Chapter XLV: “sir John and Lady Wilford”

In a second Bill was out of bed. The little alleyway was empty, and when he reached the longer corridor there was nobody in sight. He came back to his room, turned on the light and took observations. Immediately facing his own door was another. Should he knock?

At that moment he heard somebody in the corridor, and ran out, to find the night steward.

“Who lives in that cabin?” he asked.

“Sir John and Lady Wilford,” said the steward, and Bill experienced a heartfelt sense of thankfulness that he had not disturbed that aristocratic couple.

“Did you see any man running along the corridor as you came down?”

“No, sir,” replied the steward, and then: “Has anybody tried to get into your cabin?”

“Somebody opened the door.”

The steward walked down and examined the catch.

“Maybe you didn’t close it, sir.” There was something in his tone that suggested that he thought Bill had been dreaming.

He got into his old suit and went in search of Bullott. Bullott’s cabin was empty; the bed had not been slept in. A water-bottle and a glass of water stood on the table by his bed; his overcoat was hanging on a hook, as was also his hat. Bill made his way on to the promenade deck, where barefooted deck hands were washing down.

The quartermaster in charge answered in the negative.

“No, sir, I haven’t seen Mr. Bullott. Not that I should know him if I saw him, but the fact is, I haven’t seen any passenger. Maybe he’s up on the boat deck?”

The skies were growing grey, and the morning air was cold and keen, when Bill Holbrook mounted the ladder to the upper deck. There was no sign of Bullott. Not hesitating, Bill invaded that holy of holies, the bridge, and was promptly, if courteously, ordered down by the officer of the watch.

“I’ve not seen any passengers,” said that official. “He is probably around somewhere; passengers get in queer places. Won’t you look for him again, and then come and, if necessary, I’ll report it to the captain.”

Bill returned to Bullott’s cabin, but he had not come back. He woke Stone and told him the news.

“Bullott disappeared? Impossible! He’ll turn up.”

But though the captain was aroused, and the ship searched from stem to stern, there was no sign or news of the missing inspector. Bill went down to breakfast with a heavy heart, and the girl, who had heard from her uncle what had occurred in the night, seemed as much concerned. He had begged Lambert Stone to say nothing of the doctor’s presence on the ship, and apparently Mr. Stone had been discreet in this respect, for she did not associate Laffin with the disappearance.

“What can have happened?” she said. “Could he have fallen overboard?”

“Quite impossible, according to the captain,” said Bill. “I don’t know what to think.”

“He will be found,” she suggested encouragingly.

“Perhaps he is making inquiries in the steerage?”

Bill shook his head.

“He has not been seen in the steerage, which was the first place the captain sent the third officer to search.”

After breakfast he had news which was disturbing and ominous. It came from the ship’s doctor, who met him at the head of the gangway.

“I wish you’d come along with me, Mr. Holbrook,” said the medical officer. “You’re a friend of Mr. Bullott’s, aren’t you?”

“Yes, a very great friend,” said Bill quickly. “Have you found him?”

“No, we haven’t found him, only--come along here.”

He opened the door of Bullott’s cabin, and at first Bill saw nothing unusual, until the doctor pointed. On the floor under his feet was the shape of a cat, stiffly extended in death.

“This cat belongs to the steward--or rather, it belongs to the stewards’ mess,” said the doctor. “It sometimes followed its favourite master, and apparently followed Gibbon, who is Mr. Bullott’s bedroom steward, when he came up to tidy the cabin. The cat got on to the bed and drank from that water.” He pointed to the glass of water that was on the bedside table, which seemed as full as it had been when Bill had seen it the night before. In the daylight, however, he noticed a bluish tinge to the liquid. “This unfortunate animal took two sips, and that is the result.”

“Poisoned?” asked Bill.

The doctor nodded.

“I don’t know what poison it is, but it is a pretty virulent one,” he said. “I have smelt it for cyanide, but it is something much more powerful.”

At that moment his own steward brought a bottle, and into this he carefully poured the contents of the glass.

“I can make a rough analysis, but I doubt whether I shall be able to detect the agent used until we get to New York,” he said. “Mr. Bullott had no suicidal tendencies?”

