He vanished abruptly toward the stairway, so abruptly that she stared after him, puzzled. Then she turned again toward the cabin, slowly, thinking over the long conversation she'd had with him. The long and somehow very final conversation. For he had accepted her decision about Mickey completely; there was no doubt of that. It was in his manner, in his impersonally friendly tone, in everything about him.
So that was in the past.
She reached the little cabin, which was empty, the bunks neatly made up. She went to the port and gazed out for a long time into the fleecy gray; it was as if the ship made no progress, as if life itself had stopped.
Only it hadn't, she realized presently. It would go on, and on and on. But forever without Josh. Forever without another moment of the real kind of life she had touched for an instant, there on the deserted deck in Josh's embrace, and had failed to grasp. The rest of it would be forever unreal, a sequence of shadows.
She did not know exactly when she realized that someone had entered the shadowy cabin behind her. Quite gradually, however, the fact telegraphed itself to her senses. Someone was in the cabin; someone stood between her and the door; someone who had entered very softly, very stealthily, without her knowledge.
15
The hard, terrible hands that had gripped her there at the railing on the dark deck seemed to reach out again toward her.
She did not move. She could not move, she could not turn, she could not speak. Even if she could have forced her stiffened throat to scream wildly for help, it would not have mattered, for the foghorn began again, roaring over the ship, hurling itself back from the fog, effectually drowning any sound, any cry for help she might have made.
Somehow, though, the sound itself set her free from that first moment of paralyzed recognition. Her mind was racing. It seemed important first not to let whoever stood behind her know that she was aware of that furtive presence. Only thus could she hope to avoid a physical struggle which could have only one conclusion; she knew that instinctively. And next she must think of some expedient, some way to escape. The foghorn stopped.
Actually, the thing she did she had not planned to do. It was a quick, instinctive impulse. She spoke. She called out clearly and evenly: "Daisy Belle—did I leave my toothbrush in the bathroom? Look, will you?"
Daisy Belle, of course, was not in the bathroom. Nobody was there. The door was slightly ajar. But if whoever stood in that cabin with her could not see, quite, into the bathroom, if whoever was there believed her, believed that someone else was near, believed that she was not alone . . .
Her heart, her breath, everything about her seemed to have stopped. There was no sound, only the dying echoes of the foghorn filling the cabin, pressing against her ears, shutting out other sounds.
And then nothing. No rustle, no sound, no door closing, no motion of any kind.
Somehow, when that silence and feeling of emptiness persisted long enough she turned.
No one was there.
The cabin was empty and, as she had thought, the bathroom door only slightly ajar. Anyone standing about in the center of the cabin could not have seen that no one was in the small room.
Certainly no one was there now or anywhere.
Her heart was beating hard again, her breath coming painfully in hard gasps as if she'd been running.
A small hump of something white lay-on the floor. She walked toward it and stared down.
It was a bandage, made of gauze, twisted and turned, so it made a rather crude sort of helmet.
Such as the patient in the red bathrobe, with the bandaged face and holes for eyes might have worn.
Only it was not a real bandage. It had not been a patient.
And Josh had been right.
Without rhyme or reason, without any basis of motive or cause, he was right.
She must tell Josh. She must tell the Captain. Yes, that was it. Report it to him.
Urdiola was locked up and charged with murder.
Who then had come like that into her cabin? Who had made and worn and, in escaping, dropped that disguising helmet which lay now so limp and so horribly convincing?
Josh had been right.
But she did not go at once to the Captain. Instead she locked the cabin door. She sat down in the chair under the port and looked at the twisted tangle of white gauze. Who could have worn that, and why?
She was still there when much later Daisy Belle and Gili returned to the cabin. They returned together and she heard their voices as one of them tried the door and then knocked. Otherwise, she thought, in a kind of spell of horror, she could not have moved to open the door. But Daisy Belle's crisp sensible voice was incredibly comforting and reassuring. She got up and on her way to the door picked up the gauze helmet.
The touch of the thin material in her fingers was convincing, too; she hated to touch it. She rolled it up tightly, put it in the pocket of her coat which still hung over her shoulders and opened the door.
"Why did you lock the door?" said Daisy Belle, more as an exclamation than a question. She snapped on lights abruptly and the cabin leaped from its dim gray shadow to light under which Daisy Belle looked tired and old and with sharp lines on her thin brown face. Gili crossed to the bunk and stretched out with the lazy indolence of a cat upon it and said nothing, but only gazed at the bunk above her with enigmatic, narrowed green eyes. She said nothing, in fact, until Daisy Belle said briskly that it was time for lunch and she'd wash up first and disappeared into the bathroom. Then Gili instantly roused. She swung her long handsome legs around and sat up.
Gili said: "You talked to him! You talked to Mickey!" She shook back the long blonde lock of hair that hung over her face and cried: "You with your fine lady ways. And your money. Don't answer. I don't care. Why do you suppose Mickey wanted you if it wasn't for the money he could get out of you! Listen . . ." Her hands curled hard around the mattress, and she leaned forward, her eyes narrow and furious. "Listen. I could tell you that I heard you call him Mickey; that that's how I knew his real name. I could tell you that I— borrowed his cigarette case, that I saw it and picked it up and used it. I could tell you that I said everything I said just to tease you. Or to make you angry with Mickey so you'd give him up. I could tell you anything like that. And you'd believe me."
"Gili, be quiet. Gili . . ." It was as if those clawing strong hands were tearing down a wall, shredding a hard woven fabric.
Gili cried, drawing her mouth back from her teeth as if she were at bay herself, not Marcia. "But I'm not going to. Do you understand? I'm not going to give him up to you. He doesn't need you now. He's got everything he wants from you. He's through with you. He belongs to me. You with your smugness and your money—that doesn't matter. You can't have him."
Mickey had said: "Do you believe me or Gili?" Marcia remembered that as clearly as if again, he had spoken the words in her ears. She said: "I don't believe you."
"You think I'm lying!" Gili put back her head so the blonde ends of her hair flung outward savagely and laughed and cried: "Lying! About Mickey and me! Lying . . ." She stopped laughing. She sprang to her feet and across the room and her hands were reaching out like strong white claws toward Marcia and Marcia slapped her face. Hard, along one cheek.
Gili stopped. Marcia's hand tingled. Daisy Belle was in the bathroom doorway, staring.