We had a steak dinner which Gordon and I punished severely, then retired to the privacy of Eric’s stateroom. Gordon outlined the development of the case and concluded:
“I hope you won’t think we’re jumping to conclusions, because we’re not. But it’s in the cards for me to ask you what you know about Sue Sholto. Naturally a thorough investigation is being made in Honolulu. In the meantime it’s up to me to find out what I can at this end. Anderson is at this end, and Hector Land is, or was. Can you tell me anything that might link Sue Sholto with Hector Land, or with a man that might be Anderson, or with the apparently subversive activities of those two?”
I had been watching Eric’s face while he listened to Gordon’s careful lecture. The last month had changed him. When I met him in Honolulu on the day of the party, it had seemed to me that he was suspended between acceptance and rejection of the world. His eyes had been turned outward, but uncertainly. His face had begun to set in the closed, bound look of a neurotic egotism. But the process had seemed then to be susceptible of interruption. Now the process was complete.
His smiles were no longer spontaneous, his looks were not naïve. The center of his being had retired into a secret labyrinth where it sat like a spider, clutching its means with avarice and regarding its ends with narrow passion. In a word, grief and shock are not always ennobling. Eric thought of the death of Sue Sholto chiefly as a possible obstacle in his naval and postnaval career and a thorn in his comfort.
“I didn’t know her very well,” he said. “She was just a girl I dated a few times. Naturally if I had any reason to suspect her of illegal activities I’d have reported her. Certainly I’d have had nothing more to do with her.”
“There was no sign of a relationship between her and Hector Land?”
“Certainly not. And so far as I know she wasn’t acquainted with anyone who might have been Anderson.”
“Isn’t it true that she was politically suspect?” I said. “Mary described her as a fellow-traveller.”
“I wouldn’t know. We never discussed politics.”
Gordon put in: “Did she show curiosity about naval affairs?”
“The normal feminine curiosity, I suppose. She didn’t ever try to pump me that I can remember.”
“How long did you know the girl?”
“A few months. But I was at sea most of the time, and only dated her a few times when I was in port. She had other friends. I don’t see why I should be singled out merely because I was with her on the night she killed herself.” His voice was bitter.
“You aren’t being singled out, Lieutenant Swann. You simply happen to be available for questioning. Did you know any of her other friends?”
“No, I never met any of them. She just mentioned them occasionally. I don’t remember any names. And I very much hope that you’ll keep my name out of this when it breaks in the papers. I have a wife in Michigan and if–”
“I know what you mean. Let me assure you we have no desire to embarrass innocent parties.” As Eric became more reticent and cautious, Gordon became smoother and more glib, like a salesman who has lost a sale but wishes to retain the goodwill of the customer.
“Mary could tell you more than Eric,” I said to Gordon. “She worked with Sue Sholto and was friendly with her. One woman can find out things about another woman more easily than a man can, anyway.”
“I’ll get in touch with her tomorrow. Where is she staying?”
“At the Grant for the present. But I think you’ll have to depend on your Honolulu sources for the bulk of your evidence. I gather that Sue Sholto didn’t talk about herself.”
“I was about to come to this end of the affair,” Gordon said in a faintly patronizing tone. “Lieutenant Swann, can you round up two or three members of the crew who were intimate with Land?”
“I don’t think he was intimate with anybody. But I’ll see what I can do. Do you want to wait here?”
“If you don’t mind my using your room.”
“Not at all.” Eric went out.
He returned in about ten minutes with two Negroes. In the interval Gordon cross-questioned me about the circumstances of Sue Sholto’s death. He was particularly interested in the movements of the guests and of Hector Land, which I reconstructed from memory as well as I could.
The two Negroes who preceded Eric unwillingly through the hatch looked frightened. They exchanged furtive looks. Their mouths were closed and set. Gordon’s introduction of himself capitalized on their fear:
“My name is Gordon. I am an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. My special field is subversive activities, that is, catching spies and traitors.”
“This is Joe Doss, the Captain’s steward,” Eric said. Joe Doss was a small fat man with an almost hairless head and the face of a dusky moon. “This is Albert Feathers, one of the mess-boys who shared a compartment with Land.” Albert Feathers was a lanky mulatto with large liquid eyes, a convulsive Adam’s apple, and hair that was forcibly straight.
“Hector Land,” Gordon continued, “is suspected of being a spy and a traitor. He was apparently a member of an illegal organization named Black Israel. Did he ever mention it to you?”
“No, sir. He never mentioned anything like that to me.” Joe Doss disowned Hector Land in the same spirit, almost the same words, that Eric had used in disowning Sue Sholto: “I didn’t know him very well. He worked down in the wardroom and I worked up in the Captain’s galley.”
“Feathers, you went on liberty with Land more than once,” Eric said.
“Yes, sir,” Feathers admitted in a dull voice. “But I wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with his lodge.”
“Did he try to get you to join Black Israel?” Gordon said.
“Yes, sir. He didn’t call it Black Israel, but that must be what he was talking about. He said it was to make the dark people strong.”
“By what methods?”
“He didn’t say. I told him he was just going to get himself into trouble, and when I told him that he just shut up like a clam. He said he’d get me if I said anything to anybody.”
“You should have told me or your division officer about that,” Eric said. “You might have saved a lot of trouble.”
“Yes, sir,” he said tonelessly. “I’ll know better next time.”
“Did Hector Land try to persuade you to spy for him?”
“Oh, no, sir, nothing like that. He didn’t say anything about me spying. He just told me about the secret society. I just thought it was like an ordinary secret society.” Feathers’ large eyes seemed ready to dissolve in tears. His feet were rooted to the floor but his long body moved restlessly under his blue dungarees.
“Where did Hector Land get his money?”
“I don’t know, sir. He got his pay.”
“I’m not talking about his pay. He had more money than the Navy ever paid him. Where did he get it?”
“I don’t know, sir. Maybe he got it spying.”
“Why you making that up, Albert?” Joe Doss said. “You don’t know if he made his money spying.”
“No, sir. I thought that’s what you meant.”
“Hector Land made money gambling,” Joe Doss said.
“Yes, sir,” Feathers echoed. “He made money gambling. He ran a pool. He told me one time that back in Detroit he used to be overlook man for a policy wheel.”
Gordon turned to Doss, who seemed the more intelligent of the two: “What kind of a pool?”
“I don’t know, sir. It was some kind of a numbers game.”
“Did you ever buy a chance in it?”
“No, sir, I don’t gamble.”
“We’re not interested in checking up on gambling just now,” Eric said. “If you know anything, let’s have it. You won’t suffer for it. It may do you some good.”