Chapter XLVIII: A Radio From New York

He stared at her open-mouthed, and once she had voiced her suspicions, their feasibility was obvious.

“Come up on to the boat deck.” He gripped her arm, and together they ran up the companionway. Halfway along the deck, at a place just behind the fourth funnel, was a little cabin. Billy had already explored this part of the ship very thoroughly, and, opening the door, he ushered her into an interior dazzlingly lit with thermionic valve lamps. The spectacled young man who frowned at this rude intrusion grinned when he recognised Billy.

“I want to get this radio off right away,” said Bill, as he sat down and began to scribble. “This is to the District Attorney, New York. ‘Have you sent any instructions to purser of _Escorial_ ordering that all pistols on board shall be deposited in purser’s office under pain of imprisonment and fine? This is very urgent. Have reason to suspect hold-up on _Escorial_. Radio me immediately. William Holbrook, staff reporter, _Dispatch Herald_.’”

He looked at his watch; it was barely three.

“Please God the District Attorney keeps late hours. It is just after midnight in New York,” he said.

They went down to the cabin, where the doctor had put on the last bandage and was on the point of departure.

“This is a matter that must be reported to the captain,” he said. “I take a very serious view of these attempts, first by poison and now by knife, to murder the members of your party.”

“You don’t take half as serious a view as I take,” said Bill grimly.

The officer of the watch, to whom the circumstances had been reported, came off duty at four and Bill had a long and earnest talk with him.

“It was easy to get into the cabin,” he said. “Mr. Stone’s suite is parallel with the lower promenade deck. The glass has been cut and the porthole was open that way. You’ve heard no more of your friend Bullott?”

“No. But he is on the ship somewhere.”

“In which case,” said the officer, “he must be no bigger than a flea, for we can’t do any more in the way of searching this ship unless we have the paint washed!”

“Maybe you’ll find him under that,” laughed Bill.

He could only marvel, as the days progressed, how perfectly a ship’s company keeps a secret. Not one of the thousands that travelled on that great vessel knew how near they had been to tragedy, or guessed the startling events that had occurred whilst they slept.

“It is uncanny,” agreed Betty. She was stretched on her deck chair in the hour before lunch. Clad in white from her chin to the tips of her dainty feet, she held one young man entranced. “I can almost believe that I’ve been dreaming myself. A woman has just told me that she never as a rule travels by this line because they use preservatives in the milk! She has brought her own milk this voyage, and her only worry is whether she has laid down a sufficient supply to last out to New York!”

Bill said nothing. He was wondering whether these complacent passengers, to whom ocean travel was a scarcely noticeable experience, would have a shock before the stem of the vessel ploughed the Hudson River.

“Another one told me that she never liked travelling in July because it is too late for icebergs. She says that she loves icebergs because they thrill her,” said Clive.

A steward came up at that moment, searching the passengers’ faces, and, coming to Bill, caught his eye, and hurried towards him.

“A radio for you, sir.”

Bill Holbrook carried the message into the shelter of the social hall and read:

“No such order has been issued by my department. Sullivan Act applies within the frontiers of the United States.”

It was signed by the District Attorney. Bill read the message again. What should he do? The first step was to interview the purser. He found that gentleman in his own cabin, very busy with the classification of those very weapons with which the message was concerned.

“Read this,” said Bill. “It is a reply to my wire to the District Attorney, asking him whether he had issued any order to the effect that passengers are not allowed to be in possession of pistols during the voyage.”

The purser, a stout, clean-shaven man, with the plump face which is peculiar to pursers, read the message and frowned.

“I can’t understand that,” he said. “There is no doubt we had a radio from the District Attorney.”

“It was a fake,” said Bill, “and I’m telling you something, Mr. Purser. It was faked by people who have a direct interest in disarming the passengers of this ship.”

The purser’s jaw dropped, and then he laughed.

“Rubbish!” he said. “You’re trying to get a story out of the ship, Holbrook. That won’t do at all.”

“How do you account for this message?” asked Bill stubbornly.

The purser read it again.

“It certainly is strange,” he said thoughtfully, “but naturally I can’t act upon a private message. I had better see the captain.”

There was on the table, almost at Bill’s hand, a long Browning pistol, and tied to the barrel was a small brown carton of shells. Bill looked at it thoughtfully.

“I’ll see the captain right away, Holbrook,” said the purser. “You just wait here until I return.”

Bill strolled out of the cabin. The purser’s office was empty. He saw that the position of the officer’s bed practically covered one door, the chair in which sat the armed quartermaster effectively protected the other.

“The purser is well guarded,” he said to himself.

There was a certain reminiscent ring about the words, and he repeated them. The purser’s guard? What guard had he heard about, or talked about, in connection with ships? And then it came to him suddenly. “Second engine-room guard!” Tinker Lane, the betrayer of the Twenty-Third Degree of the Proud Sons of Ragousa, had talked about an engine-room guard! That was a matter which needed thinking out. He got back to the purser’s cabin a little in advance of the officer himself.

