It was agonizing, he thought, to want to sleep so much, and yet not be able to. He stared up into the darkness, and envied the man in the bunk above him. His springs had not creaked in ages.
Baxter resolutely closed his eyes again. This time he would go to sleep. He certainly needed it.
Hardly had he settled himself, however, when a premonition leaped full grown into his mind that some one was close to him, peering down at him, bending over him. With a jerk, his eyes unshuttered themselves. Only blackness above.
He lay quietly for a moment, waiting and listening. Except for the thrust of the propeller and the snorings of sleepers all around him, there was no sound.
Suddenly a grip of steel enclosed his throat. He writhed and twisted, and endeavored to cry out. But the fingers around his windpipe tightened relentlessly. His unborn cry reduced itself to a desperate gasping for breath.
His hands tore furiously at the arms and fingers of the midnight strangler. There was no doubt about the intentions of the unknown assailant. Murder was in his squeezing grip.
Baxter was no weakling. Before enlisting in the army, his muscles had been hardened by years of a man’s work. This stood him in good stead now. He discovered that he was stronger than the person whom the darkness shielded. Desperation, always the best ally of a man fighting for his life, spurred him to supreme effort. Slowly and surely, struggling against the time when his tortured lungs must collapse for want of air, he finally managed to loosen the terrible, constricting grip.
“Help!” he yelled. “Murderer! Catch him!”
Sounds leaped through the hold. Awakened men, startled, sat up in their bunks and called out. Then, after a moment of swiftly increasing disturbance, lights flashed in the ceiling, chasing the shadows to more obscure hiding places. Tousled-headed men, in tiers, blinked at one another.
“What’s going on down here?” demanded an authoritative voice gruffly. “Who’s making all the disturbance?”
All eyes turned toward the voice and saw the corporal of the guard descending the iron ladder leading into the hold. He was known to the previous service men as Corporal Frank, a soldier who had served three years in Panama, and who now, after a leave in the States, was returning to his regiment for a second three years.
The corporal walked swiftly to Baxter, who had climbed out of his bunk.
“Somebody tried to choke me!” cried the recruit, tenderly fingering his throat.
Frank looked at him with suspicion.
“You’ve had a nightmare, Red! Who would want to choke you?” he laughed.
“Nightmare, huh?” Baxter pointed to the harsh marks on his neck.
“Goshamighty!” exclaimed an old soldier, who was leaning interestedly out of a near-by bunk. “Go tell the O. D. about it, recruity! Maybe we got some nut on board! No telling who he’ll pick on next!”
The gray-haired old buck shivered despite the heat, and worriedly drew his red face, colored by uncounted thousands of tropical beers, back into his bunk.
II
Wherever there are soldiers, there is a guard. Along with inspection, that important military function is never forgotten, whether the soldiers are in their forts, or merely transients on a transport. Each day at sea, usually late in the afternoon, guardmount is held, and a new guard takes over the various posts throughout the ship. There is the refrigerator to be protected from ungry raiding parties; enlisted men must be kept from those parts of the ships reserved for officers. Recruits generally furnish the rank and file of the guard, while previous service men like Corporal Frank make up the noncommissioned personnel. Then, from the commissioned officers on board, one is designated to be the Officer of the Day.
Captain Freeman, neat, despite the sultriness, in his well-pressed blouse and gleaming Sam Browne belt, was the Officer of the Day. The lights in the ceiling of the O. D.’s office up forward on the main deck brightened his silver-gray hair. Little, pleasant wrinkles gathered at the corners of his gray eyes as he talked to Sergeant Flaherty, who sat alongside the desk.
Flaherty was an old noncommissioned officer, with many years of service. He had been back to the United States on leave, and was now returning to his post in Panama.
He was a portly man, and seemed to mind the all-pervading heat terribly. His woolen olive-drab shirt was open at the throat, displaying a little tuft of blond hair which topped his massive chest. With a huge, khaki bandanna, he kept continuously mopping perspiration from his big, shining bald head.
Captain Freeman went directly to the reason why he had summoned Flaherty from the sergeant’s cabins on the stern of the ship.
“Sorry, Flaherty, to haul you out of bed at this hour of the night.” Freeman glanced at his watch. “It’s after midnight,” he added ruefully.
He took a gray sheet of paper from the top of the littered desk and offered it to the sergeant.
“Here. Read this,” he said grimly. “We have a murderer on board.”
Flaherty stared at the officer and then dropped his blue eyes to the paper.
Received: At Sea, April 29.
To: Commanding Officer, U. S. Army Transport Shiloh
Believe you have, among troops on board, John Horning, wanted for double murder here. Description: Height, five feet seven inches; weight, one hundred forty pounds; red hair, blue eyes; regular features and freckled complexion. German-Irish extraction. Request immediate information.
Edward P. Doyle.
Deputy Commissioner.
Department of Police, New York City.
“It came in early this evening,” Captain Freeman explained. “I’ve been working on it ever since. But,” he confessed wearily, “it’s got me stumped.”
A little twinkle lighted up his gray eyes.
“You know the traditional army procedure, sergeant, when an officer is stumped? He calls in the best sergeant he’s got, tells him the problem, and orders him to solve it. And usually these sergeants manage to make good. Lord knows how they do it, but they do.”
Sergeant Flaherty cussed inwardly. He knew what was coming.
“So, Flaherty,” concluded the captain, “I’m stuck, and you’re it. The old army game, sergeant. You know the problem. There’s a murderer on board. Find him.”
Flaherty mopped his bald head and blinked.
“Really, though, sergeant,” the officer smiled understandingly, “you ought to do better than I. You’ve been in direct contact with the men. You know them. And whatever investigations you make won’t cause as much suspicion, or embarrassment, as mine would.”
Captain Freeman’s smile faded and his manner became serious again.
“This fellow Horning,” he said, “must be a pretty bad customer. Here’s tin account of what he did. Rotten, and bloody as the devil. I got it out of one of the old newspapers lying around on board.”
Flaherty’s blue eyes widened as they skimmed through the clipping.
New York, April 20— Early this morning neighbors of Mr. and Mrs. Roy Davega found their bodies sprawled in death on the living room floor of their apartment. Bloody evidences were everywhere of the desperate and futile struggle Roy Davega and his young and beautiful wife put up to save their lives from the unknown assassin. They had been brutally stabbed to death with some sharp weapon, apparently a knife or a dagger.