The Blind Barber

His steward tapped on the door to tell him the bath was ready as usual; Morgan slid into a dressing-gown and went out into the breezy passage. Passing the outer door, he pushed it open a little way to put his head out and breathe the full exaltation of the morning. The warm air blew on him in a splendour of sunlight broadening along the horizon behind long pinkish-white streamers of cloud. There was a deep grey-green sea, stung with flecks of whitecaps and wrinkling under a glitter of sun that trembled up like heat haze. He looked up ahead to the long lift and fall of the bows; at the sweep of white cabins; at the red-mouthed air-funnels and brasswork of portholes awink with morning; he heard the monotonous break and swish of water past the bows, and felt that it was good. Everything was good. He even had a fleeting tenderness for Captain Whistler, who was probably now sitting with a beefsteak at his eye and sighing because he could not go down to breakfast. Good old Captain Whistler. There even occurred to him a wild idea that they might go to Whistler straightforwardly, man to man, and say, 'Look here, skipper, it was a blinking shame we had to paste you in the eye last night and strew whisky-bottles all- over your deck, and we're sorry; so let's forget it and be friends. Shall we?' But more sober reflection suggested to him that not all the good omens of the morning presaged enough magic to wangle this. Meanwhile, he dreamily sniffed the morning. He thought in joyous contentment of England and his wife Madeleine who would meet him at Southampton; of the holiday in Paris they would take on the money he had contrived to hypnotise out of gimlet-eyed publishers in America; of the little white hotel by the Ecole Militaire, where there were eels in the fountain of a little gravelled garden; and of other things not relevant to this chronicle.

But, while he bathed and shaved he reviewed the unpleasant side of the problem. He could still feel the horrible shock of finding that grotesque razor in the berth, and the blood under his fingers to mark the way of the Blind Barber. In a conference lasting until nearly four in the morning they had tried to determined what was best to do.

Warren and Valvick, as usual, were for direct action. The former thought it would be best to go straight to Whistler, taking the razor, and saying, 'Now, you old so-and-so, if you think I'm crazy, what do you think of this?' Morgan and Peggy had dissented. They said it was a question of psychology and that you had to consider the captain's frame of mind. In the skipper's momentarily excited state, they said, Warren might just as well tell him he had gone back to his cabin and discovered a couple of buffaloes grazing on the furniture. Better wait. In the morning Whistler would institute a search and find a woman missing; then they could go to him and vindicate themselves. Ultimately, it was so agreed.

With the razor safely locked away in Morgan's bag, and the berth on C deck made up in case a steward should become curious, Morgan again discussed the plan with Warren while he dressed that morning. For the moment, Morgan deliberately kept himself from speculating on the hows and whys of the (alleged) murder last night. There were things to come first. Shortly the ship would be buzzing with the news of the recovery of the emerald elephant. Afterwards, with this weight removed from the skipper's microscopic intelligence, they could soothe him back to belief in a throat-cutting. Then would come the real duel with the Blind Barber.

'What I want to know,' said Warren, as they descended to the dining-saloon, 'is whether it'll be Dr. Kyle or the Perrigords who find the emerald. I still have my suspicions…'

'Of the medical profession?' asked Morgan. 'Nonsense! But I would rather like to see Dr. Kyle shaken out of his calm. Jove! you were right! The boat's waking up. We'll have the sick-list down to a minimum by this afternoon. Look at all the kids. If old Jules Fortinbras has got his sea legs—'

The dining-saloon was full of sunlight and murmurous with an eager clatter of knives and forks. Stewards beamed and did tricks with trays. There were more people out for breakfast at the unholy hour of eight-thirty than there had been for dinner last night. But at the captain's table sat only one solitary figure — Dr. Kyle, sturdily plying knife and fork. Dr. Kyle was a trencherman after the fashion of the lairds in Sir Walter Scott. He could mess up a plate of fried eggs with a dispatch that would have roused the envious approval of Nicol Jarvie or that foreigner, Athelstane.

'Good morning!' said Dr. Kyle, with unexpected affability, and rolling round his shoulder, he looked up. 'A fine day, a fine day. Good morning, Mr. Warren. Good morrrrning, Mr. Morgan. Sit down.'