“None whatever,” said Bill emphatically; “he was the healthiest and sanest man I have met. If there is poison in that glass, and undoubtedly there is, then it was introduced by somebody who wished to do him a mischief. Why was the water put there, anyway?”

The steward volunteered the information that Bullott had asked him to pour out a glass of water before he left for the night, and to place an apple in readiness on a plate, as he was an early riser. The apple was gone.

“He may have eaten that last night,” said Bill, “but if he did, he took it out of the cabin.”

Holbrook opened the inspector’s trunk and made a brief examination, without discovering any clue to the man’s disappearance.

“The thing is so peculiar that I think it ought to be reported by wireless to the police of New York and London.”

Bill had had a consultation with Lambert Stone, and together they went to the captain and told him of the presence of Dr. Laffin.

“He is not on the ship’s list at all,” said the captain incredulously, and then: “Are you sure you were not dreaming, Mr. Holbrook?”

“I’m quite sure about that,” said Bill.

“This other business about Bullott is rather worrying. He is a Scotland Yard officer--I knew all about him before he came on board--and he is the last man I should have thought it would have been necessary to protect. My officers, who have searched the ship, say that there is no sign of him, and I am afraid we must return him as having fallen overboard.”

“Or having been thrown overboard,” said Lambert Stone emphatically. “The doctor has told you about the water in the cabin, and the poisoned cat?”

“Yes, I don’t like it at all. I’ll be glad when we’re past Sandy Hook.”

Suddenly, as if he had remembered something, he went into the chart house and presently called them in.

“There was one curious event happened in the night. I see the chief officer’s logged it. A steam ketch obstructed the fairway--you probably heard our siren go in the night. We just missed her by a matter of feet, but she swung in and kept abreast of us, in fact, so confoundedly close that the chief officer had to yell to the skipper to haul off, or he’d report him.”

“Is it possible that a man could have got from the deck of the _Escorial_ to the deck of the ketch without mishap?”

“Quite possible,” said the captain; “that is a fact that we noted. She went under our stern eventually, but kept up so well with the ship that it would have been possible for an agile man to transfer from one boat to the other.”

Bullott was unknown to the passengers, and his disappearance occasioned no remark. There was, of course, a possibility that he, for some extraordinary reason, had, in his secret way, arranged to be trans-shipped in the English Channel, but if that were so, there was no reason why he should not have notified the captain of the _Escorial_ that that was his intention. In this possibility, however, was a grain of comfort.

“I am going to think that he did get off,” said the girl resolutely, when she was told. “I refuse to be worried on this trip. Everything is so gorgeous that it is wicked to be unhappy.”

For Bill’s part, he was glad that Betty Carew (he still thought of her as Carew) took this course. But in his own mind he had doubts as to whether the ketch supplied a solution to the mystery.

“She must have been a fast traveller to keep up with the _Escorial_,” suggested Lowbridge when he heard this theory propounded.

“Not necessarily,” was Bill’s reply. “The ship had previously struck a bank of fog and was running at half-speed.”

The girl’s philosophical attitude was one to be imitated; this Bill realised before the Sunday was through. He tried to put Bullott’s disappearance from his mind, tried to forget even the sinister possibility of Dr. Laffin’s being on board, though he knew in his heart that with the coming of night there was a danger of this man’s reappearance.

Betty Stone and her uncle occupied suite H. on D. deck, and his first move that day was to locate this exactly. In the course of the day he had reason to go to the purser’s office, and was again reminded of the absence of Bullott when he saw the burly figure of a sailor sitting with his back to the door of the safe, a large Navy revolver strapped to his side.

“Your friend has not turned up, Mr. Holbrook?”

“No, I don’t think we shall see him again this trip,” said Bill.

The purser made a little face.

“We don’t like these disappearances at sea; they have to be reported, and some ships get a bad name in consequence. I know one of the Transatlantic boats that has got so bad a reputation for suicides that they can never get their full complement of passengers, except in the tourist season.”

