Luther's voice from those bandages said wearily: "I came to see Daisy Belle. I did not intend to hurt Marcia. I didn't intend to touch her. I only wanted to talk to Daisy Belle. I thought she'd be here in this cabin. I didn't know that only Marcia was here. I was alone in my cabin. I thought with all the tumult on deck I could get here, without being seen, and I did. I had the gauze hidden under a cushion in the officers' lounge. Nobody thought of looking there. I took it from a dressing tray. I had seen Heinzer. I had to disguise myself like that in order to approach Para, for he knew I'd killed Castiogne and he knew I'd kill him if I could. But I didn't come here to kill Marcia. I thought Daisy Belle was in this cabin and that perhaps I could speak to her alone. I had to tell her my plans. I had to, and then I heard them shout from the boats out there that they'd found him—Heinzer. So I knew then there was no escape for me. I couldn't leave this cabin. I couldn't . . ."
Josh said: "You'd better get to a doctor . . ." and suddenly sprang forward as the thin, red figure wavered and crumpled against the door.
"Get the doctor, Marcia—hurry—go on . . ."
She thought, even then, that Josh wanted to save her the thing that he knew was going to happen.
Luther Cates had a bad heart attack. He lived until the day came fully. He did not make any further statement.
It was not necessary.
A few hours later replies to wirelessed inquiries which the Captain had sent began to clatter into the ship's receiving sets. All the money that Luther Cates with his great wealth had banked in Switzerland before the war was gone. It had gone without any question to the Nazi cause.
Daisy Belle had not known it. She had not dreamed that Luther's own collaboration had been so expensive, so positive, and so appalling.
"My own," she said brokenly to the Captain, "seemed so great. It was as if we shared a dreadful burden of guilt. I never dreamed that there was anything worse. So much worse. I knew that there was a shortage of cash; we used my jewels for everything. I didn't know why. I thought it had something to do with war conditions, with getting funds . . ." She stopped, and after a moment continued very slowly: "I think he did it because—well, simply because it was easier. He had the money, so it was available. They wanted it, perhaps they brought pressure." She paused again and said wearily: "I don't think Luther was politically a Nazi, but I—it is very difficult for me to say this, but it must be true—I think he thought they were going to win. I think it was"—her voice choked over the words but she repeated it—"it was easier. We were among Nazis. They knew about the money. He bought our freedom and comfort."
The Captain said: "The diamond he gave Castiogne was not a passage bribe, then?"
She had thought the whole thing through. She said steadily: "I think it was the first payment for silence to Castiogne. Luther came to me on the Lerida, the day of the storm, and said it was to pay Castiogne for getting us a passage. Actually it must have been shortly after Gili and Castiogne heard us talking. Castiogne must have seen his way to blackmail and undertaken it immediately. He must have come at once to Luther for money. And then—then Mickey Banet heard the tale from Gili. And he thought, as Castiogne did, that here was his chance to bleed Luther. Were they partners, he and Castiogne?"
Gili had been questioned. Gili still said that she didn't know.
She had admitted, however, that when she had talked of the thing, accusing the Cateses, there in Mickey's cabin, the first night on the Magnolia, she had been afraid of Mickey. "I knew then that he didn't want me to talk of the Cates couple and of what Castiogne and I had heard them say. I knew Mickey was trying to make me stop talking of it. So I stopped. I didn't know why he wanted me to stop talking of the Cateses and Castiogne. I never knew why." She had paused there, and presently added sullenly: "I knew Mickey. I knew when not to question him."
He had tried, too, to insure that Marcia kept the, to him, potentially valuable secret about the Cateses by playing on her loyalty to Daisy Belle. "An accusation like that is a very unpleasant one," he had said. "It sticks. Never tell anybody." And Marcia had been only too glad to agree.
Josh said, now, thoughtfully: "Gili told him what she'd heard, and what she thought Castiogne would do with the knowledge of the Cateses which Castiogne and Gili so unexpectedly shared. To Banet it was like the discovery of a gold mine. Banet did not tell Gili his immediate realization of that. Instead, knowing that Castiogne already knew, he suggested to Castiogne that they become partners. Castiogne had to agree. But Castiogne must have already confided in Para. Perhaps Para was to be the strong man. At any rate, as Urdiola says, Castiogne and Para were close friends. I think that Castiogne had not told Mickey that Para was already his partner. I don't think Mickey knew or guessed that until the diamond was found; perhaps he never knew it. But Para knew that Mickey was one of them and told Cates, later, on the Magnolia. So it was three people in a conspiracy against Luther. He did not know that at first. He thought it was only Castiogne and killed him when he saw that an American ship was about to pick you up. He had to do that, for he realized that if he once let Castiogne leave the lifeboat alive he'd be at his mercy forever. But Para took the diamond from Castiogne while he pretended to revive him. Then Para came to Luther on the Magnolia. Luther was dealing now with a stupider man than Castiogne. He got the fact out of Para that Mickey Banet was in on the thing, too. So Luther killed Para. He admitted that he had seen Heinzer, and snatched upon that disguise. Para knew of his danger. Cates had to disguise himself in order to take Para by surprise. And then Luther saw Miss Colfax was on deck. He talked to her and then hurried inside, assumed that very easy disguise again and made sure that Miss Colfax would see him. His motive, as we said then, must have been to direct suspicion away from the people from the Lerida. Banet thought it a good enough idea, apparently, to try the same disguise himself later. He could secure gauze as easily as Luther, and he had a red bathrobe, also. The conditioning factor all along was the fact that there were so many red bathrobes, so many patients wearing them, that it was an accepted, usual pattern of the crowded life on the ship; but Banet was clumsy and frightened. He had cruelty but not the cold courage necessary. He ran and dropped the gauze. Naturally Banet had to be murdered. Probably up to then Cates had had a difficulty about weapons—the knife from the locker in the lifeboat? A knife stolen from the galley? We'll never know about that. But this time he had a revolver. He killed Banet. There wasn't anything else to do."
Colonel Wells said: "He might have succeeded in passing himself off as Jacob Heinzer, at least until they got him to the hospital and got the bandages off, and if he were very lucky."
"You can't escape on a ship," said Captain Svendsen. "You can on dry land—once he got ashore and at a hospital he must have thought he could contrive some way to escape. Yes . . ."
"If he had sat tight and said nothing . . ." began Colonel Wells reflectively, and the Captain interrupted: "If he'd sat tight and said nothing he'd never have got away. He knew it. So the chance he took in trying to take Heinzer's place was, at least, a chance. Otherwise, as Luther Cates, he had no chance. We'd have kept after them, all of them, until the truth came out about the money. Cates was vulnerable and knew it. And he was on deck and Heinzer came along and suddenly there was a chance. And he seized it. He would do away with Heinzer, assume his place, stay in the patient's cabin perhaps, make himself as inconspicuous as possible for the rest of the voyage, and try to leave the ship as Heinzer and eventually to escape the hospital. Luther Cates had to be dead. There," said the Captain heavily, "was his one small chance and he took it. Otherwise he had none. And it might have worked if he were adroit enough, careful enough. Heinzer's face was hidden; his voice was a broken, gasping whisper; he was ambulatory and thus had no special care and Cates, in assuming the patient's identity, would not have been under the close observation by nurses and doctors that a litter case, say, would have been under. Once on land, once at the hospital, he must have hoped for a chance to escape. Well," he took up a thick sheaf of papers from his table and said—"here is my report to my superiors. I wish you to listen and, insofar as you can do so, verify the details."