Local Color

“Miss Cartwright, Major Slocum,” he said, “this is my – this is Mr. – ” he hesitated the merest fraction of a second – “Mr. Cole, who is travelling with me this trip.”

Miss Cartwright nodded, the Major bowed, Keller pulled off his cap. They descended the steps in a straggling procession, Miss Cartwright and Bronston being in front, the Major next and Keller bringing up the rear. At the foot of the stairs Bronston addressed the young lady.

“I’ll relieve you of my coat now,” he said. “I’m afraid you did find it rather heavy.” He looked straight into her eyes as he spoke and touched his lips with a forefinger. She nodded back to show she thoroughly understood the signal, and then he took the ulster across his arm and he and Keller moved on ahead.

“Look here, Bronston,” grumbled Keller when they were out of earshot of the Major and his niece, “you acted kind of funny up yonder. It looked to me like you didn’t care much about introducing me to your swell friends.”

“To tell you the truth,” apologised Bronston, “I forgot for the moment what your travelling name was – couldn’t remember whether it was Cole, or something else. That’s why I hung fire. It did make the situation a bit awkward, didn’t it? I’m sorry.”

“Oh, all right,” said Keller; “that explains it. But I was a little sore just for a minute.”

At the door leading into the first cross hall Bronston glanced back over his shoulder. Miss Cartwright and her uncle were not following them. They had halted upon an untenanted stretch of deck, and the young woman was saying something to her uncle and accenting with gestures what she said. Her hands moved with the briskness which generally accompanies an eager disclosure of important tidings. The Major, his stately head bent to hear her, was nevertheless looking at the vanishing figures of the two men.

Bronston smiled gently to himself as he and Keller crossed the threshold and headed for the dining saloon. He didn’t go near Miss Cartwright or Major Slocum again that day, but in the course of the afternoon he, watching from a distance, saw her in earnest conversation with two of her friends from Evanston – and both of these two were women. Immediately Bronston went below and stayed there. He didn’t even get up for dinner. The excuse he gave Keller, when Keller came in at dinnertime, was that he wanted to go over some papers connected with his case. The small desk at which he sat was littered with papers and he was steadily making notes upon a scratch pad. He asked Keller to ask their dining-room steward to bring him a light meal upon a tray.

At this point we digress, in order to drag in the fact that this ship, the Mesopotamia, was one of the largest ships afloat at this time. The following year there would be bigger ones in commission, but for the moment she ranked among the largest. She was over eight hundred feet long and of a beam measurement and a hull depth to correspond; but even upon a craft of such amplified proportions as this was news travels with amazing rapidity, especially if it be news calculated to arouse and to excite. Such a ship might be likened to a small, compact town set afloat, with all the social ramifications of a small town and with all of a small town’s curiosity regarding the private affairs of the neighbours. Ashore gossip flies swiftly enough, goodness only knows; at sea it flits from point to point, as if on the wings of the swallow. What one knows every one else knows, and knows it very soon too.

The digression is concluded. Let us return to the main thread of our narrative. Let us go back to the joint occupants of D-forty.

It was nine-twenty that same evening when Keller broke in upon his companion, who sat at the little desk, still busied with his writing. Keller seemed flustered, not to say indignant. He slammed the door behind him viciously.

“Somebody’s on,” he stated, speaking with disconsolate conviction. “I know I haven’t said anything, and it don’t stand to reason that you’d be talking; but they’re on.”

“On what?” inquired Bronston calmly.

“On to us – that’s what! It’s leaked out who we are.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I don’t think anything about it – I know. I’ve got the proofs. We had our little game all fixed up for to-night – me and the same three fellows I’ve been playing with right along; but when I looked them up in the smoking room after dinner they all three excused themselves – said they didn’t feel like playing. Well, that was all right, but a little later I saw Latham and Levy joining in a game with two other men, both strangers to me. So I tried to get into another game that was just starting up, and the fellows there horned me out. I could tell they didn’t want to be playing with me. And going through the lounge I tumbled, all of a sudden, to the fact that all the people there, men and women both, were looking hard at me and nodding to one another – get what I mean? Maybe they didn’t think I saw them – I didn’t let on, of course – but I did see ’em. I tell you they’re on. Say, what do you know about a lot of stuck-up people passing up a man cold, just because they’ve found out some way that he’s a private detective?”

