DR. CUSTRIN
It was not until dinner that evening that I had the opportunity of
meeting Dr. Custrin. The _Naomi_ was steaming along amid the gorgeous
pageantry of sunset and the warm glow of the dying day was warring with
the soft lights of the electric candles on the dinner-table when I came
in to the saloon. Garth introduced me to the doctor. He was a sleek,
smooth young man with hair like black satin and a beautifully trained
small black moustache. His hands and feet were small and well-made and
there would have been a touch of effeminacy about him but for his
otherwise manly bearing, his bold black eyes and pleasant voice. A
certain narrowness of the eyes and a curl of the nostrils told me, who
have an eye for such things, that, probably, as his name indicated, he
was of Jewish extraction. In conversation I elicited that he had been
born in Mauritius, educated at Cape Town, and had taken his degree at
King's College Hospital in London. Garth's New York office it
appeared, had picked him up at Colon where he was studying Colonel
Goethals' wonderful arrangements for the extermination of yellow fever
and malaria.
Lawless and Mackay, the chief engineer, a sententious Scot, who opened
his mouth only to utter a platitude or to put food or drink into it,
dined with us. Garth made me sit next to Marjorie who looked ravishing
in a white lace evening frock.
"Put the two war veterans together!" the baronet commanded. "My little
girl here," he explained to me, "drove a car at the front. She has the
Military Medal."
"Daddy!" expostulated Marjorie and a warm flush coloured her cheeks.
"I would never have given my consent," Garth added, "but she just
didn't ask me for it!"
"My dear old thing," said the girl. "You make me look ridiculous by
bragging about my silly little trips around the bases when I'm sure Dr.
Custrin or Major Okewood saw a hundred times more of the war than I
ever did!"
"I never got out of the base at the Cape," said the doctor. "The East
African campaign kept us too busy for anybody to be spared."
"And I," was my retort, "never went back to France after the Somme!"
"Were you wounded?" asked Garth.
"Badly?" questioned Marjorie in reply to my nod.
"Nothing to write home about," I answered. "When I came out of
hospital I went into the Intelligence."
"How fearfully thrilling!" exclaimed the girl. "Wasn't it frightfully
exciting?"
"It wasn't the front," I replied.
After dinner on the deck under a vast span of velvet sky spangled with
stars I found myself alone with Marjorie Garth. A broad band of yellow
light shone out from the smoke-room where the others sat and talked
over their coffee. Above us on the bridge the form of the man at the
wheel bulked black.
We strolled up and down in silence. For myself I was quite overcome by
the majesty of the tropical night at sea.
"The Intelligence," asked Marjorie suddenly, "that's the Secret
Service, isn't it?"
"Yes," I agreed.
"You were very modest about it at dinner," she remarked.
I shrugged my shoulders.
"I only stated the plain truth," I returned. "In the fighting troops,
remember, every fifth man became a casualty and three months was the
average run of the platoon officer!"
"Yet," commented the girl, "you seem like a man who has been in tight
places. I shouldn't say to look at you that you've had a placid or
easy existence. Like mine, for instance. Sometimes I think it's only
men of action like you who know how to grapple with life. Can you
imagine me in an emergency for instance?"
"Yes," I said. "I believe I can. You've got a brave eye, Miss Garth.
I think one can judge people's temperaments, as one judges horses, by
the eye."
She shook her head and laughed.
"What does this sort of life teach anybody? This beautiful ship, these
well-trained sailors, the splendid service that Daddy's money can buy?
My dear man, it's no good flattering me about my brave eye. Money
makes a solid barrier between my life and any really thrilling crisis!
I shall be kept in cotton-wool till the end of the chapter."
"What a strange person you are!" I exclaimed. "Girls of your age with
your position and your.... your.... attractions don't find time for
philosophising as a rule. You ought to be enjoying your youth instead
of meditating about life. I don't mean to be inquisitive; but.... are
you unhappy?"
We had halted near the rail. We were standing very close together and
I felt the touch of her warm young body against my arm.
She turned and looked at me. Again I told myself that this girl was
the most beautiful, the most unspoiled creature I had ever met.
"I've only once been thoroughly happy," she answered rather wistfully,
"and that was when I was with the army in France. I loved the romance,
the adventure of it all, the good comradeship not only between the
women but also between the men and the women. Money wasn't everything
then. I was an individual with my own personality, my own friends.
But what am I now? The daughter of Garth, the millionaire. And they
print my picture in the weekly papers because one day I shall have a
great deal of money which Daddy has worked all his life to make. I've
never had any brothers and sisters and my mother has been dead for
years. I've had to live my whole life with money as my companion. And
money's not a bit companionable!"
She smiled whimsically at me, then gazed down abstractedly at the
phosphorescent water thumping against the side of the ship.
"This yacht!----" she went on. "I have everything a girl could
possibly require here--everything except my freedom!"
"Good Lord!" I observed, "you'll have that too, when you marry! You've
plenty of time for that!"
Marjorie Garth laughed.
"My dear man," she protested, "don't you know it's easier to marry off
a girl with no money than one who will have as much as I shall? To
Daddy every young man I meet is a fortune-hunter. If I run a boy home
from the golf-club in my car I am cross-questioned regarding his
'intentions'; if a man takes me out dancing in the afternoon there's a
scene. And Daddy's taste in men is vile; I'm not alluding to you--I
mean at home! But I've no use for the second generation of
millionaires and I've told Daddy so. I'd rather marry a beggar than
some of the rich men's sons he tries to throw in my way...."
