The sergeant beetled his sandy eyebrows and hurled a question at him.
“When was your sister born?”
“Well,” hesitated Shelby, staring at the sergeant like a hypnotized sparrow returns the gaze of a snake, “one was born in 1900. Jane was born in, let me see—”
“How many sisters have you?” snapped Flaherty.
“Three,” replied Shelby sullenly.
“Hump!” grunted the sergeant. “Go back to bed.”
“He’s a nasty customer,” offered the corporal of the guard, when Shelby had gone.
“What’s that?” demanded Flaherty sharply. “How?”
Corporal Frank shrugged his shoulders.
“He was in the big crap game we had in the hold this afternoon. He lost all his money and accused Recruit Winters of shooting with loaded dice.”
At the mention of Winters’s name, Sergeant Flaherty gave the captain a glance from beneath lowered eyebrows.
“Winters was the big winner,” the corporal continued. “The game broke up in a slugging match between Shelby and him. The crowd parted them before they got very far. Shelby threatened that he’d get Winters for the crooked dice, and he looked as if he meant it.”
“Good night!” groaned Captain Freeman. “These red-heads will drive me crazy! I’ll never have another in my outfit again as long as I live!”
Winters appeared next at the door. He was a raw-boned soldier, who ambled rather than walked. He had neglected to brush his hair, which was bushy, and so dark as to be nearly brown. He seemed not at all disturbed by the midnight summons, and smiled familiarly, showing huge, buck teeth. A smear of freckles crossed the bridge of his bulbous nose and ended on his prominent cheek bones.
Flaherty was about to shoot a question at him when Corporal Frank interrupted.
“I shall go around and inspect the guard again, sir,” he said to the officer of the day.
Captain Freeman absently waved his hand in permission. His mind was taken up with studying the recruit in front of him. Corporal Frank silently stepped out into the darkness of the deck and carefully closed the screen door behind him.
“When were you in the Bronx last?” demanded Flaherty sullenly, keenly eying the none too intelligent face of Recruit Winters.
“Well, sarge” — he showed all his buck teeth in a grin and drawled the answer in a nasal voice — “I didn’t hardly ever go near the Bronx. It was kind of out of the way for us New Yorkers who lived on the East Side. I guess the last time I was there was when Al Smith ran for President. That was, now—”
“That’s enough!” snorted Flaherty disgustedly. “Al Smith wasn’t elected. I guess you know that?”
“I guess I do!” grinned Waters. “I had to beat up a dozen guys on account of it.”
“All right! All right! Beat it back to bed.”
“Thanks, sarge! Anything more. I can do for you...?”
Recruit Winters backed clumsily through the screen door. His hand lingered on the jamb for an instant. Sergeant Flaherty glared at him, so he retreated hastily.
“What do you think, sergeant?” began Captain Freeman.
Flaherty’s chair hit the floor with a bang. Before the officer’s startled eyes he charged for the door.
“Holy smoke!” he cried over his shoulder. “I must be getting paralysis of the brain, sir. Did you see that good-luck ring on Winters’s finger? It had a diamond in it, too! I’ll get him back here and find out about that!”
As Flaherty shot through the door the officer seized the newspaper clippings on his desk. The body of the murdered Roy Davega had been stripped of a good-luck ring containing a diamond! Was the slow-moving, dumb-looking Winters the killer? Was it he who had tried to choke his red-headed fellow recruit, Baxter, in the stealth of night? Why?
Mystified and worried, the officer tried to sit still in his chair as he waited for Flaherty to return with Recruit Winters. Perspiration speckled Captain Freeman’s face. If anything serious happened while he was officer of the day, he would be in a tight spot officially.
Sergeant Flaherty found the deck deserted. He hesitated for a moment, somewhat surprised. He had expected to see Winters’s figure walking toward the stern of the ship. The recruit had hardly had time to gain the aft hatchway and disappear.
Flaherty paused another moment to drag the khaki bandanna from the hip pocket of his breeches and mop his bald head once again. The tropical night was glorious. Tilted low against the horizon, a pattern of diamonds among the countless star jewels scattered prodigally across the black velvet dome of the sky, was the Southern Cross. A cool sea breeze blew in Flaherty’s face.
Except for the steady throb of the propeller shaft, the ship was soothingly quiet. Practically no lights gleamed anywhere on the transport, so the Shiloh passed, gently swishing, through the sea and the night, like some luminous creation through a black, silver-shot void.
Flaherty was tucking away his handkerchief when the thought struck him that Winters, instead of going all the way to the stern, might have left the deck amidships, where there was a staircase leading down into the hold.
Evidently that was what Winters had done. There might still be time to catch up with him before he reached the maze of bunks in the darkness of the hold.
Hastening amidships, Flaherty found the passageway which led to the stairs descending into the hold. In another moment he was traveling a narrow, dimly illuminated corridor whose red-painted floor, broken occasionally by the high sills of bulkhead doors, stretched to the stern of the ship where the shadows of the soldiers’ sleeping quarters finally blotted it out. Recruit Winters was not in sight.
The sergeant was stepping over the sill of the last bulkhead door when his descending foot struck something which brought his heart to his throat. That which his foot had met was soft, and yet not wholly yielding.
Flaherty’s fingers trembled as they struck a match. When the flare of light penetrated the bulkhead’s shadow the sergeant’s blue eyes widened and his lips parted slowly in horror. Stretched out on the floor, face downward, was the body of a soldier. The back of his woolen, olive-drab shirt was drenched with blood which, even as Flaherty watched, continued to ebb slowly from several wounds.
Although the very attitude of the body, its outflung fists clenched in death’s hopeless grasp, told the sergeant that the soldier was dead, nevertheless Flaherty bent to turn him over.
A strangled exclamation shot through the old sergeant’s lips. Here was the man he was seeking! There was no mistaking the buck teeth, revealed by lips which had frozen parted after writhing in death agony. Across the bulbous nose, the smear of freckles yellowish now in the pallid face, stood out startlingly.
“Heaven protect us!” muttered Flaherty, rising slowly from the body. “Winters!”
He stared up and down the dim, silent corridor in fear. Somehow he almost expected to see a sinister shadow flit among gaunt stanchions and bulkheads and hear a maniacal laugh in the ominous silence. Nothing moved anywhere; there was no sound save the muffled, continuous beat of the propeller shaft and the swishing of water against the side of the ship, coming through an open porthole near by.
Fascinated, awed, full of horror, Flaherty’s gaze returned to the body. The murderer had attacked again, not with his hands closing a windpipe, but with a savage knife; not Recruit Baxter, but Recruit Winters — and this time he had been successful.
Flaherty swallowed hard on the lump in his throat. Murderer on board! Baxter choked and Winters slain with a knife. Both red-headed.
Then another thought smashed into the sergeant’s brain and sent his gaze swiftly probing across the hands of the dead man. No sparkle, no dull gleam of gold rewarded him. The good-luck ring which Winters had worn on leaving the office was gone.