The Man in the Brown Suit (9 page)

At the sting of the cold water he stirred, then sat up.

“Keep still, please,” I said.

He was the kind of young man who recovers his faculties very quickly. He pulled himself to his feet and stood there swaying a little.

“Thank you; I don't need anything done for me.”

His manner was defiant, almost aggressive. Not a word of thanks—of even common gratitude!

“That is a nasty wound. You must let me dress it.”

“You will do nothing of the kind.”

He flung the words in my face as though I had been begging a favour of him. My temper, never placid, rose.

“I cannot congratulate you on your manners,” I said coldly.

“I can at least relieve you of my presence.” He started for the door, but reeled as he did so. With an abrupt movement I pushed him down upon the sofa.

“Don't be a fool,” I said unceremoniously. “You don't want to go bleeding all over the ship, do you?”

He seemed to see the sense of that, for he sat quietly whilst I bandaged up the wound as best I could.

“There,” I said, bestowing a pat on my handiwork, “that will have to do for the present. Are you better-tempered now and do you feel inclined to tell me what it's all about?”

“I'm sorry that I can't satisfy your very natural curiosity.”

“Why not?” I said, chagrined.

He smiled nastily.

“If you want a thing broadcast, tell a woman. Otherwise keep your mouth shut.”

“Don't you think I could keep a secret?”

“I don't think—I know.”

He rose to his feet.

“At any rate,” I said spitefully, “I shall be able to do a little broadcasting about the events of this evening.”

“I've no doubt you will too,” he said indifferently.

“How dare you!” I cried angrily.

We were facing each other, glaring at each other with the ferocity of bitter enemies. For the first time, I took in the details of his appearance, the close-cropped dark head, the lean jaw, the scar on the brown cheek, the curious light grey eyes that looked into mine with a sort of reckless mockery hard to describe. There was something dangerous about him.

“You haven't thanked me yet for saving your life!” I said with false sweetness.

I hit him there. I saw him flinch distinctly. Intuitively I knew that he hated above all to be reminded that he owed his life to me. I didn't care. I wanted to hurt him. I had never wanted to hurt anyone so much.

“I wish to God you hadn't!” he said explosively. “I'd be better dead and out of it.”

“I'm glad you acknowledge the debt. You can't get out of it. I saved your life and I'm waiting for you to say ‘Thank you.' ”

If looks could have killed, I think he would have liked to kill me then. He pushed roughly past me. At the door he turned back, and spoke over his shoulder.

“I shall not thank you—now or at any other time. But I acknowledge the debt. Some day I will pay it.”

He was gone, leaving me with clenched hands, and my heart beating like a mill race.

Eleven

T
here were no further excitements that night. I had breakfast in bed and got up late the next morning. Mrs. Blair hailed me as I came on deck.

“Good morning, gipsy girl. Sit down here by me. You look as though you hadn't slept well.”

“Why do you call me that?” I asked, as I sat down obediently.

“Do you mind? It suits you somehow. I've called you that in my own mind from the beginning. It's the gipsy element in you that makes you so different from anyone else. I decided in my own mind that you and Colonel Race were the only two people on board who wouldn't bore me to death to talk to.”

“That's funny,” I said. “I thought the same about you—only it's more understandable in your case. You're—you're such an exquisitely finished product.”

“Not badly put,” said Mrs. Blair, nodding her head. “Tell me about yourself, gipsy girl. Why are you going to South Africa?”

I told her something about Papa's life work.

“So you're Charles Beddingfeld's daughter? I thought you weren't a mere provincial miss! Are you going to Broken Hill to grub up more skulls?”

“I may,” I said cautiously. “I've got other plans as well.”

“What a mysterious minx you are. But you do look tired this morning. Didn't you sleep well? I can't keep awake on board a boat. Ten hours” sleep for a fool, they say! I could do with twenty!”

She yawned, looking like a sleepy kitten. “An idiot of a steward woke me up in the middle of the night to return me that roll of films I dropped yesterday. He did it in the most melodramatic manner, stuck his arm through the ventilator and dropped them neatly in the middle of my tummy. I thought it was a bomb for a moment!”

