"Proof ..."
"Your faith was very stubborn, darling, and very blind. The proof is that since Banet died, the attempts to murder you seem to have stopped. Whatever other link was between Castiogne and Para—whoever murdered Mickey and Luther, you are now safe."
The air from the port was cold and misty on her face. Again the distant voices of men searching through fog and darkness for the body of a man overboard drifted eerily to their ears.
The ship was, in fact, in a turmoil. Wards, passageways, decks were, for the moment, unguarded. It was an orderly confusion, concentrated on the search which the Captain himself was directing, but it was confusion. Anyone could have gone quietly along those warm, gray passageways just then without being seen. Anything could have been done, just then, without being heard. But Mickey was dead.
So she was forever safe from those tortured and terrible hands.
Josh lifted his head and listened. "Murder at sea," he said slowly, "is so horribly simple. A body sliding past a port, and then nothing. We'll never know how unless Luther's body is found, but a woman could have done that, too."
A woman could have held the revolver that had been used to kill Mickey. Conceivably, a woman could have contrived to silence Luther forever in the black and foggy sea, but not Castiogne, not Para. She said: "Josh, do you mean that Mickey killed Castiogne and Para?"
Josh's reply was not really a reply. He said: "It's always possible Urdiola told the plain truth."
"Do you mean that he killed Mickey? But Mickey said it was a woman. . . ."
Josh, staring out into the graying fog, said slowly: "Certainly somebody killed Mickey. But I do think that it was Mickey who came to your cabin yesterday in another attempt to kill you. Those gauze bandages around his face made a simple and easy disguise. I've inquired about the gauze. Almost anybody could have managed to snag that from some supply closet or dressing tray. But when you came to the Captain with that horribly twisted thing, I knew beyond all doubt that Banet would kill you if he could. Up to then I hadn't really been convinced. I'd told myself I must be wrong. My whole theory was based upon the character of a man you knew and loved so much that you were going to marry him."
"Who killed him?"
"I don't know. . . ."
"He said a woman . . ."
"Yes, I . . ." Again a new and troublesome thought seemed to cross his mind. He thought and frowned and shook his head. "If it was a woman there's only Gili and Daisy Belle. I don't think it was Gili for the exact reason she gave. She needs food and clothing and shelter and just at that moment Mickey was her only hope of getting any of them. And Daisy Belle would have no motive. Even if Banet were trying to blackmail her on account of the Nazi business that Gili told us about, that threat was spiked when they came across and confessed all that. So Banet couldn't have held that over Daisy Belle's head and thus provide a motive for her to murder him. I simply don't know why he was killed, Marcia, unless somehow it actually is linked up with Castiogne and Para and the diamond. Yet Urdiola is locked up. I suppose he might have got out, somehow, but I don't see how and neither does anybody else. Luther could have had originally the same motive as Daisy Belle, but he would have, since they've come out with the truth, the same lack of motive. And nothing accounts for Luther's murder. Nothing links up the two Portuguese and Banet and Luther."
He paused, and said suddenly: "Except, of course, the theory that Luther knew something damning to the murderer. And there's no getting around the fact that Svendsen and Colonel Wells have got exactly four suspects, if Urdiola's out: you and me, and Daisy Belle and Gili. I didn't murder Banet or anybody; you didn't. There is only Daisy Belle and Gili, and I simply don't think either of them did it!"
He looked out the port, staring into the queerly variegated fog, black and gray, spotted with dim flares of orange and red light. He said slowly: "Gili wouldn't murder her only source of supply—Banet. Daisy Belle's whole life is bound up in Luther—she wouldn't murder him. I don't see how the killing of the two Portuguese comes into it and both of them were killed. And, to tell the truth, Marcia, while I am as sure as I'll ever be of anything that Michel tried to kill you, and I think he did it for fear you would tell his real identity, nevertheless, I still can't see why he'd get rid of you before he got more money out of you. Darling, darling, that's brutal. But it's true." Again he stopped and thought this time for moments while she stood at his side, the cold damp air in her face. And then said: "It's queer. Just as you decide there's no way out, all at once you think you see it."
He turned from the port, put his hand thoughtfully under her chin and said: "My darling, my darling, no matter what happens, you are safe. Nothing now can hurt you. . . . Do you want to go to Daisy Belle? She's in the Captain's cabin. I think she needs you."
She didn't want him to leave. There was so much she had to say, and yet had no words. He said, matter-of-factly: "Wrap yourself up if you go on deck. It's damned cold," and touched her cheek lightly. And he walked out of the cabin and closed the door.
For a long time Marcia did not move.
The cabin was cold. She stood huddled in the long red bathrobe, gradually aware of the chill and stealthy fingers of fog. Presently she moved across the cabin, intending to dress, intending to wrap up in a coat, intending to go to Daisy Belle, and then sat down on the edge of the bunk, staring at nothing.
She roused herself finally with a sharp realization that some time had passed since Josh had gone, while she thought of Mickey, and of the past, which was wrong; things that had happened could never be reconciled. Their only virtue was that they were gone.
Josh had said that Daisy Belle would need her. She'd better go.
She had on gray pajamas, men's pajamas, too big for her, like the bathrobe. She'd not wait, though, to dress. She'd wrap herself in the thick nurse's coat that lay over a chair under the port. She went to get it and, as she reached for it, Josh returned.
She heard the door open and heard him enter the cabin quickly, and she turned, saying: "Josh. . . ."
Her voice died in a gasp, as if hands had already caught her throat.
Yet she had really barely a glimpse of the tall figure in the doorway—the figure in a red bathrobe with white bandages over its face—for the electric light switch clicked, and the cabin, everywhere, was in darkness.
There was a dim rosy twilight which outlined the port.
There was the soft rustle of motion.
And then in the thick silence an unintelligible choking whisper which said nothing, which merely made sounds.
20
But Mickey was dead.
He had once come to her cabin, masked and fearfully anonymous, like that, but he was dead.
And the patient—the real patient, what was his name?— what could he want of her?
As if it were the most important thing in life just then she sought frantically for his name and remembered it. Jacob Heinzer, Jacob Heinzer. What could he want of her?
The whisper had stopped.
There was a listening quality in the silence. And then she was listening too, every nerve in her body strained to hear, for there were shouts from the fog, shouts from the darkness and the black sea, shouts of men who had found something.