The Blind Barber

undermining your health? I'll show you. Simply press this button…'

Warren took the gift from the Greek and Morgan and Peggy hurried him out in case he grew violent in an effort to make Mr. Woodcock disgorge information. Woodcock stood teetering on his heels, smiling tightly, as they left him. In the passage outside they leaned against the wall, rather breathless.

'The low-down crook!' breathed Warren, shaking in the air the Mermaid Automatic Electric Mosquito Gun. 'The dirty double-crosser! He knows! He knows, and he won't—'

'But was he serious about that testimonial?' asked Peggy, who could still not get this part of the matter untangled. 'I mean, fancy! He can't really mean that he wants your uncle to appear in the newspapers saying, 'I'm wild about Woodcock's bug-powder,' can he? I mean, that would be awful!'

'Baby, that's just it. He's as serious — well, he's as serious as Uncle Warpus trying to swing an international treaty and protect somebody's neutrality. You don't know,' said Warren, with some violence, 'how self-complacent modern advertising is. They call it public service. Come on. Let's go up and see the old horse-thief upstairs. What Uncle Warpus would say to me if I forced him into endorsing bug-powder is more than a drinkless stomach allows me to contemplate. I have a feeling that the sooner we see Captain Whistler, the old herring, and get this business about the girl straightened out, the sooner I'm going to feel well again. Come on.'

'And / have a feeling—' said Morgan, and stopped.

He did not continue. But he was right.

12 — Indiscretions of Curtis Warren

When they knocked at the door of Captain Whistler's cabin just abaft the bridge, it was opened by a melancholy steward who was making up the berth and clearing away breakfast dishes in a large, comfortable, rosewood-panelled cabin with curtains of rather startling pattern at the portholes.

'Commander ayn't 'ere, sir,' the steward informed them, squinting at Warren in a rather sinister fashion. ' 'E's gorn to see Lord Sturton, 'e said you wos to wait, if you please.'

Warren tried to be nonchalant, but he showed his apprehension.

'Ah,' he said, 'Ah! Thanks, steward. How is the old mackerel feeling this morning? That is — er—'

'Ho!' said the steward significantly, and punched at a pillow as he arranged it.

'I see,' said Warren. 'Well, we'll — er — sit down.'

The steward pottered about the cabin, which gave evidence that the captain had fired things about in some haste, and finally doddered out with the breakfast tray. The nasty look he gave them over his shoulder confirmed their hypothesis that the beauties of nature did not induce in Captain Whistler any mood to stand on the bridge and sing sea-shanties.

'I guess he's still peeved,' was Warren's opinion. 'And this is kind of a delicate matter, Hank. You do all the talking now. I don't think I care to risk it.'

'You bet your sweet life I'll do all the talking,' agreed Morgan. 'I wouldn't answer for any of us if the skipper walked in here and saw you with this razor in your hands. Especially as he's just gone to see Sturton, he is not likely to be in a playful frame of mind. Understand — you are to keep absolutely silent throughout the whole interview.

Not a word, not a movement unless you're asked to confirm something. I refuse to take any more chances. But I don't know—' He sat down in a leather chair, ruffled his hair, and stared out of one porthole at the pale sky. The sunlit cabin, swaying with drowsy gentleness in a murmurous swish of water conveyed no sense of peace. 'I don't know,' he went on, 'that I feel altogether right about it myself. For the moment let Woodcock keep his information and blast him. What has happened to that emerald? That's the question.'

'But after all, Hank, it isn't any business of ours,' Peggy pointed out, with a woman's practical instinct. She took off her shell-rimmed glasses with a pleased air of having solved the thing, and shut them into her handbag with a decisive snap. 'I shouldn't bother, old boy. What's the odds?'

'What's the odds?'