“Here's your Colonel,” I said, as the tall soldierly figure of Colonel Race appeared on the deck.

“He's not my Colonel particularly. In fact he admires
you
very much, gipsy girl. So don't run away.”

“I want to tie something round my head. It will be more comfortable than a hat.”

I slipped quickly away. For some reason or other I was uncomfortable with Colonel Race. He was one of the few people who were capable of making me feel shy.

I went down to my cabin and began looking for something with which I could restrain my rebellious locks. Now I am a tidy person, I like my things always arranged in a certain way and I keep them so. I had no sooner opened my drawer than I realized that somebody had been disarranging my things. Everything had been turned over and scattered. I looked in the other drawers and the small hanging cupboard. They told the same tale. It was as though someone had been making a hurried and ineffectual search for something.

I sat down on the edge of the bunk with a grave face. Who had been searching my cabin and what had they been looking for? Was it the half sheet of paper with scribbled figures and words? I shook my head, dissatisfied. Surely that was past history now. But what else could there be?

I wanted to think. The events of last night, though exciting, had not really done anything to elucidate matters. Who was the young man who had burst into my cabin so abruptly? I had not seen him on board previously, either on deck or in the saloon. Was he one of the ship's company or was he a passenger? Who had stabbed him? Why had they stabbed him? And why, in the name of goodness, should Cabin No 17 figure so prominently? It was all a mystery, but there was no doubt that some very peculiar occurrences were taking place on the
Kilmorden Castle
.

I counted off on my fingers the people on whom it behoved me to keep watch.

Setting aside my visitor of the night before, but promising myself that I would discover him on board before another day had passed, I selected the following persons as worthy of my notice:

(1) Sir Eustace Pedler. He was the owner of the Mill House, and his presence on the
Kilmorden Castle
seemed something of a coincidence.

(2) Mr. Pagett, the sinister-looking secretary, whose eagerness to obtain Cabin 17 had been so very marked. N.B.—Find out whether he had accompanied Sir Eustace to Cannes.

(3) The Rev. Edward Chichester. All I had against him was his obstinacy over Cabin 17, and that might be entirely due to his own peculiar temperament. Obstinacy can be an amazing thing.

But a little conversation with Mr. Chichester would not come amiss, I decided. Hastily tying a handkerchief round my hair, I went up on deck again, full of purpose. I was in luck. My quarry was leaning against the rail, drinking beef tea. I went up to him.

“I hope you've forgiven me over Cabin 17,” I said, with my best smile.

“I consider it unchristian to bear a grudge,” said Mr. Chichester coldly. “But the purser had distinctly promised me that cabin.”

“Pursers are such busy men, aren't they?” I said vaguely. “I suppose they're bound to forget sometimes.”

Mr. Chichester did not reply.

“Is this your first visit to South Africa?” I inquired conversationally.

“To South Africa, yes. But I have worked for the last two years amongst the cannibal tribes in the interior of East Africa.”

“How thrilling! Have you had many narrow escapes?”

“Escapes?”

“Of being eaten, I mean?”

“You should not treat sacred subjects with levity, Miss Beddingfeld.”

“I didn't know that cannibalism was a sacred subject,” I retorted, stung.

As the words left my lips, another idea struck me. If Mr. Chichester had indeed spent the last two years in the interior of Africa, how was it that he was not more sunburnt? His skin was as pink and white as a baby's. Surely there was something fishy there? Yet his manner and voice were so absolutely
it
. Too much so, perhaps. Was he—or was he not—just a little like a
stage
clergyman?

I cast my mind back to the curates I had known at Little Hampsley. Some of them I had liked, some of them I had not, but certainly none of them had been quite like Mr. Chichester. They had been human—he was a glorified type.

I was debating all this when Sir Eustace Pedler passed down the deck. Just as he was abreast of Mr. Chichester, he stooped and picked up a piece of paper which he handed to him, remarking, “You've dropped something.”

He passed on without stopping, and so probably did not notice Mr. Chichester's agitation. I did. Whatever it was he had dropped, its recovery agitated him considerably. He turned a sickly green, and crumpled up the sheet of paper into a ball. My suspicions were accentuated a hundredfold.

