Mickey's face, too, was too brightly illumined. It showed the sharp lines those years had brought, the hollows around his gray eyes. He went to sit on the edge of the opposite bunk and said, slowly: "I don't know. I was walking along the deck. ... I just suddenly knew I was falling, that I'd hit my head, that everything was black and confused and—that's all."
"Didn't you see anybody?"
Mickey shook his head. "I tell you there was nothing." He brooded for a moment and said: "I fainted once or twice. Maybe more. I mean while I was in prison." His words and voice were matter of fact and even. His hands, as if they had a secret frightened life of their own, went out of sight, behind him, holding to the mattress. "Everybody did, from various reasons. That's in the past. But that's the way it seemed to me there on deck tonight. I simply blanked out. But it was with a kind of crash. I suppose that's when I hit my head against the bulkhead. That is, understand me, I'm not sick. I'm perfectly well. But it was like that."
Gili said: "Don't, Andre. Don't think of those horrible things. They are gone." Her voice was warm and full of life and strength and yet was casual as if she had bestowed a pat to a wounded dog.
Marcia linked her own hands on her knee and said steadily: "Andre, there was someone on the deck."
Josh Morgan cut in: "Miss Colfax had rather a bad experience, Messac. She came inside to get help and then decided to return to you, and on her way around the deck she either crashed into something there in the darkness or there was someone on deck who seems to have tried to—well, to push her overboard."
Gili sat up and gave a queer, small scream and clapped her hand over her mouth. Mickey jumped up and stared down at Marcia. "What happened? Who was it? Marcia, tell me . '. ." He put his hand hard on her shoulder. His face was white and drawn.
Josh Morgan said quickly: "Oh, she's all right. The doctor looked her over. But it was rather a shock. The point is, Messac, if somebody tried to kill her, it was somebody from the lifeboat. At least . . ." He paused while Mickey's white face blazed down at her, and his hand dug into her shoulder and Gili sat there with her hand tight over her mouth and her eyes wide and dark as a cat's shining over it. Then Josh Morgan said: "At least nobody else on the ship could have done it. Nobody else on the ship would have a motive. Or so the Captain says."
Gili slid out of the bunk in one long sinuous movement. Her face was glistening queerly and so white that it had a greenish tinge around the shadows of mouth and nose. Her eyes were blank and bright. She cried jerkily: "It is the murderer. None of us is safe! None of ... He was killed. Alfred. He was big and strong and—then he was killed. Just like that. In a moment—under our eyes, he was killed. We are not safe. We . . ." Her eyes darted around and around the cabin, her head moved to and fro like a panther's seeking a way out of its cage. A horrible kind of claustrophobia seemed to possess her. She cried, still gasping and hoarse: "I know who killed him. I know why . . ."
Josh Morgan rose suddenly, and Andre said: "Gili, what are you saying? What do you know?"
"What do I ... ?" Gili's searching, bright eyes reached him and stopped and she caught her full lower lip in strong white teeth and held it so hard there was a tiny smudge of blood suddenly upon it. Josh Morgan said: "Go on. Who killed him?"
Gili still staring, let go her lip slowly. "That—that American woman did it. The Cates woman. She—she was afraid of him. She was a friend of the Nazis. Alfred knew it. She's rich. He'd have got money from her. She killed him."
8
The little cabin was perfectly silent, so again the ship made itself manifest and throbbed and pulsed around them. Humans might talk, might move and speak of murder, but the Magnolia had to go sturdily on her way, nosing along through the fog, meeting the heavy, rolling sea.
66
Josh Morgan stirred suddenly. "You'd better explain that, Miss Duvrey. What do you mean?"
Gili whirled around toward him. She shot one bright, cornered look at Marcia. Her long, strong hands doubled up as if they were claws, as if she might have to defend herself. She tightened her full lips stubbornly, shot another glance at Josh Morgan and said: "I won't talk. I didn't mean to talk. You can see for yourself it is dangerous. Murder . . ."
Josh Morgan said coolly: "Oh, come now, Miss Duvrey. You'll have to explain all this to the Captain. You may as well tell us."
This time those lambent eyes flashed green and frightened fire. "Do you mean you'll tell him?"
Josh Morgan shrugged. "You can't just make statements like that and let it go. You'll have to take it back or explain what you mean. Why did you say that the Cateses were friends of the Nazis? How do you know?"
"Because"—she eyed him sulkily now—"because they were. And he knew it. Alfred Castiogne."
"How did he know?"
Mickey's hand released Marcia's shoulder. He gave a kind of weary sigh and went back to sit on the edge of the bunk. "Don't talk nonsense, Gili," he said. "Don't invent. Don't embroider."
Gili spoke English with such ease and fluency that you felt she must have lived in continental hotels all her life. Yet once in a while Marcia had already discovered, some colloquialism, some idiom or metaphor baffled her. She turned a puzzled look toward Mickey. "Embroider?"
"Tell the truth," said Josh Morgan.
Her green, lustrous eyes slid toward him. "Oh, well, but naturally. I'll tell you exactly how I know." She stopped, bit her lip again, but this time in a perplexed way as if arranging certain events in her own mind and choosing her words. Then she shot another veiled glance at Josh Morgan and said: "I was with him. With Alfred, I mean. We heard them talking. It was on the other ship." She bit her lip again and looked at the floor. "It was at night."
The light was bright and too clear directly above her, so the lines on her face were deeply etched and she seemed older and her skin shone with faint, sudden dampness. Marcia knew that Mickey's hands again had gone behind him. It was a mannerism, one of many sad and dreadful souvenirs that were like scars and that gradually she must heal. Gili said: "If you must know, we were sitting in a lifeboat! They didn't know that we were there; they thought themselves alone."
Mickey said impatiently: "You've told nobody about this before now. ..."
Her green eyes flashed his way.
"But I . . ." she began, and Mickey said less sharply: "This is a very serious accusation. You don't realize how serious. If I were you, I'd keep it to myself."
''But . . ." she began again, explosively, and then checked herself. "Perhaps you are right," she said unexpectedly. "Yes, I'm sure—but it can do no harm. I mean if they are Nazis . . ."
"They?" said Josh Morgan.
"The Cates two. The husband and wife. They were talking."
Her voice sounded reluctant. Josh Morgan said abruptly: "Having told us this much, you'll have to go on. What exactly did they say?"
She shot him a sullen look. "They—oh, they talked."
"What about?" His voice was easy, his eyes inexorable.
Gili looked at her hands. "They—well, they said at last they were on a ship. One said to Buenos Aires. The other said, yes, and they might better stay there forever than return to America—they meant to the United States."
As she talked, staring down at her hands, either her seeming reluctance to tell the little story diminished, or her inventiveness speeded up. She went on more rapidly and with a certain defiance: "Then she said, but there was nothing else for her to do. She said what was money, what was anything. Then he said, quite clearly, you understand, there was no mistake about it—he said, but we were actually collaborationists; we were friends of the Nazis; nobody will ever forget it. We can never go home. And after a long time she said in a quiet voice, it didn't sound like her, it sounded as if she had"—Gili fumbled for words—"as if she had a plan, as if she wanted to persuade him, she said, oh, so softly. No one need ever know!"