Wolson hurried off to the Captain’s cabin, and Eric and I sat down with the book. He looked up the entries and I wrote them down in a column on a slip of paper. In twenty minutes we found the record of six enclosures in letters which Hector Land had sent to Mrs. Hector Land in Detroit. The entries, which were dated, extended over the last three months. Each was for approximately one hundred dollars, and the total was six hundred and twenty dollars.
“He didn’t save that out of his Navy pay,” Eric said. “He’s got another source of income.”
“Gambling?”
“Could be. He’d have to have a wonderful run of luck.”
“He could have won it all at once, in one glorious crapgame, and sent it home in installments to avoid suspicion.”
“That’s true. The dates correspond with the times we’ve been in port. We’ve been in and out of Pearl regularly for the last three months. We’ve been in for three or four days approximately every two weeks. Of course he had to send it off when we were in port, because you can’t mail letters at sea. I wonder where in hell he got his money.”
“Where’s Land now?”
“In his quarters, I suppose. He’s restricted to the ship until the next Captain’s Mast, and then he’ll probably get the brig.”
“For what?”
“He admitted himself that he went into that room to steal whiskey. Even if that’s the only thing he did, he’s in for it and he knows it.”
“I don’t suppose we’ll get anything out of him this morning,” I said. “Last night scared him stiff. But I think we should have a talk with him.”
“I think so too.”
We found Land in the wardroom helping another steward to set the tables for breakfast. He avoided looking at us and went on working as if we weren’t there. He worked quickly and intently as if he would willingly devote his whole life and all his faculties to the safe and homely task of unfolding tablecloths and arranging knives and forks and spoons.
When Eric called, “Land!” he straightened up and said, “Yessir,” still without looking at us. In the bright iron room his scarred black face and huge torso looked incongruous and lost, like a forest tree torn from its roots by a storm or a flood and lodged in an alien and fatal place.
“Come here and sit down,” Eric said. “I want to talk to you for a minute.”
He moved toward us quickly, and, after we had seated ourselves, sat down on the edge of a chair. “Yessir?”
“You’ve been sending a good deal of money home lately.”
“Not so much, sir. Just what I manage to save. My wife needs the money, sir.”
“No doubt she does. But that doesn’t explain where you’ve been getting it.”
“I saved it, sir. I hardly spend any money on myself at all. I send her all my pay, sir.”
“Where did you get six hundred and seventy dollars in the last three months? If you stall, I’ll know you’re lying.”
Land’s jaws moved convulsively, in labor with an answer, but no words came. Finally he said: “I made it, sir. I just made it.”
“How?”
“I made it gambling. I’m powerfully lucky with the dice, and I made that money gambling.”
“Who with?”
“Just with the boys. Anybody that wanted to play.”
“Men from this ship?”
“Yessir. Well, no, sir. Some of them was I guess. I don’t remember.”
“Think about it, and remember, Land. Because I’m going to check up on your story, and if you’re lying it’s going to be too bad for you. You’re in a pretty bad position as it is, and this gambling deal isn’t going to help.”
“Yessir,” Land said, the muscles of his face tense with repressed fear. “I made the money gambling. That’s the truth, and that’s why I’m telling you. I’m a lucky man at craps–”
“That’s what you said. Go out in the galley and see if there’s any chow for us. It’s nearly time for breakfast.”
Land rose as if a spring had been released under him, and almost ran into the galley.
“Do you think he’s telling the truth?”
“How should I know?” Eric said a little snappily. “A black never tells the truth to a white if he can think of anything better. He’s got too much to lose.”
A loudspeaker on the bulkhead began to rasp: “Lieutenant Swann please lay down to the quarterdeck for a telephone call. Telephone call on the quarterdeck for–”
“It’s probably the police,” Eric said wearily. “What was that detective’s name?”
“Cram.”
It was Detective Cram calling from Honolulu. He wanted to get formal statements from Eric and me, concerning the circumstances of Sue Sholto’s death and my discovery of the body.
“He wants to talk to you,” Eric said when he had told me this.
I took the receiver and said, “Drake speaking.”
“This is Cram. Can you come over to police headquarters this morning? I want to get your story straight.”
“Yes, but I have to report in at the Transport Office first. I may have to leave on pretty short notice.”
“Yeah, I know. We’re going to have the inquest this afternoon. You’ll have to be there, also Lieutenant Swann.”
“We’ll be there. Are there any new developments?”
“No, but the coroner has his doubts about it being a suicide. The trouble is, we’ve got no lead. Anybody could have done it, including the deceased. The whole thing’s wide open, and I don’t know how we’re going to get it closed. Do you?”
“No.”
“Well, we’ll talk about it when you come over to my office. Nine o’clock suit you?”
“Right.”
We talked about it for nearly two hours behind the Venetian blinds in Cram’s office, and got nowhere. Sue Sholto could have been killed by Land, by Eric, by me, by Gene Halford, by Mary Thompson, by Mrs. Merriwell, by Dr. Savo, by any one of a hundred people. No one who was at the party could account for his actions continuously, and there wasn’t even any reason for limiting the field of suspects to those who had attended the party. Honolulu House had been wide open to anyone all evening.
The stubborn fact that always stymied us, the blind alley where each new idea led, was that no one had any apparent reason for killing Sue. Eric and Mary were the only ones with whom Sue had had any personal relations, so far as we knew, and neither of them seemed an eligible suspect. I was not surprised that the upshot of the inquest, like the conclusion of our morning’s talk, was the verdict that Sue Sholto had died by her own hand.
During the inquest, which was repetitious, dull, and obscure, I watched Mary. She was the only object in the bare, sweltering room on which the eyes could rest without effort. She showed the effects of her friend’s death, of course; in the luminous pallor of her skin, the mournful directness of her gaze, the intense stillness of her hands when she gave her testimony. Once or twice her voice broke when she described Sue’s usual gaiety, contrasting with her sudden and unaccountable depression the night before.
“Yet I didn’t think it was a suicidal depression,” Mary said in answer to the Coroner’s question. “Sue was deeply emotional, passionate, but she never gave way to anything like – such black despair.” Her eyes grew dark with horror of the image that her imagination saw: a lithe body twisted and limp, a bright face become sodden and blue, a discontent with life so great that it preferred nothing. Mary had difficulty in speaking, and the Coroner excused her from the witness stand.
When the inquest was over Mary was the first to leave the room, walking quickly and blindly to the door. But when I made my way to the hall she was there waiting for me.