Five Passengers from Lisbon

7

He left them both at the door of the cabin. Marcia herself would not have been able to find it; the narrow gray passage looked to Marcia exactly like every other. The nurse, however, knew the ship probably as she knew the palm of her hand. She led them along intersecting passages, through doors, across an entrance to a ward, into another passage and another, stopped before one of the closed doors that lined it, and opened the door briskly. The interior of the cabin was dark.

Josh Morgan said briefly: "Sleep well," took his cap from the nurse and went away.

The nurse put the coat over Marcia's arm. "Are you sure you're all right, Miss Colfax? Or shall I stay?"

"No, no. Thank you. You've been very good. I'm keeping you from other things."

"I'm on night watch. So I'll go along and get my supper before I go back to my ward. Two other nurses are on duty there and two corpsmen. We take turns in going down for supper. If you're sure there's nothing I can do for you . . ."

"No, thank you."

The nurse smiled briefly, turned away and Marcia entered the cabin.

She closed the door. She'd wait until the nurse was out of sight and then find her way to Mickey's cabin.

Where were the lights? The other nurse, Lieutenant Stoddard, had said that Gili and Daisy Belle Cates shared the cabin with her. It occurred to her that they must be already in their bunks in the tiny room, and already asleep, for neither of them spoke to her.

It would be better simply to wait for a few minutes, until she was quite sure the nurse had gone and then slip out again without turning on the light and rousing Gili or Daisy Belle or both. She wondered what time it was. Something about the ship, the hushed atmosphere, the quiet empty stretches of corridors and closed doors had given her a sense of lateness. The nurse had spoken of supper. That would be, she supposed, about midnight, as in a hospital.

There was no sound except the distant throb of engines and the rush of water beyond some open port. She waited, her hand on the round knob of the door, listening, because in the darkness one does listen, and counting. In two minutes, when she had counted twice sixty seconds, it would be safe to leave the cabin without being observed by the nurse.

She had reached thirty when an odd thing happened. She had heard no sound except the mingled sounds of a ship at night. Certainly she heard no footstep in the corridor outside, but the handle of the door turned under her fingers.

It turned very quietly and very steadily. Unconsciously her own hand tightened, resisting that pressure. For an instant there was a queer small combat, silent and quiet, one pressure against the other. Then, as suddenly and as silently as it had begun, that stealthy, steady pressure stopped.

She knew when the hand outside relinquished its hold, for the handle gave to her own. Her heart was pounding so heavily that she could near nothing else.

If anybody tried to kill you tonight, he'll try again. Josh Morgan had said that only a few minutes ago.

But she was safe here, inside the ship with all its lights, with all the nurses and corpsmen and doctors awake and going about their tasks. With Daisy Belle and Gili in the cabin, so she could call them.

Were they in the cabin?

Her fingers still gripped the handle of the door as if frozen. She scrabbled along the wall with her other hand and touched a switch and the cabin sprang into light and nobody was there.

The bunks were made up, flat and neat. Night clothes borrowed from the wards, men's pajamas and men's crimson bathrobes, lay across each bunk above the neatly folded blankets.

Where was Gili, then? Where was Daisy Belle Cates? And who had turned that handle so silently and so stealthily, and then, aware of her own resisting hand, had stopped?

If it had been Gili or Daisy Belle she'd have insisted, knocked, called out. Either of the other two women had a right to enter the cabin openly.

She must look into the corridor quickly. Already seconds had passed.

Again something Josh Morgan had said caught at her for an instant. "There's a queer contagion about murder; perhaps it's terror of being discovered, perhaps something else."

But there was nothing she knew; nothing that could make her a danger or a threat to anyone. Yet she had not imagined the attack upon her in the shadow on deck. And she had not imagined that slow, furtive pressure on the handle of the door. Suppose someone knew that Gili and Daisy Belle were not there; suppose someone knew that she was alone in that tiny empty cabin.

She realized that thoughts like that alone were dangerous. You could think anything—yes, and fear anything, if you let yourself be conquered by such thoughts and such fears. She took a long breath and opened the door.

The passage was lighted and narrow and perfectly empty. No one moved anywhere along it; no one stepped furtively out of sight into some doorway; there was no sly flicker of motion anywhere.

There were doors all along the passage. She had an impression, although she was not then sure, that the cabin was in a section of the ship reserved for women patients, military or Red Cross workers, and that it adjoined or was in the same section with the nurses' quarters. In any event the doors were closed and no one was there.

She would go to Mickey.

She dropped the coat on a chair and then, leaving the lights on, closed the door quietly behind her and started along the passage to the right, in the direction of the main, square corridor and the nearest stairs. Up on deck. Josh Morgan had said, on the port side, the third door this side of the officers' lounge.

