She broke off abruptly, her voice choking.
Mason said, “I see your angle, Belle. It’s your hand. You play it. Personally, I’d shove all my chips into the center of the table. Go talk with your mother, Belle. You can explain...”
The eyes which she turned up to him were laughing through tears. “No,” she said, “you do it. This is my last night of happiness. I’m leaving it up to you, Perry Mason, to do the dirty work.”
She turned and walked rapidly down the swaying corridor, steadying herself from time to time with an outstretched hand. Mason stood watching her with sympathetic eyes.
Chapter 5
There were many vacant chairs at the captain’s dinner. Sheeted rain lashed against the portholes. Those passengers who made merry with colored paper cups, balloons and pasteboard horns lacked spontaneity. Their merriment seemed merely a forced attempt to comply with maritime conventions. Waiters felt their way, a few steps at a time, half-filled dishes carried in deep serving trays.
Mason, dining with Della Street, looked across to where Carl Newberry and his wife and daughter were entertaining Roy Hungerford.
“Isn’t it about time you were getting something definite from them?” Della Street asked.
“Yes, ” Mason said, “I’ve warned Mrs. Newberry I must know where I stand before ten o’clock tonight. She told me to be in her cabin at nine-thirty and she’d have the money for me. Then I can go to Dail and make my proposition.”
“Moar — or I guess I should remember to call him Newberry — doesn’t seem particularly concerned,” Della Street said.
“No,” Mason admitted. “He seems to be having a good time. It’s fortunate for him that Evelyn Whiting has all of her meals in the stateroom with her patient.”
“Chief,” she said, “I have an idea Newberry’s reached an understanding with that woman.”
“What makes you think so?”
“I saw him coming out of her stateroom yesterday afternoon, and he was smiling.”
“You’re certain it was Newberry?”
She nodded.
“Perhaps,” Mason said, “that’s why he’s acting so carefree now. I’ve been wondering how he was going to manage it when the passengers went through customs and quarantine tomorrow. He’s almost certain to meet her face to face.”
“I think he’s figured that all out. After all, all he needed to do was to go to her, make some explanation and ask her to keep quiet.”
“The only trouble with that,” Mason pointed out, “is that she might indulge in gossip with some shipboard acquaintance and let the cat out of the bag. If Celinda Dail had any idea Evelyn Whiting knew anything about Belle’s father, she’d certainly move heaven and earth to find out what it was.”
Della Street said, “Belle, poor kid, realizes she could never get into Roy’s life.”
“Don’t you think he’ll try to keep in touch with her just the same?” Mason asked.
“He won’t have the chance, Chief. She’s going to tell him she’ll meet him at the Santa Anita Race Track next Tuesday. She told him her folks have a box there. She’ll never see him after she gets off the boat.”
Mason said, “If she’s in love with him I don’t see...”
“I understand exactly how she feels,” Della Street interrupted. “Taking things in her stride, mingling with him on terms of equality, she’s been able to interest him. But the minute he realizes she’s not in his set, the minute his friends start patronizing her, he’ll begin to lose interest in her. She and the Dail girl have been running neck and neck. Give Celinda Dail the handicap of being able to patronize Belle, and Belle will be entirely out of the running.”
“I’m not so certain,” Mason said.
“Well, I am,” Della Street told him. “That Dail girl is clever. She won’t rub it in. Instead, she’ll try and drag Belle out to all sorts of affairs where Belle will be among strangers but everyone else will know each other with that intimacy which comes of years of rubbing elbows and taking each other for granted. Belle will be completely out of place.”
“Well,” Mason said, “I think Belle should tell her mother exactly what she plans to do.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he said, “if Belle’s going to step out of Roy’s life, there’s no reason why I should go to a lot of trouble trying to fix things up with the Products Refining Company.”
“Oh, yes, there is,” Della told him. “It would be the greatest tragedy of Belle’s life if detectives should meet her father at the gangplank tomorrow and snap handcuffs on his wrists. And particularly if he had embezzled money from a company operated by Celinda Dail’s father. Chief, you must stop that, no matter what happens. Can’t you see? She wants Roy to remember her as a woman of mystery, not pity her. And she could never bear to have Celinda Dail gloating in triumph over her.”
“Well,” Mason said, “I’ll meet Mrs. Newberry at nine-thirty. She’ll have a definite answer by that time. I’m going to take a turn on deck. How’d you like to go out and get a lungful of storm?”
“No,” she told him, “I’m going over and join the Newberrys for a minute. I promised Belle I would. It’s eight-thirty-five now. I’ll hunt you up around nine o’clock. That’ll give us time for a liqueur and then you can meet Mrs. Newberry at nine-thirty.”
Mason nodded, crossed over to pull back her chair, gave her arm a squeeze and said, “I’ll be over on the lee side, probably on the promenade deck.”
Mason went to his stateroom, put on a top coat, wound a light silk scarf around his collar, and went on deck.
Doors on the weather side were locked. On the lee deck, rain lashed down in torrents, spurting up into little geysers, where the big drops hit the planking. Electric lights, burning in glass-enclosed cages, shed reddish rays which reflected upward from the wet deck, and were swallowed in the enveloping maw of wind-swept darkness. The roar of troubled waters furnished a steady, ominous undertone of sound.
Mason found the promenade deck a little too exposed, so went to the deck below. He walked slowly, skirting a pile of deck chairs which had been folded back and lashed securely. Water soaked up through the thin soles of his dress shoes. Spray from the beating rain moistened his face and beaded his hair. He squared his shoulders, inhaled the driving freshness of the ocean gale, listened to the roar of the waves, the shrieking of the wind — and was content.
The ship’s bells clanged twice — nine o’clock. The wind whipped the sound and dispersed it, just as it snatched the smoke from the stacks of the steamer, tore it into black ribbons, and dissolved them into the night. On the port beam, a lighthouse winked intermittently.
The ship, rolling heavily, swung far over to port, paused, then, instead of righting itself, rolled still farther, until Mason, clinging to a stanchion for support, could look down the slanting deck to the dark, tossing waves.
He heard a faint scream, then an explosive sound. He stood still, listening. The scream was repeated. It seemed to come from two decks above him.
As the ship slowly righted, Mason ran to the rail, leaned over, and tried to peer upward. The rain flooded his eyes, beat down upon his coat, trickled in rivulets along his neck and down the angle of his jaw. He could see nothing.
The ship sluggishly swung over to starboard. The waves, as though concentrating in a surprise attack, crashed against her quivering hull. Mason heard the faint jangling of a bell somewhere, then the whistle blew five short, quick blasts. The ship heeled far over and was filled with thumping jars, as though it had been an automobile running on a flat tire.