He caught my eye, and hurried into explanations.

“A—a—fragment of a sermon I was composing,” he said with a sickly smile.

“Indeed?” I rejoined politely.

A fragment of a sermon, indeed! No, Mr. Chichester—too weak for words!

He soon left me with a muttered excuse. I wished, oh, how I wished, that I had been the one to pick up that paper and not Sir Eustace Pedler! One thing was clear, Mr. Chichester could not be exempted from my list of suspects. I was inclined to put him top of the three.

After lunch, when I came up to the lounge for coffee, I noticed Sir Eustace and Pagett sitting with Mrs. Blair and Colonel Race. Mrs. Blair welcomed me with a smile, so I went over and joined them. They were talking about Italy.

“But it
is
misleading,” Mrs. Blair insisted. “
Aqua calda
certainly
ought
to be cold water—not hot.”

“You're not a Latin scholar,” said Sir Eustace, smiling.

“Men are so superior about their Latin,” said Mrs. Blair. “But all the same I notice that when you ask them to translate inscriptions in old churches they can never do it! They hem and haw, and get out of it somehow.”

“Quite right,” said Colonel Race. “I always do.”

“But I love the Italians,” continued Mrs. Blair. “They're so obliging—though even that has its embarrassing side. You ask them the way somewhere, and instead of saying ‘first to the right, second to the left' or something that one could follow, they pour out a flood of well-meaning directions, and when you look bewildered they take you kindly by the arm and walk all the way there with you.”

“Is that your experience in Florence, Pagett?” asked Sir Eustace, turning with a smile to his secretary.

For some reason the question seemed to disconcert Mr. Pagett. He stammered and flushed.

“Oh, quite so, yes—er quite so.”

Then with a murmured excuse, he rose and left the table.

“I am beginning to suspect Guy Pagett of having committed some dark deed in Florence,” remarked Sir Eustace, gazing after his secretary's retreating figure. “Whenever Florence or Italy is mentioned, he changes the subject or bolts precipitately.”

“Perhaps he murdered someone there,” said Mrs. Blair hopefully. “He looks—I hope I'm not hurting your feelings, Sir Eustace—but he does look as though he might murder someone.”

“Yes, pure Cinquecento! It amuses me sometimes—especially when one knows as well as I do how essentially law-abiding and respectable the poor fellow really is.”

“He's been with you some time, hasn't he, Sir Eustace?” asked Colonel Race.

“Six years,” said Sir Eustace with a deep sigh.

“He must be quite invaluable to you,” said Mrs. Blair.

“Oh, invaluable! Yes, quite invaluable.” The poor man sounded even more depressed, as though the invaluableness of Mr. Pagett was a secret grief to him. Then he added more briskly: “But his face should really inspire you with confidence, my dear lady. No self-respecting murderer would ever consent to look like one. Crippen, now, I believe, was one of the pleasantest fellows imaginable.”

“He was caught on a liner, wasn't he?” murmured Mrs. Blair.

There was a slight rattle behind us. I turned quickly. Mr. Chichester had dropped his coffee cup.

Our party soon broke up; Mrs. Blair went below to sleep and I went out on deck. Colonel Race followed me.

“You're very elusive, Miss Beddingfeld. I looked for you everywhere last night at the dance.”

“I went to bed early,” I explained.

“Are you going to run away tonight too? Or are you going to dance with me?”

“I shall be very pleased to dance with you,” I murmured shyly. “But Mrs. Blair—”

“Our friend, Mrs. Blair, doesn't care for dancing.”

“And do you?”

“I care for dancing with you.”

“Oh!” I said nervously.

I was a little afraid of Colonel Race. Nevertheless I was enjoying myself. This was better than discussing fossilized skulls with stuffy old professors! Colonel Race was really just my ideal of a stern silent Rhodesian. Possibly I might marry him! I hadn't been asked, it is true, but, as the Boy Scouts say, Be Prepared! And all women, without in the least meaning it, consider every man they meet as a possible husband for themselves or their best friend.