This time, the sensation amongst the assembled officers of the court
is one of genuine consternation. The affair has taken a very serious
turn indeed. The mystery of the _Marathon's_ loss is not yet solved,
but it promises to have a solution now, and a far more terrible one
than could have been deemed possible.
A quick readjustment of ideas and opinions is necessitated by this
extraordinary disclosure. The wild-eyed officer with the bandaged
head is not out of his mind, after all. The astonishing announcement
he has made is not the outcome of a disordered brain but a sober
statement of fact. And the two beautiful girls sitting one on each
side of Mrs. Shaw are not the unfortunate victims of a brutal outrage
upon the high seas, but the agents of a diabolical and successful
plot!
All this is extremely disturbing to the mental faculties, which have
suddenly to take in and assort these unexpected facts.
It is noticeable that Mrs. Shaw alone does not seem in the least
impressed or disturbed. _Her_ opinions or ideas need no
re-adjusting, whatever those of other people may require. She
betrays no sign of any emotion except that of slight boredom, and
does not move an inch except to place her sheltering arms around both
girls and draw them a little closer to her.
Not yet is there complete belief in the truth of Norah's words; or
perhaps it would be more correct to say that the import of them is
not yet completely realised; they are too astounding to be credited
on the instant.
"Do you really mean," the admiral addressed her, "that you have made
to Mr. Stapleton a confession that you and the others of your party
were concerned in the loss of the _Marathon_?"
"Yes, I do mean it," the girl answers proudly, "and I am glad!"
"What!" exclaims the admiral, shocked at such bravado, as it appears
to him. "_Glad_ that you were engaged in such a wicked plot?"
"No, glad that I made confession to Mr. Stapleton. And glad that it
has all come to light now--though for some reasons I am very sorry.
And I will tell you all you wish to know--I will indeed. But I would
rather that you should ask him."
The admiral falls back in his chair and gasps with more than
astonishment. The magnitude of this surprising revelation is simply
overwhelming. He is quite unable to find words to express what he
feels. He can only continue to act as if this nightmare were real
daytime truth, and so he puts to Stapleton the query,
"Would you mind telling us, Mr. Stapleton, just what it was that led
to this confession? I cannot believe it yet!"
"I am sorry to say it is only too true, sir I myself could hardly
credit it at first, till events forced it upon my belief. The
discovery, or rather the confession, was partly due to my chancing to
remember some words let fall by Miss Netta Sheridan when on board the
_Marathon_--words to which I paid no attention when they were first
repeated to me, as they had evidently been spoken under very great
nervous strain."
"What words? What sort of words?" the admiral questions. "Perhaps
Miss Netta would repeat them herself? I should prefer to hear them
at first-hand."
"Oh--oh--oh!" Netta wails; she is incapable of saying more than this,
and again buries her head in the bosom of Mrs. Shaw, after the manner
of the action popularly ascribed to the ostrich when trouble
threatens.
"Poor girl," cries the secretary, in quite an unusually stern voice.
"She's--she's ill, sir. She is not in a fit state to be pressed to
speak!"
"I will speak for her," calmly says her cousin. "It is perfectly
true that we were all three of us in a plot to blow up the ship--but
it was I alone who had to do the actual deed. I had the bomb."
"Oh, Norah, Norah," moans the other girl, "must you do this?"
"Was it a statement of this sort you meant when you referred to words
let fall by Miss Netta on board the _Marathon_?" asks the admiral of
Stapleton.
"Yes, sir, that was it exactly. It appears that she suddenly
repented of her part in the affair, and tried to tell the surgeon and
another officer about it in order to get them to take the necessary
action and save the ship."
"Who was that other officer? Was he rescued, or----?"
"No, sir, he was lost with the ship. Neither he nor the surgeon paid
any attention to what they considered the girl's ravings, and in fact
did not tell me anything about it till much later, and then as it
were by way of a joke."
"A _joke_! But you were first lieutenant of the ship; did you treat
the matter as a joke yourself?"
"No, sir. Though I thought as they did, that the words were those of
a girl who was not responsible for what she was saying. But
nevertheless, I caused a search to be made throughout the ship, both
on the upper deck and the main deck, I knew that none of the party
could have gone further below than that."
"You acted quite rightly. And you found nothing?"
"Nothing, sir. And that, I suppose, is what caused me to forget all
about the matter until later."