The other two looked at each other and strove to dissemble. Every morning, hitherto, Dr. Kyle had been perfectly polite, but hardly interested or communicative. He had conveyed an impression that his own society was all he cared to cultivate. A solid large-boned figure in black, with his well-brushed greyish hair and the furrows carven down his cheeks, he had devoted himself to food with the concentration of a surgical operation. Now he had an almost raffish appearance. He wore a tweed suit, with a striped tie, and his grizzled eyebrows were much less Mephistophelean as he welcomed them with a broad gesture. It was, Morgan supposed, the weather…

'Er—' said Warren, sliding into his chair, 'good morning, sir. Yes, indeed, it's a fine morning! Did you — er — did you sleep well?'

'Ah, like a top!' said the doctor, nodding. 'Though, mind,' he added, remembering his habits of thought and correcting himself cautiously, 'I don't say, fra my own experience, that I should judge it a well-chosen worrrd as applied to tops. Accurately speaking (fra my own expeerience as a boy) I should say it was mair to the purpose for tops in general to refrain fra sedentary habits. However, that's as may be. I'll have more of the bacon and eggs, steward.'

This was the first morning, incidentally, in which Dr. Kyle had given the letter 'r' its full-wristed spin. He looked benevolently on them, and at the green glitter of the sea dancing outside the portholes.

'I mean,' pursued Warren, looking at him curiously, 'you didn't — that is, everything was all right when you woke up, was it?'

'Everything,' said Dr. Kyle, 'was fine.' He paused, drawing down his brows thoughtfully. 'Ah! Ye may be referring to that disturbance in the night, then?'

'Disturbance?' said Morgan. 'Was there a disturbance?'

The other regarded him shrewdly, and in a way that disturbed him.

'I see, I see. You hadn't hearrd of it, then? Well, well, it didn't disturb me, Mr. Morgan, and all I heard was some speerited currsing on the deck. But I heard an account of it this morning, from a person of my acquaintance — which account I can't vouch for, you understand—'

'What happened?'

'Rape,' said the doctor, succinctly, and closed one eye in a startlingly raffish fashion.

'Rape?' yelped Morgan. There are certain words which have a mysterious telepathic power. Although there was a buzz in the dining-room which drowned his voice, several heads were twitched in their direction. 'Rape? My God! who was raped? What happened?'

'I can't say,' replied Dr. Kyle, chuckling. 'However, my inforrmant distinctly heard the girl's scream when set upon. My inforrmant declares that some scoundrelly dastard approached the poor girrul by telling her of his adventures while hunting big game in Africa. Weel, weel, then, that he offered her an emerald brrooch worth a fabulous sum. But, failing in his foul design, the rrascally skellum struck her over the head with a bottle o' whisky… '

'Great — Caesar's — ghost!' said Warren, his eyeballs slightly distended. 'You — you didn't hear any names mentioned in the business, did you?'

'My inforrmant made no secret of it,' Dr. Kyle answered philosophically. 'She said the abandoned wretch and seducer was either Captain Whistler or Lord Sturton.'

'And this woman's story is all over the boat?' asked Morgan.

'Oh, it will be,' said Kyle, still philosophically. 'It will be.'

Dr. Kyle continued to talk on affably while the others attacked breakfast; and Morgan wondered what would be the ultimate version of the tale that would be humming through the Queen Victoria by midday. Evidently Dr. Kyle had not found any emeralds. There remained only the stony-faced Mr. Perrigord and his monocled wife. Well? The ship's miniature newspaper lay beside his plate, and he glanced over it between deep draughts of coffee, his eye slid over what appeared to be an article or essay on the back page, stopped, and returned to it. It was headed 'renaissance du theatre,' and under it appeared, 'By Mr. Leslie Perrigord, reprinted by permission of the author from the Sunday 'Times' of Oct. 25, 1932.'

Skirling notes of harps celestial [began this effusion, with running start] sweeping one old reviewer, malgre lui, counterclockwise from his fauteuil, while nuances so subtle danced and slithered, reminding one of Bernhardt. Will you say, 'Has old Perrigord gone off his chump this Sunday?' But what is one to say of this performance of M. Jules Fortinbras,