THE THING
I deserve no credit for the solution of the Ella’s mystery. I have a
certain quality of force, perhaps, and I am not lacking in physical
courage; but I have no finesse of intellect. McWhirter, a foot shorter
than I, round of face, jovial and stocky, has as much subtlety in his
little finger as I have in my six feet and a fraction of body.
All the way to the river, therefore, he was poring over the drawing. He
named the paper at once.
“Ought to know it,” he said, in reply to my surprise. “Sold enough
paper at the drugstore to qualify as a stationery engineer.” He writhed
as was his habit over his jokes, and then fell to work at the drawing
again. “A book,” he said, “and an axe, and a gibbet or gallows.
B-a-g—that makes ‘bag.’ Doesn’t go far, does it? Humorous duck, isn’t
he? Any one who can write ‘ha! ha!’ under a gallows has real humor.
G-a-b, b-a-g!”
The Ella still lay in the Delaware, half a mile or so from her original
moorings. She carried the usual riding-lights—a white one in the bow,
another at the stern, and the two vertical red lights which showed her
not under command. In reply to repeated signals, we were unable to
rouse the watchman. I had brought an electric flash with me, and by its
aid we found a rope ladder over the side, with a small boat at its
foot.
Although the boat indicated the presence of the watchman on board, we
made our way to the deck without challenge. Here McWhirter suggested
that the situation might be disagreeable, were the man to waken and get
at us with a gun.
We stood by the top of the ladder, therefore, and made another effort
to rouse him. “Hey, watchman!” I called. And McWhirter, in a deep bass,
sang lustily: “Watchman, what of the night?” Neither of us made, any
perceptible impression on the silence and gloom of the Ella.
McWhirter grew less gay. The deserted decks of the ship, her tragic
history, her isolation, the darkness, which my small flash seemed only
to intensify, all had their effect on him.
“It’s got my goat,” he admitted. “It smells like a tomb.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“Turn the light over the side, and see if we fastened that boat. We
don’t want to be left here indefinitely.”
“That’s folly, Mac,” I said, but I obeyed him. “The watchman’s boat is
there, so we—”
But he caught me suddenly by the arm and shook me.
“My God!” he said. “What is that over there?”
It was a moment before my eyes, after the flashlight, could discern
anything in the darkness. Mac was pointing forward. When I could see,
Mac was ready to laugh at himself.
“I told you the place had my goat!” he said sheepishly. “I thought I
saw something duck around the corner of that building; but I think it
was a ray from a searchlight on one of those boats.”
“The watchman, probably,” I said quietly. But my heart beat a little
faster. “The watchman taking a look at us and gone for his gun.”
I thought rapidly. If Mac had seen anything, I did not believe it was
the watchman. But there should be a watchman on board—in the forward
house, probably. I gave Mac my revolver and put the light in my pocket.
I might want both hands that night. I saw better without the flash,
and, guided partly by the bow light, partly by my knowledge of the
yacht, I led the way across the deck. The forward house was closed and
locked, and no knocking produced any indication of life. The after
house we found not only locked, but barred across with strips of wood
nailed into place. The forecastle was likewise closed. It was a dead
ship.
No figure reappearing to alarm him, Mac took the drawing out of his
pocket and focused the flashlight on it.
“This cross by the mainmast,” he said “that would be where?”
“Right behind you, there.”
He walked to the mast, and examined carefully around its base. There
was nothing there, and even now I do not know to what that cross
alluded, unless poor Schwartz—!
“Then this other one—forward, you call it, don’t you? Suppose we locate
that.”
All expectation of the watchman having now died, we went forward on the
port side to the approximate location of the cross. This being in the
neighborhood where Mac had thought he saw something move, we approached
with extreme caution. But nothing more ominous was discovered than the
port lifeboat, nothing more ghostly heard than the occasional creak
with which it rocked in its davits.
The lifeboat seemed to be indicated by the cross. It swung almost
shoulder-high on McWhirter. We looked under and around it, with a
growing feeling that we had misread the significance of the crosses, or
that the sinister record extended to a time before the “she devil” of
the Turner line was dressed in white and turned into a lady.
I was feeling underneath the boat, with a sense of absurdity that
McWhirter put into words. “I only hope,” he said, “that the watchman
does not wake up now and see us. He’d be justified in filling us with
lead, or putting us in straitjackets.”
But I had discovered something.
“Mac,” I said, “some one has been at this boat within the last few
minutes.”
“Why?”
“Take your revolver and watch the deck. One of the barecas—”
“What’s that?”
“One of the water-barrels has been upset, and the plug is out. It is
leaking into the boat. It is leaking fast, and there’s only a gallon or
so in the bottom! Give me the light.”