'Yes, of course I'm jolly sorry for Lord Sturton, and all that; but, after all, he's got pots of money hasn't he? And all he'd do would be to lock the emerald up in some nasty old safe, and what's the good of that?… Whereas this film of Curt's is really important, poor boy. I know what I'd do if I were a man,' she declared scornfully. 'I'd take that nasty little Woodcock chap and torture him until he told. Or I'd lock him up somewhere, the way they did to that baron what's-his-name, in The Count of Monte Cristo, and not let him have anything to eat and hold soup under his nose and laugh ha-ha until he was willing to tell me. You men Bah! You make me tired.'

She made a gesture of impatience.

'Young lady,' said Morgan, 'both your ruthlessness and your logic are scandalous. I have sometimes observed a similar phenomenon in my own wife. Aside from the practical impossibility of holding soup under the bug-powder king's nose and laughing ha-ha, there's the sporting element to consider. Don't say bah. The fact remains that we have pinched old Sturton's emerald and the responsibility — What the devil's that noise?'

He jumped a little. For some moments he had been conscious of a low, steady, hissing noise somewhere about him. In his present frame of mind, it sounded exactly like the sinister hissing which Dr. Watson had heard at midnight in the dark bedroom during the Adventure of the Speckled Band. It was, in fact, the Mermaid Automatic Bug-Powder Gun.

'Curt,' said Peggy, whirling suspiciously, 'what are you up to now?'

'Handy little gadget at that,' declared Warren, in some admiration. His eyes were shining, and he bent absorbedly over the elaborate silver and enamel tube. It was a streamlined cylinder full of scrolls and flutings, with a complicated array of black buttons. From the nozzle a thin wide spray, as advertised, was flying out across the captain's papers on the centre table. Warren moved it about. 'All the buttons are marked, you see. Here's 'Spray' — that's what I've got on now. Then there's 'Half Power' and 'Full Power.'…

Peggy put a hand over her mouth and began to gurgle. This unseemly mirth annoyed Morgan still more. Besides, the spray was peculiarly pungent.

'Turn the damn thing off!' he howled, as a thin spray began to glitter all about them. 'No, don't turn it at the wardrobe, you fathead. Now you've got the captain's spare uniform. Turn it—'

'All right, all right,' said Warren, rather testily. 'You needn't get griped about it. I was only trying the thing out… All I've got to do, you see, is press this dingus and — What's the matter with the fool thing? Hey!'

The pressing of the dingus, it is true, did away with the spray. It substituted what to the skilful engineers who designed it was presumably 'Half Power.' A thin but violent stream of liquid bug-powder ascended past Warren's shoulder as he tried to look at the nozzle and somewhat frantically twisted buttons. All he succeeded in doing was turning on the electric light.

'Give me the swine,' said Morgan. 'I'll fix it. Do something, can't you? It's raining bug-powder; the place is becoming impregnated with bug-powder! Don't turn it on yourself, you blithering idiot. Turn it… O my God, no! Not in the captain's berth. Take it out of the captain's berth… No, you can't shut it off with a pillow. Not under the bedclothes, dummy! You're—'

'Well, it's better than having it soak up the room, isn't it?' inquired Warren's hoarse voice, out of a luminous mist of bug-powder. 'All right. Don't get apoplexy. I'll shut it off. I'll—' He avoided Morgan's arm, a fiendish expression on his face, and rushed to the middle of the cabin. 'No, you don't. I turned this thing on and, so help me, I'll turn it off!' He gestured with the Mermaid, which was hissing like an enthusiastic cobra. 'And this is the lousy thing my uncle is asked to endorse, is it? It's a cheat! It's no damn good! I'll find Woodcock and tell him so! I've turned every lousy knob… '

'Don't stand there orating!' shouted Morgan, whom the clammy mist had begun to envelop. 'Do something. Fire it out the port-hole… '

'I know what I'll do!' said Warren, with fiendish inspiration. 'I know what it is. I'll try 'Full Power.' That's probably the only thing that'll shut the swine off. That's it! If Woodcock had told the truth about it—'