"Where did you go then?"
"Inside. I was, in fact, in the officers' lounge when I heard of the murder."
"Did you hear or see anything while on deck that can now be construed as evidence?"
"Nothing."
The Captain eyed him thoughtfully for a moment and then turned back to Marcia. "You talked to Miss Duvrey while on deck and to Colonel Morgan. Anyone else?"
"No. That is . . ." She'd forgotten Luther; she amended it. "Luther came along. ..."
The Captain seized upon it instantly. "Luther Cates? Where had he come from? The deck below?"
"He was walking around the boat deck. I saw him come toward me."
"From what direction?"
"Forward."
"How long did he talk to you?"
"A few minutes. Five or ten."
"Where did he go?"
"Along the deck aft."
"How long was this before you discovered Para?"
"Perhaps twenty minutes. I wasn't thinking of the time. It may have been longer."
The Captain surged impatiently upward to the telephone. "I want Mr. Luther Cates. Announce it over the P.A. Right. Yes, here in my quarters." He sat down again heavily.
Colonel Wells said: "We'll have to investigate everybody's movements for at least an hour, Captain, if we hope to establish any alibis. Frankly, it seems to me an impossible undertaking. The murder was a perfectly simple and quick affair. Anybody could have done it and escaped notice. The decks were deserted on account of the fog. The foghorn covered any sounds of struggle or calls for help. The time limit is elastic. To attempt to establish alibis for nearly a thousand people seems to me"—he shrugged—"a monumental task."
"Six," said the Captain bluntly, "would satisfy me. Six . . ."
Again Marcia's thought touched them all, listing them: herself and Mickey, Gili, Luther and Daisy Belle Cates. And now the remaining Portuguese, Urdiola. Perhaps everyone in the room counted with her, but only the Colonel spoke. "That's right," he said, avoiding Marcia's eyes, avoiding Mickey's, looking only at the Captain. "Six . . ."
Someone knocked on the door, and it was a patient in a red bathrobe, with bandages over his face and head concealing it entirely. A nurse was with him.
There was another moment of silence in the cabin. Then the Captain said: "Come in, Heinzer. Come in. Now then, Miss Colfax, can you identify this man?"
The nurse, her young face puzzled, gave the patient a little push forward and he walked slowly into the middle of the cabin and stood there, seeming puzzled and uncertain himself, apparently surveying them all with that hidden, shadowed gaze. Marcia, her heart hammering, watched him. What had the Captain said—his height, the way he walked, the way he carried his arms? A hundred ways to identify a man.
And here there was nothing. He could have been the figure on the stairway; he could have been anybody and anything. He was completely anonymous.
She was aware that everyone in the room, even the nurse, was watching her. She met the Captain's waiting eyes and shook her head. "I can't tell. There's nothing . . ."
The Captain leaned back in his chair his mouth grim. "All right," he said. "Take him away. Will you question him outside, Colonel?"
The Colonel moved forward and held out his hand for the field jacket, the thick envelope which contained the patient's record, which the nurse gave him. She put her hand again on the arm of the tall figure in red; again it seemed to move slowly and uncertainly, still puzzled, still mute. They reached the door, the little procession of nurse, patient, doctor, and suddenly the patient seemed to try to speak and question. There was a hoarse rasping whisper of sound, his hands moved. The nurse urged him into the passage. The door closed behind the Colonel's erect, uniformed shoulders. And Marcia thought sickly, I can't tell; I don't know. And if it wasn't this man, then it was one of us.
Her heart was still pounding. Again everyone in the cabin looked at her.
"It could be this man?" said the Captain.
"Y-yes. I suppose so. Yes."
"Or it could have been someone else?"
"Yes."
Again he waited for a moment, hunched forward, staring thoughtfully at his hands. Then he reached for the telephone again.
"There's only one course for me to follow," he said. "This is my ship. I cannot take chances with lives under my protection. But as much for the safety of the Lerida survivors as for other reasons, I'm putting every person who was on the Lerida lifeboat under guard."
He took down the telephone. But Marcia did not hear his orders, for she was thinking again of the inexorable link of circumstance that seemed to hold the survivors of the ill-fated and ill-found little Portuguese ship together. It was like a chain, it was like a rope, from which one of them might hang.
Josh moved to light another cigarette. Mickey stared down at the rug. Colonel Wells returned as the Captain put down the receiver.
He closed the door and advanced briskly into the cabin. "His name is Jacob Heinzer. He's a naturalized American citizen, thirty years old, born in Argentina of French parents, living in New York since he was twenty." He put the field jacket down on the table near the Captain. "He says he knew nobody from the Lerida. He only knew that some survivors had been picked up. He says he was not on deck at any time during the day. He says he was alone in his cabin and knew nothing of the murder until I told him. Here's his record if you want to look at it."
The Captain glanced at the envelope and then up at the Colonel. "Do you believe him?"
The Colonel shrugged. "I don't know. I have no reason not to believe him."
"That is not an alibi," said Mickey suddenly.
He had been silent so long that everyone turned quickly toward him.
"No," said the Captain. "No. That's not an alibi. Do you know anybody by that name?"
Mickey shook his head. "Not to my knowledge. Certainly he would have had no motive in attacking me and Marcia. Unless it's a case of war nerves, a brainstorm, something like that."
"Is that possible, Colonel?" asked the Captain.
Again Colonel Wells shrugged. "Anything's possible. He seems all right to me, however. Except for his wounds."
Again the Captain pinioned Marcia with his sharp, shrewd eyes. "How about you, Miss Colfax? Ever heard that name before?"
She replied much as Mickey had done. "Not so far as I know. Certainly I cannot think of any motive that anybody might have for trying to murder me."
Josh stirred suddenly. "Captain," he said, "if I may interrupt . . ."
"Yes, Colonel Morgan?"
"Obviously the person on the stairway either wished to be seen and thus reported by Miss Colfax, or intended to murder her. If the former, it was obviously a disguise. If the latter, she is in very definite danger."
12
Danger? Marcia thought again, incredulously, Murder? Why should a man by the name of Jacob Heinzer wish to murder her? Why should any of the Lerida survivors wish to murder her? Yet the hands on her throat that first night on the Magnolia were fact.
The Colonel said slowly: "So she would report it. So that a man in a red bathrobe and bandages would be suspected, you mean, Colonel Morgan, instead of the real murderer."
Josh nodded. The Captain said shortly: "We'd better put Jacob Heinzer under guard too, Colonel. And now then . . ."
There was a knock at the door, and he said impatiently: "Come in, come in."
It was Luther, his faded eyes anxious. "Somebody said you wanted to see me, Captain."