"But then . . ." prompted Captain Svendsen.
"Then he determined to keep the name of Andre Messac."
"Why?"
She told him that, too. Mickey had been on the threshold of a great career. It had been taken from him. He had wished, he said, to save his pride and never again to be known as Michel Banet, who had promised so much and done so little.
There was a short silence, so they could hear the throb of the ship's engines, driving the ship on and on through the fog.
"When did he tell you that?" asked the Captain suddenly. "On the Lerida? On the Magnolia?"
"The night after we were taken aboard the Magnolia."
"And you agreed to keep his real identity a secret?"
She had neither the wish nor the strength to defend herself. "For the time being. Yes."
"What were you going to do when you arrived in America? Go through life as Mr. and Mrs. Andre Messac? A false name, a life of lies?"
It was, of course, what she had asked herself almost in so many words. She said: "I thought that he would agree to tell the truth."
Captain Svendsen turned to Josh. "Will you tell Miss Colfax exactly what you told me while Colonel Wells was operating."
Josh had been leaning against the table, the white sling for his wounded arm looming up brightly. His face looked almost as white. He looked at Marcia, and crossed to pull up a small chair near her. He sat down and leaned forward to take her hand. "Marcia, I knew Andre Messac. That is, I knew an Andre Messac in Paris. As you told me when I questioned you about him it is not an uncommon name. Still it was not exactly a common name, either. Andre was murdered by the Nazis." He looked down at her hand for an instant, his face set and grave.
The Captain showed anger and impatience—a deep-lying anger because of things the Nazis had done, things he had seen, things he had heard, which could never be undone, another and almost as biting an anger because he could not yet lay hold of the horrible thing he had brought aboard his ship with the passengers he had rescued from the Lerida lifeboat, because his strong red hands longed to do so, because he had to get back to the bridge, because he did not know what to do, because the very complexity of his emotions angered him. Captain Svendsen said: "Colonel Morgan, during the first fall of the war, joined a group of French resistance men. Andre Messac was one of them. So was Michel Banet. Andre Messac was arrested suddenly by the Germans and shot. Colonel Morgan was always of the opinion that he was betrayed by one of his own men. He thinks that man was the man who came on this ship using Andre Messac's name. He thinks it was Michel Banet. What do you know about it?"
"He could not have been a Nazi. Mickey was arrested by the Nazis. He was tortured by the Nazis . . ."
Josh looked up into her eyes. "Everybody who was tortured," said Josh, with a queer sad note in his voice, "was not a hero. One stands torture, another does not. The Germans knew that; that was why they tortured. They wanted information about other people. They wanted to break and twist and turn. They had a double lever with Michel Banet; pain and the maiming of his fingers which meant his whole life. I think he gave in. I think he turned Nazi at once, within a day or two of his imprisonment and torture. Unfortunately for him, it was already too late to save his hands, but he could save his life, and did. By telling everything he knew. I've always thought that Andre Messac was betrayed by one of a very small group because Andre was so"—he hesitated—"so very intelligent. So cool, so rigid about plans and strict discipline. He foresaw the day that was to come. He knew that first winter how important to France the French resistance movement would become. He was a genius for organization. Even then he realized how unsafe it would be for men to know too much of each other in that organization. Even then, in the beginning, he arranged it so you knew the fewest possible names, the fewest possible men who were allied to you. Michel Banet was one of the few who knew Andre Messac was our leader. I knew it. Perhaps a few others. But Michel Banet was arrested, and almost immediately Andre was arrested and shot. I did not know that Michel Banet had betrayed. I only knew that Andre must have been betrayed. Banet had disappeared. The rumor was that he was killed, too. The Germans were in Paris. War between the United States and Germany seemed inevitable. I got back home, as I told you, and into the army. But you don't forget people like Andre. Well, when I knew that a man had turned up on this ship using that name, when I saw that man and knew it was not his name but a man I had known to be taken by the Germans only a day or so before Andre was murdered, I"—he stared down again at his hand still holding hers—"I had to find out the truth."
The Captain said: "Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you warn me . . . ?"
Josh lifted his head. His face was very white and he looked as if he did not see Marcia, did not see anything but a somber and terrible picture that hovered in his thoughts. "Because I had to kill him with my own hands," said Josh.
There was a long silence in the lounge with its blank and glistening ports and its red cushions. Then the Captain cried: "But he said a woman did it!" He looked at Marcia. Everyone looked at Marcia except Josh who, with his dark head bent, stared down at her hand and his own, locked together.
17
Colonel Wells cleared his throat and stepped forward. "We might question Miss Colfax," he said.
"All right," said the Captain, "question her. If she murdered him, will she admit it? If she took that revolver, will she say so? If she knew he was a Nazi . . ."
Suddenly Marcia took in the sense of the Captain's words. "Mickey said a woman shot him?" she cried.
And Josh told her.
"Before Banet died he made a—a sort of statement. He was conscious for a minute or two; he was under drugs; he seemed fairly strong and as if he might make it, really. He said that a woman had killed him and he said that he'd explain or something like that later."
He paused and the silence in the lounge was so sharp it was as if somebody had screamed. Josh went on: "But he died before he spoke again."
And that sharp and terrible moment of listening, of heightened terrible silence passed.
But to somebody in that room, Marcia thought suddenly, there had been a second of terror while Josh quoted Mickey's words and then paused before he added that Mickey had said no more. Somebody had waited for a name.
Somebody? All of them. She glanced swiftly around the room and everybody else was doing the same thing. Covertly, swiftly, eyes searching and speculative, suspicion unveiled and bright.
Then the Captain said heavily and pointblank: "If you killed him, Miss Colfax, it would be better for you to say so now."
"No, no, I didn't. . . ."
"Did you know that he was a Nazi?'' .
"No."
"But you admit that you knew he was traveling under a false name and that you connived in his deception?"
"Not connive . . ."
"You knew it?"
"Yes."
Colonel Wells said slowly: "Whoever killed him must have made two attempts: the first one, that night on the deck when Banet was knocked out. Miss Colfax couldn't have done that, for she was attacked the same night, about the same time as Banet. Certainly by the same person who attacked Banet, so . . ."
"Oh, no," cried Josh. He put down Marcia's hand and got up. "Oh, no! I did that. I hit Banet."
"You . . ." began the Captain, his great fist doubling up. "That was you. . . ."