“But, wait, wait, the memory is there if I can only grasp it. Something, yes—a mark, blue, perhaps a tattoo of some kind. One of the men, it was on his wrist, almost under my nose where he held me, revealed when his glove moved away from his jacket, on the inner side of his wrist. I can remember no details, just blue of some kind.”
“Which man?” asked the captain. “The survivor or the other?”
“That I don’t know. You can understand this was not my first concern.”
“Indeed. Then there is a fifty-fifty chance that the man is still aboard—if he did not follow his accomplice through the opening. But by what excuse can we examine the wrists of the passengers? The crew members are well known to us but—” He was silent on the instant, struck by some thought that darkened his face and brought upon it a certain grimness unremarked before. When he spoke again it was in the tones of absolute command.
“Captain Washington, please remain here quietly. The doctor will tend your needs and I ask you to do as he directs. I will be back quite soon.”
He was gone without any more explanation and before they could request one. The bishop examined Washington more thoroughly, pronounced him fit, though exhausted, and recommended a soothing draught which was refused kindly but firmly. Washington for his part lay quietly, his face set, thinking of what he had done and of what his future life might be like with a crime of this magnitude in his memory. He would have to accept it, he realized that, and learn to live with it. In the minutes that he lay there, before the door opened again, he had matured and grown measurably older so that it was almost a new individual who looked up when the captain entered for the second time. There was a bustle behind him as the first engineer, Alec, and the second officer came in, each holding firmly to the white-clad arm of a cook.
He could be nothing else, a tall and solid man all in white, chef’s hat rising high on his head, sallow skinned and neat moustachioed with a look of perplexity on his features. As soon as the door had been closed, the tiny cabin was crowded to suffocation with this mixed company, the captain spoke.
“This is Jacques, our cook, who has served with this ship since her commissioning and has been with the Cunard ten years or more. He knows nothing of the events of last night and is concerned now only with the croissants he left to burn in the oven. But he has served me many times at table and I do recall one thing.”
In a single swift motion the captain seized the cook’s right arm, turning it outwards and pulling back his coat. There, on the inside of his forearm and startlingly clear against the paleness of his skin, was a blue tattoo of anchors and ropes, trellised flowers and recumbent mermaids. Washington saw it and saw more as memory clothed the man with black instead of white, felt the strength of gloved hands again and heard the hoarseness of his breathing. Despite the bishop’s attempt to prevent him he rose from the bed and stood facing the man, his face mere inches away from the other’s.
“This is the one. This is the man who attempted to kill me.”
For long seconds the shocked expression remained on the cook’s features, a study in alarm, confusion, searching his accuser’s face for meaning while Washington stared grimly and unswervingly into the other’s eyes as though he were probing his soul. Then the two officers who held the man felt his arms tremble, felt his entire body begin to shake as despair seized him and replaced all else, so that instead of restraining him they found they had to support him, and when the first words broke from his lips they released a torrent of others that could not be stopped.
“Yes, I… I was there, but I was forced, not by choice, dear God as a witness not by choice. Sucre Dieu! And remember, you fell unconscious, I could have done as I had been bid, you could not have resisted, I saved your life, left you there. Do not let them take mine, I beg of you, it was not by choice that I did any of this—”
In his release it all came out, the wretched man’s history since he had first set foot in England twenty years previously, as well as what his fate had been since. An illegal emigre, helped by friends to escape the grinding unemployment of Paris, friends who eventually turned out to be less than friends, none other than secret agents of the French crown. It was a simple device, commonly used, and it never failed. A request for aid that could not be refused—or he would be revealed to the English authorities and jailed, deported. Then more and more things to do while a record was kept of each, and they were illegal for the most part, until he was bound securely in a web of blackmail. Once trapped in the net he was rarely used after that, a sleeper as it is called in the filthy trade, resting like an inactivated bomb in the bosom of the country that had given him a home, ready to be sparked into ignition at any time. And then the flame.
An order, a meeting, a passenger on this ship, threats and humiliations as well as the revelation that his family remaining in France would be in jeopardy if he dared refuse. He could not. The midnight meeting and the horrible events that followed. Then the final terrible moment when the agent had gone and he knew that he could not commit this crime by himself.
Washington listened and understood, and it was at his instruction that the broken man was taken away—because he understood only too well. It was later, scant minutes before the flying ship began her final approach to the Narrows and a landing in New York Harbor that the captain brought Washington the final report.
“The other man is the real mystery, though it appears he was not French. A professional at this sort of thing, no papers in his luggage, no makers’ marks on his clothes, an absolute blank. But he was British, everyone who spoke to him is sure of that, and had great influence or he would not be aboard this flight. All the details have been sent to Scotland Yard and the New York Police are standing by now at the dock. It is indeed a mystery. You have no idea who your enemies might be?”
Washington sealed his last bag and dropped wearily into the chair.
“I give you my word, Captain, that until last night I had no idea I had any enemies, certainly none who could work in liaison with the French secret service and hire underground operatives.” He smiled wryly. “But I know it now. I certainly know it now.”
VI. IN THE LION’S DEN
A truck had gone out of control on Third Avenue and, after caroming from one of the elevated railway pillars, mounting the curb and breaking off a water hydrant, it had turned on its side and spilled its cargo out into the street. This consisted of many bundles of varicolored cloth which had split and spread a gay bunting in all directions. The workings of chance had determined that the site of the accident could not have been better chosen for the machinations of mischief, or more ill chosen for the preserving of law and order, for the event had occurred directly in front of an Iroquois bar and grill.
The occupants of the bar now poured into the street to see the fun, whooping happily through the streaming water and tearing at the bundles to see what they contained. Most of the copper-skinned men were bare above the waist, it being a warm summer day, clad only in leggings and moccasins below with perhaps a headband and feather above. They pulled out great streamers of the cloth and wrapped it about themselves and laughed uproariously while the dazed truck driver hung out of the window of his cab above and shook his fist at them.
The fun would have ended with this and there would have been no great mischief done if this establishment, The Laughing Water, had not been located just two doorways away from Clancy’s, a drinking palace of the same order that drew its custom solely from men of Hibernean ancestry. This juxtaposition had caused much anguish to the police and the peace of the area in the past and was sure to do so in the future, and in fact promised to accomplish the same results now in the present.