And he had to have money.
"He made me come, too. He loved me," said Gili, with even then a sidelong glance of triumph at Marcia.
The trouble was that while she fully confirmed Josh's surmise about Michel Banet, she denied any knowledge of murder, or a motive for murder.
Again, doggedly, she resisted their questions.
And rather curiously but obtrusively she reiterated her previous statement that she and Mickey had been together at the time following the murder of Para when the pseudo-patient in a red robe with his face bandaged and concealed had come down the stairway toward Marcia. Curiously, except it gave Gili an alibi, too.
The Captain, however, accused her flatly. "You murdered Banet," he said. "You were jealous, you were afraid he'd leave you. . . ."
Gili, then, laughed harshly and with frank scorn. "Murder the man who was going to provide me with—with food, and a home and clothes? What can I do in America? I worked in a barber shop in Berlin. That's where I met him. I didn't love him, but he loved me. He would have taken care of me. Murder him!" said Gili and laughed again.
It was then that the Captain gave up. He turned to Colonel Wells. "Colonel, will you see to the disposition of these people that we discussed? Thank you. Colonel Morgan, I have to tell you that your movements about the ship are now restricted."
"You mean I'm a suspect?"
The Captain said with a troubled, almost solemn gravity: "You had a strong motive—a comprehensible motive. By your own admission you tried once to kill Banet. But I do not believe that a dying man would attempt to deceive. I believe that a woman killed him."
Daisy Belle got up and stood with dignity under the harsh light. "You mean obviously one of us."
"I don't know who else," said the Captain plainly, and went away, tired and angry, hurrying back to the bridge.
The fog as always at night was deeper. It clung to the ports, it crept into the passageways, it misted the brass and the leather.
Colonel Wells said wearily: "He'll question you further tomorrow. I do beg you to consider what he says. If anybody knows anything at all it would be better in the long run to let us know it."
Luther got up wearily, too. He looked gray with fatigue. "Maybe the eyewitness will turn up. Somebody must have seen something. Banet couldn't just have lain there on the deck for hours without anybody happening along."
"Apparently," said Colonel Wells, "that is exactly what he did. Now then . . ."
He went on briefly and quickly to explain. Their cabins were to be changed. The ship was full but it was not crowded; somehow, they had shifted people about. The Lerida survivors were to be separated. He would show them.
Josh, Marcia knew, wished to speak to her. He came close to her, touched her arm and started to speak, and Colonel Wells said: "Will you come now, please?"
Josh's lips said mutely: "Later . . ."
Marcia probably by mere chance was allotted the cabin on B deck which, formerly, the three women had shared. Already Gili's and Daisy Belle's few clothes and cosmetics, all loaned or donated by the nurses, had been removed. She did not see to what cabins Gili and Daisy Belle were taken. She had an impression that Luther remained alone in the cabin he and Mickey had shared.
The ship seemed to stand still. It had, in fact, slowed almost to a stop, owing to the extraordinary thickness of the fog and the foghorn had resumed its monotonous, constant wail. Like a city, the U.S.A.H.S. Magnolia was in a state resembling that of siege.
Yet murder still apparently walked these slippery decks, amid the crimson haloes of shifting fog wreaths.
It was along toward morning that the ship slowed suddenly and hove to. Marcia did not hear the cries of "Man overboard!" and she knew nothing of the launching of the boats and the flashlights which strove vainly to pierce the fog.
A wakeful patient had seen an object resembling that of a man go past the port near him. He had heard, so still was the ship, the heavy splash in the water far below. He had given the alarm.
19
There is only one way a man can disappear from shipboard and that is into the sea.
There are, however, three causes for such a disappearance: it could be a matter of accident, suicide or murder. Neither accident nor suicide seemed as reasonable a hypothesis as the fairly unreasonable theory of murder.
And yet with the murder of Mickey Banet there had been a curious tacit conclusion that the ugly cycle of murder had now run its course.
No one had said so. The ship was, as Marcia had thought, like a city in a state of siege, guarded and alert. The troublesome and trouble-making passengers from the Lerida were separated. Each of them was under so heavy a burden of suspicion by the very fact of his presence in that doomed little lifeboat, that surely, one would have thought, and obviously the ship's officers did think, that no one of them would dare to add further to the burden of suspicion against himself. Certainly no one of them now would commit a further murder.
Yet it had happened. No one had heard any commotion or altercation on the foggy, hazy deck. No one had seen anything except the ward patient. The corpsman on duty had given a quick alarm. The ship was stopped and the crew got out boats. A quick check of wards and passengers was made and Luther Cates was missing.
The probability was that even if he were still alive he would not be found. True, the ship had been traveling at a very slow speed and the alarm had been given instantly. Even so the Magnolia moved some distance before she could stop and before the small boats could be launched.
The fog, too, seriously hindered the search. The occasional glitter of waves below shifting gray wreaths reflected the lights from the ship in confusing glimpses of red and gold. The fog was the more impenetrable because of the rosy reflected glow near the ship.
It was still dark, in spite of approaching dawn, when Josh came to Marcia. She was awake and knew that the ship had stopped. She had heard the subdued echoes of commotion, but did not know the reason for it, or for the brief visit of Major Williams who, checking the whereabouts of the Lerida passengers, knocked on the door and called to her. When she replied he hurried away again.
She was wrapped in a red bathrobe, standing at the port listening and watching the misty flares in the fog. The searchlights were gleaming this way and that from small boats when Josh knocked. "It's me," he called. "Josh . . ."
She went then and opened the door which she had bolted.
He stood white-faced in the passageway, fully clothed, except that his collar wasn't fastened. His head was bare and his dark hair shone with moisture. His overcoat shoulders were damp. He came in quickly. "It's a man overboard. Luther. So far they've not found him."
"Luther! What happened . . . ?"
"Nobody knows." From the open port, in the distance, a voice floated dismally over the water, eerily muffled by fog. Josh went to the port, looked out at the shifting wreaths of fog, the flares from the boats. "They'll never find anybody in a fog like this," he said. "But the chances are, of course, that he was dead before he struck the water."
"Luther . . ." she said at his shoulder, whispering. "Why?"
Josh turned to face her. "I wanted to talk to you last night. I couldn't. Marcia . . ." he said very gravely, "I'm sorry."
"You mean about Mickey."
"Even to you, Marcia, the cigarette case roused a sort of question. Do you remember telling me that you had been thinking of Mickey and Gili and the things that she had said and that something seemed somehow wrong to you—out of the picture? Wasn't that it? Subconsciously, it seemed wrong to you as it did to me. Yet something happened just then, and you didn't really pin the thing down."