Lucky beggar, I thought.
"I don't know why I've told you all this," the girl concluded. "You
seem to draw me out. Or perhaps it's the night. Oh, look! Wish!"
A star fell gleaming across the sky.
"I have," I said; (it was one of those idle wishes which a poor man
must not admit even to himself).
"Was it about your trip to Cock Island?"
"I'll lose my wish if I tell!" I replied. "As a matter of fact it was
not!"
Suddenly she put a warm soft hand on mine. Her touch made my heart
beat faster.
"Is it a Secret Service mission?" she asked.
Caution is second nature to a man who has served his apprenticeship in
the silent corps. In that balmy air, beneath a brilliant moon hanging
like some great lamp in the sky, it was hard to refuse a woman's
pleading, especially a girl like this, bending forward with sparkling
eyes and parted lips so close to me that I could detect the fragrance
of her hair. I put my other hand over hers as it rested on mine on the
rail.
"You can trust me," she pleaded. "I am sure there is something
mysterious about your trip to this tiny island. I know you are not
going on Government survey" (this was the pretext which Garth had given
out for my visit to Cock Island) "for the Navy always do that sort of
work. Tell me your secret!"
I had to catch hold of myself; for she was almost irresistible. I
looked away from her, steeling myself to a refusal. What I might have
done I cannot say for what man can account for actions performed under
the magic of the tropical moon? But at that moment my nose detected
the scent of a cigarette quite close.
I glanced quickly round. To all appearances we were alone. Behind us
the white smoke stack of the _Naomi_ reared itself into the night; on
either hand the deck was quite deserted; the only human being visible
was the black form of the man at the wheel silhouetted against the
faint glow of the binnacle light. But the acrid fragrance of Turkish
tobacco stole up my nostrils and the possibility of a listener within
earshot brought me swiftly back to earth.
"I'm afraid there's no mystery about my little jaunt," said I, turning
to the girl, "you know all there is to know!"
I spoke as nonchalantly as possible. But I would not meet the
reproachful gaze she turned upon me. Then she snatched her hand away.
"I'm afraid you must think me horribly inquisitive!" she observed
coldly.
There was a footstep on the deck. Dr. Custrin stood behind us.
Between his fingers a cigarette sent up a little spiral of blue smoke;
across his arm he carried a shining silver wrap.
"Sir Alexander asked me to tell you to put this round your shoulders,"
he said to Marjorie and unfolded the silver scarf. "The wind is
freshening."
The girl drew the wrap about her shoulders. The doctor looked at the
two of us.
"What a wonderful night!" he remarked. "In these latitudes the moon
seems to exercise a strange influence upon us. For example, your
father has been telling me the whole story of his early life, Miss
Garth, and I believe I have been unbosoming my aspirations and
ambitions to him. But confidences under the moon one is apt to regret
in the morning, eh, major?"
He spoke perfectly suavely and with no trace of impertinence in his
manner. But there was a hint of double meaning in his words (which
clearly indicated that he had overheard at any rate the end of our
conversation) that jarred on me.
"You need have no fears about Major Okewood," replied Marjorie with
just the faintest touch of scorn in her voice. "I am sure he is the
pattern of discretion. I think," she added, "I am feeling the tiniest
bit chilly. You promised to play for me, doctor. Won't you come into
the saloon? There is a piano there!"
Her gaze travelled proudly past me as she turned to Custrin. She made
it as clear as was compatible with the laws of hospitality that her
invitation did not include me. It was her woman's way of getting her
own back. I loved her for it; but I took a violent dislike to Custrin.
I mumbled some excuse about having to go to the chart-room and they
left me. Presently from the saloon came the rhythmic strains of the
_Rosen-Kavalier_, most sensual, most entrancing, of all Strauss's
music, played with a master-hand. The _Liebestod_, Grieg, Massenet's
_Air des Larmes_, Schumann--Custrin ran from one to the other while the
_Naomi_ stolidly thumped her way through the hissing sea. And always,
curse his impudence! the fellow played love-music....
One by one members of the crew drifted to the head of the companion-way
until there was quite a company of them outlined against the yellow
light that shone up from the cosy saloon. I remained leaning against
the rail, my chin on my chest, my pipe in my mouth, and let my thoughts
drift.... Adams coughing over his pannikin, John Bard, his honest face
troubled, looking round that house of death, the yellow-faced
Vice-Consul pulling on his black cigar.
But always I found my mind harking back to that ungainly silhouette
framed in the doorway of the hut and to the sinister echo of his
footsteps in the yard as the stranger turned his back on the scene of
slaughter which, I doubted not, had been of his contriving. What had
the Vice-Consul said? "His power is tremendous, his vengeance swift
and terrible!" Who was this lame man whom nobody saw yet whom
everybody feared? There was something of the insistence of a nightmare
in the way in which the glimpse I had had of him hung in my thoughts,
confounding itself with the ineffaceable image of that club-footed man
whom I had seen fall lifeless--how many years ago it seemed
now!--before my brother's smoking automatic. Well, whoever El Cojo
was, Mexican or South American, I was out of his clutches now. The
rail of the _Naomi_, quivering beneath my hand to the leap of the seas,
gave me confidence. I knocked the ashes out of my pipe and went below.