The ship seemed very large, after the tiny Portuguese ship, and again, very bewildering with its multiplicity of doors and passages. Any ship is at first confusing; but while passenger ships conform to a certain pattern, a hospital ship has its own pattern and to Marcia that pattern was new and strange. She knew that she was now in the forward portion of the ship, and that when she had entered the ship to find help for Mickey, she had been aft. There were offices here too, but this forward passage seemed to be a lively and frequented portion of the ship. She came out into the lobby, and there were bulletin boards, a divan, a door opening upon a lounge, heavy doors at each side leading to the deck. The offices here were not quite deserted, even at night. From somewhere along a lighted corridor branching likewise from the main corridor, but back along the port side, came the subdued sound of some machine, a typewriter or a teletype, working away in the night.

It was a heartening small sound, indicating the presence of other people.

The Magnolia appeared to be a converted passenger liner. A closed wide desk opposite Marcia was like the desk of the purser; the cabins were exact duplicates of small passenger staterooms; probably most of them had been torn out to make wards; the large salons and lounges would have been easily adaptable as wards. It was now literally a floating hospital.

All hospitals at night have a certain atmosphere, a hush and stillness, indefinable yet almost tangible. It touched her now, so she thought, climbing the stairs, what feet have climbed these stairs, what hands have slid over this railing, what hopes and fears and tangled human destinies have lived for the space of a voyage within these solid bulkheads? Only a hospital ship was different in that the patients were soldiers, men who had gone to war in order to give people like her and Mickey a chance to live in peace and freedom.

She reached the top of the stairs. The port side, Josh Morgan had said, and forward.

She turned, moving very quietly as one does in a hospital at night. There was a faint, clean hospital smell of antiseptics and medicine and soap. Through a distant opening she caught another glimpse of a night-lighted ward. Two corpsmen in white were standing in the light of a doorway near at hand, drinking coffee. Beyond them a nurse put a capped head from a ward office and glanced at her questioningly. She had a field jacket and the chart the small envelope contained in her hand. Marcia turned again, crossed to the left, found a narrow, lighted passage there and went along it.

There were again rows of closed doors, and at the very end of the passage an open doorway and a lighted room beyond showing red lounge chairs and a table stacked with magazines. This then, must be the officers' lounge, so Mickey's cabin was very near. She walked on lightly, but Josh Morgan apparently heard her footsteps. He appeared in the doorway of the officers' lounge, put down a cigarette quickly and came toward her. He'd changed to pajamas and the crimson bathrobe in which she had first seen him; one sleeve of the bathrobe hung empty. "I was waiting for you," he said. "Messac's room is here." He knocked at one of the narrow gray doors.

There was a feeling of sudden stillness in the cabin. He knocked again, more firmly. There was the sound of quick movement and Mickey opened the door. He was still in the uniform that had been loaned him; there was a white gauze dressing across his temple.

"Marcia!" He gave a surprised glance at Josh Morgan and said: "Come in . . ." and stood aside so they could enter. Gili was sitting on the bunk opposite, perfectly composed, her long, beautiful legs crossed, her slanting green eyes bright and curious.

"I expect you don't remember me," said Josh Morgan to Mickey. "You were in a pretty dazed condition. The doctor and I helped you to the dispensary."

"Oh, of course, Colonel Morgan. The doctor told me." Mickey closed the door. "Gili—Miss Duvrey, Colonel Morgan."

Gili's eyes were suddenly very luminous and warm. She tossed back a lock of her long golden hair and smiled slowly and leaned forward to put her hand in Colonel Morgan's. He said rather briskly: "How do you do," and let go her hand. "Did Major Strong fix you up, Messac?" he inquired of Mickey. "He was just starting to work on you when I left."

Mickey's scarred fingers touched the dressing on his face. "Oh, yes, I'm okay. I've only got a thumping headache. Stupid of me! I was looking for you, Marcia. I got back to the deck where I'd left you. The Captain was busy and I couldn't bother him just then so I wasn't gone very long, really. You weren't there and ... Do sit down. Here's a chair."

"There's room here. Sit by me, Colonel Morgan," said Gili. She put her large white hand invitingly on the bunk beside her.

"Thanks," Josh Morgan sat down, leaning forward, below the upper bunk. Marcia took the chair Mickey had pulled out. She said: "I had walked around to the port side. I met Colonel Morgan and we talked a while. Then I came back and you weren't there. After a few minutes I walked aft and found you."

"I don't see how I could give myself such a knockout blow. I certainly wasn't tight," said Mickey with a shrug. "It's as if somebody hit me."