Bill saw that the suite on D. deck would be a fairly easy place to guard. It was the cabin nearest to the broad landing of the companionway, and there were two entrances, which could be observed by anybody who sat on one of the settees in which the landing abounded. The suite comprised three single cabins, a sitting-room and a bathroom. Lowbridge was housed on the same deck, but two “blocks” away.

Without saying a word to anybody, he decided upon his course of action. That afternoon, when tea was served on the decks, he was missing, and Lowbridge, who went down to call him, returned with the report that he was fast asleep. It is not a difficult matter to slumber in the afternoon on a ship; the real task is to keep awake; and though, when Bill was roused at seven o’clock for dinner, he was feeling livery and irritable, he knew that sleeping was an act of wisdom in a man who expected to be awake all night.

Betty rallied him when he came down to dinner, but Stone, with an uncanny instinct, guessed why he had spent that beautiful afternoon in his cabin.

“Thinking of sitting up all night, Holbrook?” he asked, when they were smoking a cigar together on the deck after dinner.

“Yes, I am,” said Bill.

“Do you think there’s any danger to the girl?”

“I’m pretty certain there is danger to somebody,” said Bill, “and I’ve a particular desire that it should not be to her.”

“I’ve told her to lock both her cabin doors, and I don’t suppose she’ll be disturbed, but if there is any trouble you’ll call me? I shouldn’t like to be far away if Laffin started anything.”

Before taking up his vigil that night, Bill went out of his cabin, had a cold bath and came back to his cabin to dress. He found his steward putting his bed ready for the night.

“We’ve had a wireless from New York, sir--I don’t know whether it will affect you. I was in the chief steward’s office when it came, and you’ll be the first to get one of these--the other passengers get theirs in the morning.”

He put a slip of typewritten paper in Bill’s hand.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s a notification to all passengers.”

Bill read the paper. It was headed:

“Extension of Sullivan Act

“The following cablegram has been received from the District Attorney of New York City. The Sullivan Act, prohibiting the carrying of concealed arms, has been amended as follows: No member of a crew or passenger of any ship shall enter New York Harbour having in his possession firearms of any description whatsoever. Passengers in possession of arms of any description must hand them to the purser or to some other officer nominated by the captain of the ship immediately. The question of issuing licences for these arms will be considered on the arrival of the ship at New York.”

Beneath was a note from the purser:

“It is important that all ladies and gentlemen in possession of firearms should hand them into my office by midday on Monday. Failure to carry out these instructions will be visited with the severest penalty, and the purser earnestly advises every passenger to comply with the wishes of the District Attorney.”

“What is the Sullivan Act?”

The Sullivan Act Bill knew; the amendment was not a remarkable phenomenon.

“It doesn’t affect me,” he said, “for I’m not carrying anything more deadly than a Marmoosa cigar.”

He finished dressing and went to his post of observation. The late stewards eyed him curiously; one reported his presence to the purser, and that gentleman came up with the tactful suggestion that he should go to bed.

“I’m sitting here for the remainder of the night. If there’s any law against it, or if I’m breaking any ship’s regulations, why, you can bring me before the captain in the morning,” said Bill. “Otherwise, this is my idea of comfort, with the cool sea breezes blowing through the portholes--I’ve paid for ozone and I’m getting it!”

“Don’t you get it by day, Mr. Holbrook?” said the purser good-humouredly.

“There are too many people using it in the daytime,” said Bill, and the purser wisely left him alone.

The night wore on, and there was no sign of the doctor. Though he had slept through the afternoon, his head began to nod towards dawn, and it required something of an effort to keep himself awake, until the arrival of the early stewards relieved him of any need for watching.

Before turning in he walked the empty deck, and, having swallowed a hot cup of coffee, which, he admitted, was a mean preparation for slumber, he went down into his cabin, intending to sleep. That intention, however, was never carried into effect, for on his pillow he found a letter. It was addressed in pencil and he knew it instantly to be in Bullott’s handwriting. With a hand that shook he tore it open, took out a plain sheet of paper, and read:

“Don’t worry about me. I _have_ got a good constitution.”

There was no signature, but it was Bullott’s writing.