The Maniac
The full horror of their situation slowly dawned upon them. There was no escape from the Ark. They must remain living cheek by jowl in its narrow confines; yet the brain of one of them had been turned by their terrible experiences and, whoever that person was, while appearing normal for the greater part of the time, he was afflicted with occasional periods of hideous aberration in which he was capable of murder.
With a nervy gesture Gervaise passed a hand over his white hair. 'You see, it all ties up,' he went on gravely. 'I know most of you think it was Lavina who took the cigarettes but I'll swear that she would never lie to me if she had done so while in her senses. The bottle of brandy might have been taken by any of us; or perhaps that twelfth bottle was never there. I believed that it was Derek who had been at the food because he is the heartiest eater among us; but that doesn't explain the fact that much more food has disappeared than any one person could have eaten. Sam, Hemmingway and myself, all had an opportunity to attack Derek and it is plain, to me at least, that the other two had a possible motive; but neither of them had the least reason to kill poor Oliver. These acts are those of a madman and the lives of us all now depend upon finding out which of us suffers from these terrible fits of lunacy.'
Each of them was quite convinced that it was not themselves and regarded the others with reluctant suspicion. It was a frightful thing for them to think that from now onwards, if ever they remained alone for a few minutes with one of the others, that other's mind might suddenly go blank and they would find themselves fighting with a maniac; or that one of their friends might steel upon them in the dark and strike them down, as had happened to Derek and Oliver.
'Well, there are six of us now,' said the practical Sam, voicing the thoughts of them all, 'and the best precaution we can take is that never less than three of us should remain alone together.'
'How about at night?' asked Margery. 'Lavina and I must continue to share a cabin.'
'I don't mind that, if you don't,' Lavina said promptly. 'We'll lock our door, and if I see you walking in your sleep, I shall scream the Ark down.'
Margery shrugged. 'I don't mind, either. It can't be you, because you're not strong enough to have delivered those terrible blows on the back of Uncle Oliver's head.'
'1 don't know so much. They say that maniacs have superhuman strength.'
Sam shook his head. 'No, it isn't either of you girls. The fact that Derek was attacked when he was below rules both of you out. It's one of us men; either Gervaise, Hemmingway or myself.'
Sadly they set about preparing Oliver for burial. Margery washed his body while Lavina sewed up a sheet to be his shroud and weights into its lower end. It was only after they had finished that the relief of tears came; and both girls sobbed as Gervaise read the Burial Service over his brother's body. The door of the Ark was opened and the shrouded figure consigned to the cold, grey waves.
The dreary grey skies still stretched low overhead from horizon to horizon. Although it was only mid-July the temperature was that of November and it seemed to be growing colder day by day. A slight but chill wind was blowing and the waves lapped hungrily at the landing platform of the Ark; the only thing showing above the waters in all that vast desolation.
When the Funeral Service was over and they had again returned, shivering, to the warmth, none of them felt like talking. An uneasy silence brooded over the living-room as they sat about doing nothing or making a pretence of trying to read. The minds of all of them were filled with dark suspicion of their neighbours and horrid, fruitless speculation as to when and upon whom the murderer would make his next attack.
Lunch was a gloomy meal and after it, as had become their habit, they retired to their cabins for an afternoon sleep.
It was about half-past three when Derek, waking from a doze, noticed that Hemmingway was no longer in the bunk opposite him. Instantly he roused Gervaise and Sam and, slipping from his bunk, muttered quickly:
'It's Hemmingway. I felt sure it was. Look! His bunk's empty. He must have tiptoed out of the cabin while we were asleep. Come on! Arm yourselves with anything that's handy; we'll probably have to knock him out.'
At that moment there was a muffled shriek. Gervaise wrenched a sheet out of his bunk to tie the maniac, Sam grabbed a clothes-brush for a club, and Derek a heavy ruler which still lay where Oliver had left it by the side of his now empty bunk.
As they dashed out of the cabin the screams came again. For a moment they had assumed that one of the girls was the new victim; but in the tiny hallway they ran full-tilt into them, for they also had been roused and were leaving their cabin to find out who was screaming.
The trap-door in the living-room, which led to the lower deck, was open. Rushing towards it, Sam cried:
'He's down there! The poor chap must know he's the maniac and be trying to commit suicide—or else he's got caught up in the machinery.'
In his anxiety to save his friend from further injury Sam dropped the twelve feet to the lower deck straight through the trap. Derek and Gervaise followed by the ladder. A yell of 'Help! Help!' came from a storeroom where the seeds and bulbs were kept.
Picking himself up Sam sprang through the open doorway, the others hard on his heels. In the dimmish light of the single electric globe they saw that a desperate struggle was in progress. Rolling on the floor Hemmingway was at death-grips with another man.
The other three flung themselves upon the struggling couple and succeeded in wrenching Hemmingway's attacker away from him. Their opponent fought with all the strength of a madman, but between them they managed to pinion his arms and feet and roll him over on his back. As the light struck his face Sam gasped:
'Good God! It'sFinkie!'
Fink-Drummond's chin was covered with a fortnight's beard, his hair was matted, his clothes indescribably dirty. He was slavering at the mouth and his eyes shone with a maniacal hatred. Few of his old colleagues would have recognised the ex-Cabinet Minister but Sam had known him, after a moment, by his long, pointed nose.
Having bound their captive with the sheet that Gervaise had brought from his bunk, they hoisted him up to the living-room and sat him down in a chair. Out of pity for his state Lavina brought him a glass of water to drink but, with a violent jerk of his head, he knocked it out of her hand. All their efforts to make him speak were quite unavailing. He was stark, staring mad.
Gervaise went below to investigate and, returning after a few moments, said to the others:
'I think he must have been still sane when he came on board, because he chose for his hiding place the one storeroom that none of us were likely to go into until the Ark touched land. By rearranging a lot of the cases of seeds and bulbs he'd hollowed out a six-foot tunnel and in it, I'm glad to say, I found most of the missing food. I imagine he took as much as he could each time because he was afraid we might make some new arrangement of the stores so that he wouldn't be able to get at them again later on.'
'But how on earth did he get aboard in the first place?' Sam inquired.
'Roy,' said Margery. 'Roy used to sit with him when he was a prisoner at Stapleton, if you remember, and they became quite friendly. Roy must have told him about the Ark and. after he was free, he must have decided that he'd stand a better chance of saving himself by stowing away on board it than by any other means. It would have been quite easy for him to have got into it and made his arrangements on the night Roy went to London, while we were all asleep in the house.'
'That's about it,' Derek agreed. 'And during that terrible time we had those first few days, being cooped up there in the dark while the Ark was thrown all over the place must have sent him mad. God knows, it was bad enough for us; but just think what the poor devil must have suffered with all those cases sliding about or being flung on top of him in the darkness. Light as most of them are, it's a miracle they didn't kill him. But how did you find him, Hemmingway?'