The ceiling light cast a white illumination directly down upon them, so every face and every detail was very clear and sharp. Gili seemed to have moved imperceptibly nearer Josh Morgan. Her shoulder almost touched his. She was sitting crouched forward a little too, to miss the upper bunk, but relaxed and graceful with her long legs stretched out, and one hand spread out on the bunk backward so as to support her. She had loosened her hair from its heavy knot and it fell now over her shoulders, bright gold at the ends and darker along the part. Her eyes were not made up as usual but were brilliant and green and her mouth crimson. The severe neatness of the nurse's uniform that she was wearing seemed foreign to her, as if she were dressed for a masquerade. She was at ease, yet, as always with Gili, there was a suggestion of latent power, of muscles able to spring at an instant's notice, as with a slumberous cat. She was watching now and listening—and shifted just then, gracefully and deliberately, and a little nearer Josh Morgan.

The officer under that strong, downward light looked rather white and ill. His mouth was tight, with a curious look of tension and his gray-blue eyes rather narrow and dark. He shifted his own position, only perceptibly, appearing to move in order to give his arm, supported by its sling, more comfort. The move was, however, a little away from Gili. Marcia thought quite sharply and unexpectedly, some time I'm going to slap Gili—which was an absurd thing to think; a fleeting, childish bit of irritation, altogether silly. Josh Morgan eased his arm again, his shoulders looking very wide and solid under that crimson bathrobe, his hair very black and curling upward a little over his ears. He said to Mickey: "Did anybody hit you?"

Mickey's face, too, was too brightly illumined. It showed the sharp lines those years had brought, the hollows around his gray eyes. He went to sit on the edge of the opposite bunk and said, slowly: "I don't know. I was walking along the deck. ... I just suddenly knew I was falling, that I'd hit my head, that everything was black and confused and—that's all."

"Didn't you see anybody?"

Mickey shook his head. "I tell you there was nothing." He brooded for a moment and said: "I fainted once or twice. Maybe more. I mean while I was in prison." His words and voice were matter of fact and even. His hands, as if they had a secret frightened life of their own, went out of sight, behind him, holding to the mattress. "Everybody did, from various reasons. That's in the past. But that's the way it seemed to me there on deck tonight. I simply blanked out. But it was with a kind of crash. I suppose that's when I hit my head against the bulkhead. That is, understand me, I'm not sick. I'm perfectly well. But it was like that."

Gili said: "Don't, Andre. Don't think of those horrible things. They are gone." Her voice was warm and full of life and strength and yet was casual as if she had bestowed a pat to a wounded dog.

Marcia linked her own hands on her knee and said steadily: "Andre, there was someone on the deck."

Josh Morgan cut in: "Miss Colfax had rather a bad experience, Messac. She came inside to get help and then decided to return to you, and on her way around the deck she either crashed into something there in the darkness or there was someone on deck who seems to have tried to—well, to push her overboard."

Gili sat up and gave a queer, small scream and clapped her hand over her mouth. Mickey jumped up and stared down at Marcia. "What happened? Who was it? Marcia, tell me . '. ." He put his hand hard on her shoulder. His face was white and drawn.

Josh Morgan said quickly: "Oh, she's all right. The doctor looked her over. But it was rather a shock. The point is, Messac, if somebody tried to kill her, it was somebody from the lifeboat. At least . . ." He paused while Mickey's white face blazed down at her, and his hand dug into her shoulder and Gili sat there with her hand tight over her mouth and her eyes wide and dark as a cat's shining over it. Then Josh Morgan said: "At least nobody else on the ship could have done it. Nobody else on the ship would have a motive. Or so the Captain says."

Gili slid out of the bunk in one long sinuous movement. Her face was glistening queerly and so white that it had a greenish tinge around the shadows of mouth and nose. Her eyes were blank and bright. She cried jerkily: "It is the murderer. None of us is safe! None of ... He was killed. Alfred. He was big and strong and—then he was killed. Just like that. In a moment—under our eyes, he was killed. We are not safe. We . . ." Her eyes darted around and around the cabin, her head moved to and fro like a panther's seeking a way out of its cage. A horrible kind of claustrophobia seemed to possess her. She cried, still gasping and hoarse: "I know who killed him. I know why . . ."

Josh Morgan rose suddenly, and Andre said: "Gili, what are you saying? What do you know?"

"What do I ... ?" Gili's searching, bright eyes reached him and stopped and she caught her full lower lip in strong white teeth and held it so hard there was a tiny smudge of blood suddenly upon it. Josh Morgan said: "Go on. Who killed him?"

Gili still staring, let go her lip slowly. "That—that American woman did it. The Cates woman. She—she was afraid of him. She was a friend of the Nazis. Alfred knew it. She's rich. He'd have got money from her. She killed him."