The contents of the boat revealed the truth of what I had said. The
boat was in confusion. Its cover had been thrown back, and tins of
biscuit, bailers, boathooks and extra rowlocks were jumbled together in
confusion. The barecas lay on its side, and its plug had been either
knocked or drawn out.
McWhirter was for turning to inspect the boat; but I ordered him
sternly to watch the deck. He was inclined to laugh at my caution,
which he claimed was a quality in me he had not suspected. He lounged
against the rail near me, and, in spite of his chaff, kept a keen
enough lookout.
The barecas of water were lashed amidships. In the bow and stern were
small air-tight compartments, and in the stern was also a small locker
from which the biscuit tins had been taken. I was about to abandon my
search, when I saw something gleaming in the locker, and reached in and
drew it out. It appeared to be an ordinary white sheet, but its
presence there was curious. I turned the light on it. It was covered
with dark-brown stains.
Even now the memory of that sheet turns me ill. I shook it out, and
Mac, at my exclamation, came to me. It was not a sheet at all, that is,
not a whole one. It was a circular piece of white cloth, on which, in
black, were curious marks—a six-pointed star predominating. There were
others—a crescent, a crude attempt to draw what might be either a dog
or a lamb, and a cross. From edge to edge it was smeared with blood.
Of what followed just after, both McWhirter and I are vague. There
seemed to be, simultaneously, a yell of fury from the rigging overhead,
and the crash of a falling body on the deck near us. Then we were
closing with a kicking, biting, screaming thing, that bore me to the
ground, extinguishing the little electric flash, and that, rising
suddenly from under me, had McWhirter in the air, and almost overboard
before I caught him. So dazed were we by the onslaught that the
thing—whatever it was—could have escaped, and left us none the wiser.
But, although it eluded us in the darkness, it did not leave. It was
there, whimpering to itself, searching for something—the sheet. As I
steadied Mac, it passed me. I caught at it. Immediately the struggle
began all over again. But this time we had the advantage, and kept it.
After a battle that seemed to last all night, and that was actually
fought all over that part of the deck, we held the creature subdued,
and Mac, getting a hand free, struck a match.
It was Charlie Jones.
That, after all, is the story. Jones was a madman, a homicidal maniac
of the worst type. Always a madman, the homicidal element of his
disease was recurrent and of a curious nature.
He thought himself a priest of heaven, appointed to make ghastly
sacrifices at certain signals from on high. The signals I am not sure
of; he turned taciturn after his capture and would not talk. I am
inclined to think that a shooting star, perhaps in a particular quarter
of the heavens, was his signal. This is distinctly possible, and is
made probable by the stars which he had painted with tar on his
sacrificial robe.
The story of the early morning of August 12 will never be fully known;
but much of it, in view of our knowledge, we were able to reconstruct.
Thus—Jones ate his supper that night, a mild and well-disposed
individual. During the afternoon before, he had read prayers for the
soul of Schwartz, in whose departure he may or may not have had a part.
I am inclined to think not, Jones construing his mission as being one
to remove the wicked and the oppressor, and Schwartz hardly coming
under either classification.
He was at the wheel from midnight until four in the morning on the
night of the murders. At certain hours we believe that he went forward
to the forecastle-head, and performed, clad in his priestly robe, such
devotions as his disordered mind dictated. It is my idea that he
looked, at these times, for a heavenly signal, either a meteor or some
strange appearance of the heavens. It was known that he was a poor
sleeper, and spent much time at night wandering around.
On the night of the crimes it is probable that he performed his
devotions early, and then got the signal. This is evidenced by
Singleton’s finding the axe against the captain’s door before midnight.
He had evidently been disturbed. We believe that he intended to kill
the captain and Mr. Turner, but made a mistake in the rooms. He clearly
intended to kill the Danish girl. Several passages in his Bible, marked
with a red cross, showed his inflamed hatred of loose women; and he
believed Karen Hansen to be of that type.
He locked me in, slipping down from the wheel to do so, and pocketing
the key. The night was fairly quiet. He could lash the wheel safely,
and he had in his favor the fact that Oleson, the lookout, was a
slow-thinking Swede who notoriously slept on his watch. He found the
axe, not where he had left it, but back in the case. But the case was
only closed, not locked—Singleton’s error.
Armed with the axe, Jones slipped back to the wheel and waited. He had
plenty of time. He had taken his robe from its hiding-place in the
boat, and had it concealed near him with the axe. He was ready, but he
was waiting for another signal. He got it at half-past two. He admitted
the signal and the time, but concealed its nature—I think it was a
shooting star. He killed Vail first, believing it to be Turner, and
making with his axe, the four signs of the cross. Then he went to the
Hansen girl’s door. He did not know about the bell, and probably rang
it by accident as he leaned over to listen if Vail still breathed.
