From that portion of the deck the sound of the shot might not have been heard, in any case. There were ventilators near and the sound of the motors which drove fresh air through the ship would have muffled it. Probably, however, he had been shot during one of the intervals while the foghorn was sounding. At any rate, no one had heard the sound, or at least had reported it.
The revolver which the young lieutenant had lost was not found. The other revolvers which had been issued to those small searching parties were immediately collected and examined. There were not many of them and none had recently been fired. They were re-issued and again the watch was doubled.
A search was made for the missing revolver but, it too, was a hopeless inquiry. If one of the Lerida passengers had it naturally it would not be hidden in the cabins they occupied and there was all the rest of the ship and hundreds of hiding places for so small an object. Nobody, however, really believed that it was still on the ship; not with the gray, deep Atlantic to hide it forever from mortal eyes—as the ocean had already hidden, everyone felt sure, the knife that had stabbed Castiogne, the knife that had slashed at Para.
It was, of course, a different pattern of murder, and that again suggested that Urdiola might have killed the two Portuguese, but that someone else had killed Mickey Banet. It also suggested that that person could have been, as Mickey Banet had said, a woman.
It was hard to believe that a woman could have had the strength and the terrible courage to stab the burly strong young third officer, Castiogne. It was almost impossible to believe that a woman could have walked up behind Manuel Para and quietly and deftly slashed his throat.
But a woman could have held and aimed that revolver and pulled the trigger, leaving Mickey presumably dead.
It must have been, they reasoned, a shock to the murderer to hear that he was not dead, that he had even briefly revived. If so, however, that person did not betray the frightful suspense by any word or look. It would have been instantly observed, for the Lerida passengers at the Captain's orders waited together in the officers' lounge.
It was a long and horrible wait. The red-covered chairs were damp and chill to the touch. No one read the magazines on the long table. It was like waiting in a hospital reception room to hear the news from a sick bed. Eventually, while they waited, Josh and Colonel Wells came to tell them briefly that he had died.
Neither of them, however, told them, then, what Mickey's last statement had been. They stayed only a moment and went away again.
Among the four people in the lounge there was very little expression, either of relief or regret, at the expected news. Gili sat huddled on a sofa, her long, streaked hair shading her face, and neither moved nor spoke. Luther, looking ill and tired to death himself, put his drawn face in his hands and kept it there so long that Daisy Belle went to him with an anxious inquiry in her eyes.
"Are you all right?"
"Oh, yes." He lifted his face reassuringly, but she put her fingers on his wrist for a moment nevertheless. He gave her a faint, patient smile and apparently satisfied, she walked to the black glittering port and stared out into nothing. Marcia thought, this is not possible; Mickey cannot have died like this; but she knew it was true.
There was after that another long wait; a corpsman came about midnight with sandwiches and hot cocoa in thick cups on a tray. Luther questioned him, and he told them that the ship was being searched. They had not found the murderer. When Luther asked about Urdiola, he said he was still under arrest.
"Then Urdiola couldn't have done it," said Daisy Belle. Her face was parchment gray; she was cold and kept her nurse's coat tight around her tall, spare body. Luther, his face pale too, and his lips blue, handed around the cups of hot cocoa.
Marcia drank slowly, holding it in both her cold hands. There is a state of shock that is almost like an anesthetic; fortunately, under an anesthetic one has no feeling. Marcia thought that once, staring into the brown cocoa, remembering as if from a time long past Mickey's candid, clear gray eyes, his smile, the things he had said. Also she recalled the thing that Josh Morgan had said which precipitated the search for Mickey. A Nazi war criminal, trying to escape a Europe which was too dangerous for him now that the Americans had come.
Mickey with his hands tragic and maimed by those same Nazis.
She was strongly aware all the time of Gili's presence across from her, and perhaps Gili was as strongly aware of her. Their eyes did not meet until Josh returned.
He came into the room quickly and everyone looked up with a jerk. His face was very white. The ship had been, by that time, thoroughly searched and no revolver was found and nothing leading to evidence concerning Mickey Banet's murder had been discovered, he told them tersely.
"What are they going to do?" asked Luther, his face ashen under the brilliant light and the pouches heavy below his tired eyes.
"Investigate as best they can. Hope, I suppose, that somebody saw something and will come forward to say so. They are making an urgent appeal. Anybody who knows of anything at all suspicious is asked to go to the Captain at once."
"Do you think that will come to anything?" asked Luther after a pause.
"I don't know. The Captain is coming here. He said he'd be along in a few minutes."
There was a sharp silence and then Daisy Belle said abruptly: "To ask us if one of us murdered him!"
"Yes," said Josh quietly. "I suppose they'll ask that. And they'll ask you to volunteer any evidence or even, I imagine, any opinions that you may have."
It was then that Marcia became aware of Gili's eyes, bright and green and fixed, staring at her thoughtfully. She did not speak, however, but only sat there, her long blonde hair hanging lankly about her face, her eyes fastened upon Marcia in that thoughtful way. Before anyone else spoke the Captain and Colonel Wells came into the room.
Mainly they looked terribly tired. It had been Colonel Wells, a surgeon before he became commanding officer of the medical unit for the Magnolia, who had operated on Mickey. He came to Marcia directly. "I'm sorry," he said and with a kindliness which reached through the stiff self-control that had erected itself around her like a shell. "I did what I could. Whatever he was, or wasn't, I'm sorry." But there was also a sharp and cold question in his eyes.
Captain Svendsen, however, swiftly took matters into his own hands. They all knew, he said, what had happened. If any of them knew anything of the murder or suspected anything they must understand how urgently important it was to tell them. He did not wait for anyone to speak but went on: "Shortly before he was found injured a question of his identity arose." He turned directly to Marcia. "You were engaged to marry him. You must have known the truth. Colonel Morgan says that he was really a man by the name of Banet, a concert pianist. Is that right?"
"Yes."
"Why was he using a false passport? And a false name?"
She told him. It had seemed best to leave Europe as quickly as possible. He had decided to use a passport which had belonged to a friend, Andre Messac. He had his own photograph substituted.
"Why did he not use his own?"
"He said he had none. He had nothing, no personal possessions. It would take time to secure a passport of his own."
"If he had turned Nazi he would not have dared to apply for one. He would have been afraid to let his identity be known anywhere in France, wouldn't he?"
"I suppose so. Yes."
"And you subscribed to his plan to use a false passport. Why? You must have known that that is a criminal offense."
At the time it had seemed the only course which might help, quickly, to restore Mickey to himself. Now it seemed futile to try to explain it. She replied: "It seemed right then. We intended to do something about it in Buenos Aires, go to the American consul and tell him the whole story. But then . . ."