Overcome by his feelings he snorted in disgust. Then added, as an afterthought: “Well, what’s the next move? What do you think we’d better do now?”

Bronston considered a moment before answering.

“If your suspicions are correct I take it the best thing for us to do is to stay away from the other passengers as much as we possibly can during the rest of this trip. At least that’s what I figure on doing – with your consent.”

“How about that Miss What’s-her-name, the girl who was with you this morning?” asked Keller. “How are you going to cut her out?”

“That’s simple enough – merely by not going near her, that’s all,” said Bronston. “Admitting that you are right and that we have been recognised, the young woman probably wouldn’t care to be seen in my company anyhow. As things seem to stand now it might be embarrassing for her.”

“I guess you’ve got the right dope,” said Keller. “If anybody objects to my company they know what they can do. What do you figure on doing – sticking here in the room?”

“Remaining in a stateroom for a day or so won’t be much of a privation to a man who faces the prospect of being locked up in an English jail indefinitely,” said Bronston. “It’ll merely be a sort of preliminary training. Besides, we ought to reach shore to-morrow night or the next morning. I shall certainly stay where I am.”

“Me too, I guess,” said Keller dolorously. “I sure was enjoying that little game, though.”

After all, as it turned out, Keller wouldn’t have cared to leave his quarters anyhow on the next day. For overnight the sea, so placid and benignant until now, developed a passing fit of temperament. In the morning the sea wasn’t exactly what you would call rough, but on the other hand it wasn’t exactly what you would call absolutely smooth; and Keller, being a green traveller, awoke with a headache and a feeling of squeamishness in his stomach, and found it no privation to remain upon the flat of his back. Except for a trip to the bathroom Bronston did not venture out of the room either. He read and wrote and smoked and had his meals brought to him. Keller couldn’t touch food.

So the situation stood in the middle of the afternoon when there came a gentle knock at the door. Keller was dozing then, but roused himself as Bronston called out to know what was wanted. The voice which answered through the panels was the voice of their bedroom steward, Lawrence.

“I’ve a wireless, sir,” he said; “just received from the coast. It’s addressed to ‘Sharkey Agency’s Operative, aboard Steamship Mesopotamia,’ and the wireless operator brought it to the purser, sir, and the purser told me to bring it to this stateroom. Was that right, sir?”

Keller sat up with a groan. His head was swimming.

“Stay where you are,” said Bronston; “I’ll get it for you”; and before Keller could swing his feet to the floor Bronston had unbolted the door and had taken the message from Lawrence’s hand. The steward, standing outside, had time only to murmur his inevitable “Thank you, sir,” and catch one peep at the interior of the stateroom before the door was closed in his face. Bronston turned and handed the sealed envelope to Keller.

“What did I tell you last night about ’em all being on?” said Keller. “A message comes with no name on it, and yet they know right where to send it. And, say, did you get a flash at the look on that steward’s face? Somebody’s been telling that guy something too.”

He opened the brown envelope and glanced at the small sheet that it contained. “The London officer will meet us at Liverpool,” he said, as he crumpled the paper and tossed it aside. “We land at the other place first, don’t we – Fishhawk, or whatever its name is?”

“Fishguard,” Bronston told him. “Or rather, we stop off Fishguard, and tenders come out to meet us and to take off mail and passengers. Then the ship goes on to Liverpool.”

“Good enough,” said Keller. “You and me will stay right here in this stateroom until we get to Liverpool; that’ll be some time to-morrow, won’t it?”

“To-morrow afternoon, probably,” said Bronston. He went back to his writing, whistling a little tune to himself.

The precaution of the overcareful Keller proved unnecessary, because in the morning word was brought by the bathroom steward that a notice had just been posted in the gangway opposite the purser’s desk announcing that because of the roughness of the channel the liner would proceed straight to Liverpool without stopping off Fishguard at all. Nevertheless, the detective kept the stateroom door locked. With land in sight he was taking no chances at all.