The captain, in the mean time, had been watching Singleton. He had
forbidden his entering the after house; if he caught him disobeying, he
meant to put him in irons. He was without shoes or coat, and he sat
waiting on the after companion steps for developments.
It was the captain, probably, whom Karen Hansen mistook for Turner.
Later he went back to the forward companionway, either on his way back
to his cabin, or still with an eye to Singleton’s movements.
To the captain there must have appeared this grisly figure in flowing
white, smeared with blood and armed with an axe. The sheet was worn
over Jones’s head—a long, narrow slit serving him to see through, and
two other slits freeing his arms. The captain was a brave man, but the
apparition, gleaming in the almost complete darkness, had been on him
before he could do more than throw up his hands.
Jones had not finished. He went back to the chart-room and possibly
even went on deck and took a look at the wheel. Then he went down again
and killed the Hansen woman.
He was exceedingly cunning. He flung the axe into the room, and was up
and at the wheel again, all within a few seconds. To tear off and fold
up the sheet, to hide it under near-by cordage, to strike the ship’s
bell and light his pipe—all this was a matter of two or three minutes.
I had only time to look at Vail. When I got up to the wheel, Jones was
smoking quietly.
I believe he tried to get Singleton later, and failed. But he continued
his devotions on the forward deck, visible when clad in his robe,
invisible when he took it off. It was Jones, of course, who attacked
Burns and secured the key to the captain’s cabin; Jones who threw the
axe overboard after hearing the crew tell that on its handle were
finger-prints to identify the murderer; Jones who, while on guard in
the after house below, had pushed the key to the storeroom under
Turner’s door; Jones who hung the marlinespike over the side, waiting
perhaps for another chance at Singleton; Jones, in his devotional
attire, who had frightened the crew into hysteria, and who, discovered
by Mrs. Johns in the captain’s cabin, had rushed by her, and out, with
the axe. It is noticeable that he made no attempt to attack her. He
killed only in obedience to his signal, and he had had no signal.
Perhaps the most curious thing, after the murderer was known, was the
story of the people in the after house. It was months before I got that
in full. The belief among the women was that Turner, maddened by drink
and unreasoning jealousy, had killed Vail, and then, running amuck or
discovered by the other victims, had killed them. This was borne out by
Turner’s condition. His hands and parts of his clothing were
blood-stained.
Their condition was pitiable. Unable to speak for himself, he lay
raving in his room, talking to Vail and complaining of a white figure
that bothered him. The key that Elsa Lee picked up was another clue,
and in their attempt to get rid of it I had foiled them. Mrs. Johns, an
old friend and, as I have said, an ardent partisan, undertook to get
rid of the axe, with the result that we know. Even Turner’s recovery
brought little courage. He could only recall that he had gone into
Vail’s room and tried to wake him, without result; that he did not know
of the blood until the next day, or that Vail was dead; and that he had
a vague recollection of something white and ghostly that night—he was
not sure where he had seen it.
The failure of their attempt to get rid of the storeroom key was
matched by their failure to smuggle Turner’s linen off the ship.
Singleton suspected Turner, and, with the skillful and not over
scrupulous aid of his lawyer, had succeeded in finding in Mrs. Sloane’s
trunk the incriminating pieces.
As to the meaning of the keys, file, and club in Singleton’s mattress,
I believe the explanation is simple enough. He saw against him a strong
case. He had little money and no influence, while Turner had both. I
have every reason to believe that he hoped to make his escape before
the ship anchored, and was frustrated by my discovery of the keys and
by an extra bolt I put on his door and window.
The murders on the schooner-yacht Ella were solved.
McWhirter went back to his hospital, the day after our struggle,
wearing a strip of plaster over the bridge of his nose and a new air of
importance. The Turners went to New York soon after, and I was alone. I
tried to put Elsa Lee out of my thoughts, as she had gone out of my
life, and, receiving the hoped-for hospital appointment at that time, I
tried to make up by hard work for a happiness that I had not lost
because it had never been mine.
A curious thing has happened to me. I had thought this record finished,
but perhaps—
Turner’s health is bad. He and his wife and Miss Lee are going to
Europe. He has asked me to go with him in my professional capacity!
It is more than a year since I have seen her.
The year has brought some changes. Singleton is again a member of the
Turner forces, having signed a contract and a temperance pledge at the
same sitting. Jones is in a hospital for the insane, where in the
daytime he is a cheery old tar with twinkling eyes and a huge mustache,
and where now and then, on Christmas and holidays, I send him a supply
of tobacco. At night he sleeps in a room with opaque glass windows
through which no heavenly signals can penetrate. He will not talk of
his crimes,—not that he so regards them,—but now and then in the night
he wraps the drapery of his couch about him and performs strange
orisons in the little room that is his. And at such times an attendant
watches outside his door.