"And a pity you ever remembered it!" cries Mrs. Shaw, no longer able
to contain her indignation. "No, Admiral Darlington, it's no use
your telling me to hold my tongue; it's high time that someone
possessed of a little common-sense should speak a word. Can't you
see for yourself that the surgeon on board the _Marathon_ was quite
right? _He_ didn't believe a word of all this poor frightened girl's
imaginary story--_he_ put it down to the right cause, their
sufferings; and he ought to know, being a doctor, a good deal better
than this fool of a nephew of mine who has obviously only begun to
believe in the story since he has had this knock on the head which
has made him crazy for the time being! To put it plainly, they are
all three of them a little unhinged. As for the girls, on the top of
all they have been through I suppose they must have somehow or other
got to hear about the loss of the _Marathon_--you can't keep these
things secret, however much you may try--and, as a result, they have
just _dreamt_ this ridiculous story! I'm surprised at your listening
to it!"
"Well, Mrs. Shaw, upon my word, I'm more than half inclined to agree
with you," mutters the admiral. And the whole of the court, braced
by the cold douche of Mrs. Shaw's plain common-sense, begins to think
that perhaps it has been a little too ready to give credence to the
sensation offered it.
Stapleton himself is to a certain extent impressed by this view of
the situation. He forgets, for the moment, the meeting of Dick
Baynes and Norah in his presence, and the disclosure of her having
been in Glasgow the previous week. Nor can he be blamed for
forgetting, after such a shaking-up as he has had in falling over the
cliff. He almost begins himself to believe that they have all of
them been the victims of hallucination; and there is the opinion of
the fleet-surgeon to back up this belief.
"May I ask a question, sir?" It is Norah who is unexpectedly
addressing the admiral.
"Certainly you may, my dear Miss Sheridan." The admiral is actuated
by very kindly feelings towards the girl whom he regards with more
than a little pity--"of course you may. What is it you wish to ask?"
"I would like to ask Mr. Stapleton if he thinks that I was in my
right mind at the time I made my confession to him."
It is a terribly difficult position, that in which Stapleton finds
himself now. He came here to accuse and denounce this girl it is
true; but his accusation has been coldly received and largely
discredited--in so far that he himself is half converted to the view
that the whole charge is a phantasy of the imagination. And, now,
the thought uppermost in his mind is how he may save Norah from the
consequences of her own action; for he has made one great discovery
since he came into the room--that his love for her is not dead, but
stronger than ever.
"What have you to say to this, Stapleton?" says the admiral, noting
the silence of the young officer.
"I would rather not answer the question, sir."
"But I am afraid I must insist upon your doing so."
"Yes," Norah adds to the admiral's quiet command, "answer me, please."
"Why do you torture me?" cries the unhappy lover, goaded beyond
endurance, "can't you see that you are making me----"
"Answer me!"
"Come, Stapleton," urges the admiral, "we are waiting."
Thus constrained, Stapleton at last makes answer.
"She seemed to me to be entirely in possession of her senses."
"And did you believe what I told you?" continues Norah. She will not
spare him.
Again he takes refuge in silence.
"Will you answer her, please?" somewhat impatiently speaks the
admiral.
"I could not help believing her."
"Thank you. There is only one more question I want to ask you," the
girl continues. "Having heard all that has been said here, what do
you now believe to have been the cause of the blowing up of the
_Marathon_?"
Instead of replying to her, Stapleton faces the president of the
court, and in a clear, steady voice makes a moving appeal for mercy.
"Sir," he cries, "I submit that the questions now put to me are such
as I ought not to be called upon to answer, for the reason that they
all tend to prejudice the case against these young ladies. I came
here to accuse them, true! It was my duty to do so. But it is not
my duty to help them to condemn themselves. And there is another
thing which must be said--neither of these two girls actually had a
hand in depositing the bomb on board. One of them dissociated
herself from the attempt at a very early stage, and the other--this
lady who has tried so hard to influence this court against
herself--not only repented of her share in the plot but really did
her utmost to prevent it being carried out."
"What do you mean by that last remark? Explain yourself please," the
admiral says.
"She had the bomb concealed in her dress, and according to
arrangement, her part in the affair was to place it somewhere in the
ship before making her escape with the others. She refused to do so.
And when the man of the party tried to seize the bomb from her, she
resisted him, in the effort to save the ship from destruction."
"Dear me!" ejaculates the president, "well, well! This is really a
most extraordinary state of affairs altogether. What on earth could
have induced you," turning to Norah, "to take part in such a terrible
business, such a wicked scheme?"