Since their stateroom was on the port side and the hills of Wales stood up out of the sea upon the other side, they saw nothing of Fishguard as the Mesopotamia steamed on up the choppy channel. Mainly they both were silent; each was busy with his own thoughts and speculations. Hampered in their movements by the narrow confines of their quarters they packed their large bags and their small ones, packing them with care and circumspection, the better to kill the time that hung upon their hands. Finally Bronston, becoming dissatisfied with his own bestowal of his belongings, called in the handy Lawrence to do the job all over again for him.

As the shifting view through their porthole presently told them, they left the broad channel for the twistywise river. The lightships which dot the Mersey above its mouth, like street-lamps along a street, were sliding by when Lawrence knocked upon the door to ask if the luggage was ready for shore. He was told to return in a few minutes; but instead of going away he waited outside in the little corridor.

“Well,” said Keller, “I guess we’d better be getting up on deck, hadn’t we?” He glanced sidewise at the shiny steel cuffs, which he had fished out from an ulster pocket and which lay upon the rumpled covers of his bed. Alongside them was the key of the door.

“I suppose so,” said Bronston indifferently; “I’ll be with you in a minute.” With his back half turned to Keller he was adjusting the seemingly refractory buckle of a strap which belonged about one of the valises. He had found it necessary to remove the strap from the bag.

“Hello, what’s this?” he said suddenly. The surprise in his tone made Keller look. Bronston had leaned across the foot of his bed and from a wall pocket low down against the wainscoting had extracted something.

“Why, it’s a razor,” he said, holding it up; “and what’s more it looks like your razor – the one you thought you’d lost.”

“That’s what it is,” said Keller, taking it from him. “I wonder how in thunder it got itself hid there? I’ll stick it in my pocket.”

“Better not,” advised Bronston. “If I’m not mistaken it is against the English law to carry a razor upon the person. A locked valise would be a better place for it, I should say.”

“I guess you’re right,” agreed Keller. “In a strange country it’s just as well to be careful.”

He turned and stooped down, fumbling with the hasps upon his small handbag. As he did, something supple and quick descended in a loop over his head and shoulders. In an instantaneous flash of alarm he sensed that it was the same broad strap which he had seen a moment before in the hands of the other man. As he straightened with an exclamation of surprise, the strap was violently tightened from behind, the tough leather squeaking under the strain as the tongue of the buckle slipped through a handy hole; and there he was, trussed fast about the middle, with his arms bound down against his sides just at the elbows, so that his lower arms flapped in the futile fashion of a penguin’s wings. He cried out then, cursing and wriggling and straining. But a man who would have been his equal in bodily vigour even though his limbs were unhampered was upon him from the rear, pitching him forward on his bed, face downward, wrestling him over on his side, muffling his face in a twist of bed clothing, then forcing his wrists together and holding them so while there was a jingle of steel chain and a snapping together of steel jaws. Half suffocated under the weight of his antagonist, with his mouth full of blanket and his eyes blinded, overpowered, tricked, all but helpless, lashing out with his feet in a vain protest against this mishandling, Keller now was dimly aware of a wallet being hurriedly removed from his breast-pocket and of something else of equal bulk being substituted for it. Then he was yanked upon his feet, a cap was jammed upon his head, the leather noose about his body was cast off, and he stood unsteadily – a composite picture of dishevelment, dismay, chagrin and rage – wearing upon his two clamped hands the same gyves which his conqueror had worn when they boarded the ship.

“You’ll pay for this – I’ll make you pay for this!” he sputtered. “I’ll show you up! Damn you, take these things off of me!” and he tugged impotently at his bonds until his wrist-bones threatened to dislocate themselves. “You ain’t got a chance to get away with this – not a chance,” he cried. “I’ll raise this whole ship! I’ll – ”

“Rest perfectly easy,” said Bronston calmly, soothingly almost, as he flung the strap aside and stepped back. “The ship has already been raised, or a part of it. If you weren’t so excited you would know that our friend Lawrence has been trying to get in the door for the last half minute or so. I think he must have heard you kicking. Let us admit him.”

He had the key in his hands – in the stress and fever of the encounter he had even remembered, this thoughtful man, to secure the key. And now, with his eyes turned toward the captive, who remained stupefied at this inexplicable manœuvre, he was stepping backward and unfastening the door, and swinging it open for the admission of the astounded servant.

