for assistance.

'Its quite all right, Captain,' the latter explained as smoothly as he could. He had a lump in his throat and a feeling that if Warren kept on explaining he would go insane himself. 'Naturally Curt's a bit upset, and I suppose he tells things in rather an odd way. But it's quite simple, after all. It's about some stocks — you understand. The bears were raiding the market, you see, and his stocks had depreciated.'

'Oh! He's been worried about financial matters has he? Yes, yes,' said the captain heavily. 'But let's come down to terms, Mr. Morgan? Do you vouch for the truth of this crazy story?'

'Go and see, why don't you?' shouted the exasperated Warren. 'That's what I've been asking you to do from the first, if you'd had any sense. Here you're keeping Miss Glenn shivering M my coat, and all of us standing out here on n zero deck when that poor girl may be dying. Aren't you coming, Doctor?'

'We are all coming,' said the captain, with sudden decision. He beckoned his two subordinates, and the weird little procession went down to the door. Warren tugged it open, while they all piled through; a pale-faced Peggy, trembling and breathing deeply in the warm air. For a moment they blinked against the light.

'All right, there you are,' said Warren, himself shivering as he stood against the wall of the white passage. 'There's where she got caught in the door. You see the blood on the rubber matting… '

The captain looked at him.

'Blood? What blood? I don't see any blood.'

There was none, although Morgan knew it had been there. He took off his spectacles, wiped them, and looked again without result. And again he felt in the pit of his stomach that uneasy sensation that behind this foolery there was moving something monstrous and deadly.

'But—!' said Warren desperately. He stared at the captain, and then threw open the door of the state-room beside his.

The light in the roof was burning. The berth on which they had laid the injured girl was empty; the pillow was not disarranged, or the tucked-back sheets wrinkled. There was not even the smeared towel with which Peggy had wiped blood from the girl's face. A fresh towel, white and undisturbed, swung from the rack of the washstand.

'Yes?' said Captain Whistler stormily. 'I'm waiting.'

7 — Into Which Cabin?

In its own way that was the beginning. It was the mere prospect of an empty bed and a clean towel, not in themselves especially alarming things, which sent through Morgan a sense of fear such as he had not known even in the past during the case of the Eight of Swords, or was to know in the future during the case of the Two Hangmen. He tried to tell himself that this was absurd and was a part of the crack-brain comedy on C deck.

It wasn't. Afterwards he realised that what had struck him first was something about the position of those sheets…

During the brief moment of silence while they all looked into the white state-room, he thought of many things. That girl — he saw again her straight, heavy, classic face, with its strong eyebrows, twitching and blood- smeared against the pillow — that girl had been here. There was no question about that. Ergo, there were three explanations of why she was not here now.

She might have recovered consciousness, found herself alone in a strange cabin, and left it for her own. This sounded thin, especially as her injury had been severe and as a normal person on recovering consciousness would have called for help, kicked up a row, rung for the steward, at least shown sign of weakness or curiosity. But there was an even stronger reason. Before leaving the cabin, she would not have remade the bed. She would not carefully have put on fresh sheets and a pillow-case, in addition to disposing of a soiled towel and hanging another exactly in its place. Yet this had been done. Morgan remembered that, as they put her down, there had been spots of blood flicked on the sheet. He remembered that a lurch of the ship had caused the contents of a whisky-glass to soak the pillow and a part of the top sheet. The bed had been remade! but why and by whom?

The second explanation was a piece of fantasy which even Morgan doubted. Suppose.the girl had been acting? Suppose she was in league with their friend the joker; that she had only pretended being hurt to distract their attention while somebody rifled Warren's cabin? Ridiculous or not, that film had very dangerous potentialities in countries where it is not considered humorous to direct raspberries at the Chancellor. The world wags, and Progress brings back the solemn nonsense of autocracy. In England or the United States the thing would be regarded with levity, as the sort of diplomatic howler often perpetrated by a Tophat; but elsewhere—? Still, Morgan did not believe in any such abstruse plot. Aside from the fact that the joker could gain very little freedom of movement merely because he had got a woman to sham injuries in the next cabin, there was the question of the girl's condition. The dangerous contusion along the skull, the blood of n real cerebral haemorrhage, the white eyeballs uprolled In unconsciousness, were not feigned. She had been hurt, find badly hurt.

The third explanation he did not like to think of. But he was afraid of it. It was five miles, they said, to the bottom of the sea. As he saw weird images in the stuffy little cabin, he felt a jerk of relief — yes, in a way — that Peggy Glenn hud disregarded orders and had not stayed at the bedside. Somebody would have come in and found her there.

These thoughts were so rapid that Captain Whistler had spoken no more than one sinister sentence before Morgan turned round. The captain, his fat figure hunched into a waterproof, had lowered his head nearly into the collar. Under the full electric light the colours of his swollen face were even more of the paint-palette variety, especially the left eye that had closed up behind a purpling hatch. He knew that they were looking at this, and it made him madder still.

'Well?' he said. 'What kind of a joke is this? Where's the woman you said was dying? Where's the woman you begged me to help? Blast my compass with lightning! What's your idea in wasting my time when there's fifty thousand pounds' worth of emeralds stolen somewhere on

this ship? There's nobody in that bunk. There's been nobody in that bunk.' A ghoulish thought seemed to strike him. 'You don't tell me there's anybody there now, do you? Come on, young man; you don't seriously think you see anybody there now, do you?'

He backed away a little, his eyes on Warren, 'Barnacle,' said Captain Valvick violently, 'dere iss no yoke. Ay tell you he iss right! Ay saw her — ay have my fingers on her head. Ay carry her in here. She wass—' Words failed him. He strode over, seized the pillow out of the berth and shook it. He peered under the berth, and then into the