"I was brought up from childhood to hate the English," Norah answers.
"My father hated them, and trained me up in his own ideas. At first
I made his opinions my own just because they were my father's; but
afterwards I came to hold them and believe in them on my own account.
You see, my father was killed by the English. And that broke my
mother's heart--she died, too. Do you think I had great cause to
feel friendship for the nation that brought them both to their death?"
"Poor girl, poor girl!" exclaims the admiral, almost forgetting her
complicity in the plot in his sympathy for her troubled life. "Then
you say it was just your inherited hatred of England that prompted
you to take part in this conspiracy, you and your cousin here?"
"No, sir, not Netta. She was cowed by her brother, and persuaded by
myself. You must not blame her, I tell you; in her heart she was
against it from the very beginning--only, she was forced into it.
Netta is innocent--at any rate in intention; as for myself, I do not
want any excuses to be made for me, and I neither ask nor desire any
mercy to be shown me."
"You were fully determined, you say, to carry out this wicked plan to
the very end?"
"Yes, I really meant to do the deed. I hated all the English."
"And--you hate us still?"
"I--no, not now; God forgive us, I cannot do so now."
"But did you not, then, actually place this bomb in the ship?"
"No, sir, it was taken from me by my cousin, Patrick."
"Then, did he find means to conceal it on board the _Marathon_?"
"I do not know. But I suppose he must have done so, since the ship
blew up."
This proves too much for good Mrs. Shaw. She cannot keep silent any
longer.
"Oh, I have no patience with any of you!" she exclaims, in superb
disregard of officialdom. "Norah, I should like to shake you! I
should like to shake all of you! Isn't it enough for you to know
that there was a lot of bad gunpowder on board the ship? What other
explanation do you want? Nasty dangerous stuff at the best of times,
and goodness only knows how dangerous it must be when it has turned
sour and gone bad or whatever it is that happens to it. You seem to
have forgotten all about that, and here you are listening to a
crack-brained fellow and a couple of hysterical girls with a
cock-and-bull story of a plot and a bomb! Really, for a lot of
grown-up men, I'm ashamed of you all!"
There is something in what she says. Her words are not without their
effect upon her listeners. On all sides there is evident by the
expression of their faces that they would much prefer to believe in
the more rational explanation supplied by the knowledge of the
defective ammunition, and that they are not quite certain that they
are not making fools of themselves in giving a hearing to this
strange story which appears more and more as it goes on to be based
on nothing firmer than an over-excited imagination.
"I think, sir," remarks an officer, voicing the opinions of the rest,
"that while no doubt this that we have just been told should of
course be thoroughly sifted, we certainly ought not to lose sight of
the possibilities of the defective cordite; and I cannot refrain from
giving my opinion that when we have concluded the examination it is
in this that we shall find, so far as we can ever hope to find, the
real cause of the _Marathon's_ loss."
A chorus of murmured approval follows the speaker as he ends this
direct little speech; and the universal wish is evidently for
suppressing the melodramatic story-tellers; nobody really believes in
them--their story fails to convince. And in all probability if they
can be decently dismissed now, the whole incident will presently be
allowed to sink into oblivion.
But there is always, at a public gathering, which the majority are
anxious to see ended, some annoying person who is possessed of an
equally keen desire to prolong the proceedings.
It is so on this present occasion. Rising in his place, an officer
of the court suggests:
"There is one thing which I consider we ought to do at once, without
waiting further, in regard to this matter."
All the others cast glances of profound disgust upon this officious
busybody. The luncheon hour has long gone by, forgotten in the
excitement of the unexpected interlude; and now, if there is more
talking to be done that will not brook delay, heaven only knows what
hour it will be before anyone is able to get a feed!
"Well, and what is it?" The admiral, unconsciously affected by the
same corporeal needs as the others, is just a little short-tempered.
"I think, sir, that we ought to hear the statement of the other
witness of the--the three shipwrecked passengers, the man of the
party."
They have forgotten Patrick Sheridan! Only this annoying suggestion
recalls his existence to the minds of the assembled officers.
"Yes, perhaps you are right," says the admiral, suppressing a sigh.
He is very hungry! "I suppose we ought to examine him as well as the
others. Perhaps he will be able to account for these--these somewhat
improbable theories we have been listening to. Bring him in, and
let's get it over!"