“Lawrence,” snapped Bronston in the voice of authority and command, “I want you. My man here tried to give me the slip and I had to use a little violence to secure him. Bring these bags and come along with us to the deck. I shall possibly need your help in making the explanations which may be necessary. Understand, don’t you?”

Reaching backward, he slipped a shining gold coin into Lawrence’s palm; he slid into a grey ulster; he advanced a step and fastened a firm hand upon the crook of Keller’s fettered right arm. Involuntarily the captive sought to pull away.

“I keep telling you you ain’t got a chance,” he blurted. “I’ll go to the captain – ”

“No, my noisy friend, you won’t go to the captain,” Bronston broke in on his tirade, “but you’ll be taken to him.” With a forward swing he thrust Keller across the threshold and they bumped together in the narrow cross hall. “Come along now, Lawrence, and look sharp,” he bade the pop-eyed steward over his shoulder.

We may briefly sketch the details of the trip through the passageway, and up the steps from D-deck to C-deck and from C-deck to B, for really it occupied less time than would be required for a proper description of it. Suffice it to say that it was marked by many protestations and by frequent oaths and by one or two crisp commands and once by a small suggestion of a struggle. These sounds heralded the progress of the trio as they moved bumpingly along, so that the first officer, catching untoward noises which rose above the chatter of the passengers who surrounded him, garbed and ready for the shore, stepped back from the deck into the cabin foyer, followed by a few first-cabin folk who, like him, had heard the clamour and had gathered that something unusual must be afoot.

The first officer barred the way of the procession. He was a competent and self-possessed young man, else he would not have been the first officer. At sight of his brass buttons and gold-braided sleeves Keller, still striving to cast off Bronston’s hold, emitted a cry of relief.

“Captain! Captain!” he yelled; “listen to me. Listen to me a minute, please.”

“The captain is on the bridge until the ship has docked,” answered the uniformed one. “I am the first officer. What is the trouble?”

“There is no trouble – now.” It was Bronston speaking; speaking authoritatively and without outward signs of excitement. “Would you care to hear what I have to say, Mr. Officer?”

“I would.”

“But, see here, I’m the one that’s got a right to do the talking,” burst in a frenzied gurgle from the sorely beset Keller. “You listen to me. This is an outrage!”

“One at a time,” quoth the first officer in the voice of one accustomed to having his orders obeyed. “Proceed,” he bade Bronston.

“You may have heard,” stated Bronston, “that we are a detective and a prisoner. I believe there has been talk to that effect on board here for the past day or two.”

The first officer – his name was Watts – nodded to indicate that such rumours had come to his ears.

“Very well, then,” went on Bronston; “my man here will probably claim he is being kidnapped. That is his last hope.” He smiled at this. “He tried to get away from me a bit ago. We had a tussle. The steward here heard us struggling. I overpowered him and ironed him. Now, for reasons best known to himself, I apprehend that he will claim that he is really the detective and that I am really the prisoner. Will you kindly look at us both and tell me, in your opinion, which is which?”

Dispassionately, judicially, First Officer Watts considered the pair facing him, while curious spectators crowded together in a semicircle behind him and a thickening stream of other first-cabin passengers poured in from off the deck, jostling up closely to feast their gaping eyes upon so sensational an episode. It took the young Englishman only a moment or two to make up his mind; a quick scrutiny was for him amply sufficient. For one of these men stood at ease; well set up, confident, not noticeably rumpled as to attire or flustered as to bearing. But the other: His coat was bunched up on his back, one trouser leg was pulled half way up his shin; his mussed hair was in his eyes; his cap was over one ear; his eyes undoubtedly had a most wild and desperate look; from his mouth came vain words and ravings. Finally there were those handcuffs. Handcuffs, considered as such, may not signify guilt, yet somehow they typify it. So far as First Officer Watts was concerned those handcuffs clinched the case. To his understanding they were prima facie evidence, exceedingly plausible and highly convincing. Promptly he delivered his opinion. It was significant that, in so doing, he addressed Bronston and ignored Keller:

“I’m bound to say, sir, the appearances are in favour of you. But there should be other proof, don’t you think – papers or something?”