“I’ve seen the captain,” said the purser. “He is sending another radio to New York, but in any case he thinks it is just as well if we keep these pistols until we reach port--what do passengers want guns for, anyway?” he demanded. “The captain thinks that, so long as we’ve got arms in the ship’s store, there’s no reason to worry about your hold-up suggestion.”

“Where is the ship’s store?”

“Back of the chart-room,” said the purser. “We’ve got enough rifles and revolvers to run a war!”

“I see,” said Bill. “You may be sorry, Mr. Purser--darned sorry--before this trip is through, that you didn’t take my advice.”

And then he strolled out to the deck, and did not tell the girl the contents of the radio message until they were alone.

“They’re so very satisfied that all things are for the best in the best of possible ships that I don’t think it is possible we shall shake their faith. The thing is to leave them to it.”

She shivered.

“It is quite a horrible idea--I mean that there are no arms on the ship except those in a store which may be rushed at any moment!” she said, and he could only agree.

Going down to lunch, they joined the little group that stood before the bulletin board at the head of the companionway. It was covered with sheets of typewritten news that had been received during the night. There was the usual story of a Pittsburg heiress who was divorcing her husband, the inevitable rail accident in France, a speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer--the news was English, and would remain English till the morrow, when Cape Cod would colour the bulletins with tales of chorus-girl-millionaire marriages, risings in Mexico and fluctuations in the price of cotton. One message interested Bill and he stayed behind to read it.

“Spanish police report the disappearance from Bilboa, under suspicious circumstances, of oil-tanker _Thomas Inland_. During night, when captain and officers were ashore, vessel put out to sea without authority and has not been sighted since. The Spanish gunboat _Alfonso XIII_ is searching for the ship, but the weather in the bay is foggy.”

He was going down to ponder this matter, when a man from the purser’s department pinned up two supplementary messages, and one of these was headed:

“The Missing Ship”

“No further news has been heard of the oil-tanker. It is believed that some English sailors who have been living at Bilboa are responsible, and that the man who organised the theft was a Captain Harvey Hale, who is being sought for by the English police.”

“Harvey Hale”--H.H.! Bill gasped as the full understanding of those initials on the knife came to him. Was Harvey Hale on board the ship? If he were, what connection was there in this adventure of Laffin’s, with the stolen tanker at Bilboa? The letter “H” was not an uncommon initial; there might be a dozen people on board who could lay claim to it. But the coincidence was very striking.

Smooth as was the sea, there was just the hint of a swell, and this had been sufficient to send Clive Lowbridge to his cabin.

“Clive thinks that his coffee was tampered with this morning,” said Betty. They were alone at the table, for Lambert Stone was too shaken to appear that day.

“I expect we shall all be hypochondriacs, or imitating the Sultan of Turkey, who has his food tasted by an official poison-proof varlet before he eats anything, before we reach New York,” said Bill.

She was very serious and a thought pale. He wondered whether she shared Clive Lowbridge’s objection to the slight roll of the big vessel. But when he asked her tactfully if she would like to cut out two courses and go on to the deck, she declined.

“You can cut out the course, if you want. But it is more comfortable here. Besides, I want to talk--I always want to talk when I meet you,” she added, a little ruefully. “Billy, I’m going to be an heiress after all, and against my will.” And then: “Mr. Stone thinks my father is dead.”

He was silent.

“You think so, too, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Honesty compelled him to the answer. “I am afraid that it is true,” he said softly.

“Poor father! And yet--he meant so little to me, Billy. He was as much a stranger as you were. Is there an instinct that makes children recognise their own parents?”

“I don’t think so,” said Bill. “The only instinct to which children respond is that which makes them give love for love and care for care. That is how I have sized it up. If you give children affection and thought and sympathy, why, they return it to you, whether you’re their father or their mother or their uncle or their cousin ninth removed. If you give them justice, they’ll give you justice. A child is a mirror.”

“You talk almost like the President of an Orphan Home,” she said with a faint smile.

“Don’t I just? Children have been a study of mine. I don’t think you need grieve too much. Remember, your father thought you were dead, and had ceased to mourn you--and anyway, had never known you or given you the chance of loving him.”

“I think I’ll come up to the deck after all,” she said with a sigh.

While she went in to see whether her uncle had had his lunch, he walked along to his own cabin. The steward was nowhere in sight, and his hand was on the knob of the door when, looking up, he saw on the white enamelled surface, the print of a large black hand. He looked at it in amazement. Was that a warning? Turning the handle, he opened the door and stepped in. He took one stride, then stood like a man petrified.

Lying on his bed, his eyes half-shut, his clothes in rags, was a man.

For a second Bill did not recognise the haggard, unshaven face, and then:

“My God!” he said. “Bullott, where did you come from?”