“Certainly,” agreed Bronston. He drew a red leather wallet from his own breast-pocket and handed it over to Watts. Then, working deftly, he extracted half a dozen letters and a sheaf of manuscript notes from an inner pocket of Keller’s coat and tendered them for examination; which crowning indignity rendered Keller practically inarticulate with madness. Watts scanned these exhibits briefly, paying particular attention to a formal-looking document which he drew from the red wallet.

“These things seem to confirm what you say,” was his comment. He continued, however, to hold the written and printed testimony in his hands. He glanced at the impressive document again. “Hold on; this description of the man who is wanted says he has a moustache?”

“Oh, I’m going to offer you other proof, plenty of it,” Bronston promised, cutting in on Keller, who grew more incoherently vocal with each moment. “Would you be so good as to send for the ship’s barber?”

“Bring the barber!” ordered Watts of a wide-eyed cabin boy.

“This steward has served us since we came aboard,” went on Bronston, indicating Lawrence. “Now, my man, I want you to tell the truth. Which of us two seemed to be in charge on the night you first saw us – the night we came aboard – this man or I?”

“You, sir,” answered Lawrence. “I recall quite distinctly that ’twas you spoke to me about the ’eavy luggage.”

“Who took from you the wireless message which you brought yesterday to our stateroom, addressed to the representative of the Sharkey Detective Agency?”

“You, sir.”

“Who handed you your tip a few minutes ago for serving us during the voyage?”

“You did, thank you, sir.”

A figure of dignity pushed forward through the ring of excited spectators and a sonorous, compelling voice was raised impressively. Major Slocum had been late in arriving upon the scene, but what he now said earned for him instant attention.

“Mr. Officer,” announced the Major with a gesture which comprehended the central pair of figures, “you may accept it from me as an absolute and indisputable fact that this gentleman, who calls himself Brown, is a bona-fide detective. I gleaned as much from my conversation with him upon the occasion of our first meeting. He evinced a wide knowledge of police matters. Of the other person I know nothing, except that, since Brown is the detective, he must perforce be the prisoner.” He cleared his throat before going on:

“Moreover, deeply though I regret to bring a lady, and especially a young lady, into a controversy involving a person who is charged with crime” – here he blighted the hapless Keller with a glare – “deeply as I regret it, I may say that my niece is in position to supply further evidence.”

The crowd parted to admit Miss Lillian Cartwright, then closed in behind her. Excitement flushed the young lady’s cheeks becomingly. The first officer bowed to her:

“Pardon me, miss, but would you mind telling us what you know?”

“Why, I’ve known for two days – no, three days, I think – who they were,” stated Miss Cartwright. “Mr. Brown – the detective, you know – loaned me his ulster the other morning; and when I put it on I felt something – something heavy that jingled in the pocket. Mr. Brown didn’t seem to want me to take it out or speak about it. But at the very first chance I peeped in the pocket, and it was a pair of handcuffs. I’d never seen any handcuffs before – closely, I mean – so I peeped at them several times. They are the same handcuffs that are on that man now.”

“That was my overcoat he loaned you!” yelled Keller, waving his coupled hands up and down in his desperate yearning to be heard in his own defence. “Those handcuffs were in my overcoat pocket, I tell you, not in his.”

“Oh, no,” contradicted Miss Cartwright, most positively. “Yours is a brown ulster. I’ve seen you wearing it evenings on the deck. And this was a dark-grey ulster, the same one that Mr. Brown is wearing this very minute.

“And I remember, too, that on that very same morning you came up and asked Mr. Brown to take you to lunch, or rather you asked him to go to lunch so that you could go, too. You spoke to him twice about it – quite humbly, I thought.”

There were murmurs of applause at this. Another voice, unheard until now, spoke out, rising above the confused babbling. It was the voice of a sophisticated New Yorker addressing an equally sophisticated friend:

“There’s nothing to it, Herman! Look at those feet on Brown. Nobody but a bull would be wearing shoes like that. And pipe the plaid lid – a regulation plain-clothes man’s get-up, the whole thing is.”

“But those are my shoes he’s wearing,” wailed Keller, feeling the trap closing in upon him from every side. “Those are my shoes – I loaned ’em to him.”