It was a lovely May morning on the English Channel, and the steam
yacht _Nadine_ was travelling under easy steam at about eight knots an
hour midway between Guernsey and Southampton. Her owner, Ernest Shafto
Hardress, Viscount Branston, eldest son of the Earl of Orrel, was
taking his early coffee on the bridge with his college chum and guest,
Frank Lamson, M.A. of Cambridge, and Doctor of Science of London, the
youngest man save one who had won the gold medal in the examination
for that distinguished degree. In fact, he was only thirty-two, and
the medal had already been in his possession nearly a year.
The morning was so exquisitely mild, that sea and sky looked rather as
though they were in the Mediterranean instead of the Channel. They
were sitting in their pyjamas, with their bare feet in grass slippers.
"Well, I suppose it's time to go below and shave and dress; Miss
Chrysie and Lady Olive will be up soon, and we'll have to make
ourselves presentable," said Lamson, getting out of his deck-chair and
throwing the end of his cigarette overboard. "Hello, what's that?
Here, Hardress, get up! There's a body there in the water, horribly
mangled."
"What!" exclaimed Hardress, springing from his seat and going to the
end of the bridge where Lamson was standing. "So it is! Poor chap,
what can have made such a mess of him as that?"
"Fallen overboard from a steamer, I should say, and got mopped by the
screw," said Lamson, in his cold, bloodless voice. "It's a way screws
have, you know, especially twin screws."
"That's just like you, Lamson," said Hardress; "you talk about the
poor chap just as if he was an empty barrel. Still, he's been a man
once, and it's only fair that he should have Christian burial,
anyhow."
As he said this he caught the handle of the engine telegraph and
pulled it over. "Stop." The yacht slowed down immediately, and he went
on:
"Lamson, you might go and send the stewardess to tell the ladies not
to get up for half-an-hour or so. This isn't exactly the sort of job a
woman wants to see. Mr Jackson, will you kindly lower away the
quarter-boat?"
The young Viscount was right--for the object that was hauled in from
the sea could hardly even be called a human corpse, so frightfully was
it mangled out of all mortal shape. When it was brought on board, a
careful search was made through the tattered remnants of clothing that
were still attached to it for some marks of identification; but
nothing was found. A couple of pockets, one in the waistcoat and one
in the trousers which were left intact, contained nothing. There was
no mark on what was left of the linen. The upper half of the head was
gone, and so there was no use in photographing the remains. In short,
the ghastly spectacle was the only revelation of a secret of the sea
which might never be further revealed.
"I'm afraid it's no good," said Lamson; "there's nothing that anybody
could recognise the poor chap by. In fact, it looks to me like a case
of deliberate suicide by someone who didn't want to be identified.
He's evidently fallen overboard from a steamer, and people don't do
that by accident with empty pockets. For instance, that inside coat
pocket was made to button, and would probably have had a pocket-book
and tickets in it. From what's left of them I should say the clothes
were French, and, judging by the locality, I should say he might have
been a French passenger from le Havre--perhaps to Southampton on one
of the South-Western boats. Hello, what's this? Perhaps this is a clue
to the mystery."
As he spoke he put his hand on the back of the body, where the sodden
clothes outlined an oblong shape, a few moments after it had been
turned over.
"It feels like a box, or something of that sort. At any rate, we'd
better see what it is," he went on, taking a sheath-knife from one of
the sailors and ripping the cloth open. "Tied to the body. By Jove!
Why, this is mystery on mystery! Nothing in his pockets, no mark on
his linen or clothes, and this thing tied to his body! Well, I suppose
we may as well see what there is in it; and as you're the owner of the
yacht and Deputy-Lieutenant of your county, I suppose I'd better hand
it over to you."
As he said this he cut the cords and handed the tin box to Viscount
Branston, who said as he took it:
"Of course, we shall have to open it, and we'll do it together after
breakfast. Now, Mr Jackson, oblige me by having the body sewn up in a
bit of canvas. I don't want the ladies to see it in that horrible
state. And you may as well put on full speed; we don't want it on
board any longer than we can help. Now, Lamson, come along and dress."
When they came out of their state-rooms they found the ladies already
on deck, taking an ante-prandial stroll arm-in-arm. Lady Olive was a
tall, perfectly-proportioned young woman of about twenty-five, not
exactly pretty, but with a dark, strong, aristocratic face, which
showed breeding in every line, and which was lighted up and relieved
most pleasantly by a pair of soft, and yet brilliant, Irish eyes. When
her features were in repose, some people would have called her
handsome; when she smiled, others would have called her, not pretty,
but charming--and they would have been about right.
Her companion, Miss Chrysie Vandel, daughter of Clifford K. Vandel,
President of the American Electrical Storage Trust of Buffalo, N.Y.,
was an absolute contrast to her. She was about an inch shorter,
exquisitely fair, and yet possessed of a pair of deep blue eyes, which
in some lights looked almost black. Her brows were several shades
darker than her hair, which was golden in the sun and brown in the
shade. She was not what a connoisseur would call beautiful, for her
features were just a trifle irregular, and her mouth was just ever so
little too large. Still, taken as a whole, her face had that
distracting and indescribable piquancy which seems to be the peculiar
property of the well-bred American girl at her best.
Both were dressed in grey serge, short-skirted yachting suits, and
each had a white duck yachting cap pinned to her hair.
"Well, Shafto," said Lady Olive, as the two men took their caps off,
"and what is all this mystery about? Chrysie and I have been
speculating all sorts of things."
"Why, yes, Lord Branston," chimed in Miss Chrysie. "I got out of my
bath and fixed myself double quick, half expecting to come on deck and
find ourselves held up by a French torpedo-boat, after all that talk
we heard in Jersey about the trouble between you and France and Russia
over China."
"I am happy to say it is not quite so serious as that, Miss Vandel,"
said Hardress, "and I hope we shall be able to get you safe to
Southampton before the war starts. The fact is, about an hour ago,
while Lamson and I were having our coffee on the bridge, he saw--well,
the body of a man, terribly mangled, floating in the water. So we
stopped to pick it up. It was frightfully mutilated, and, of course,
it was nothing for eyes like yours to look upon, so we've had it sewn
up in canvas, and we're taking it to Southampton to give it a decent
burial."
"Now, I call that real good of you, Viscount. I guess you British have
finer feelings in that way than we have. I don't believe Poppa would
have stopped his yacht if he'd struck a whole burying lot afloat."
"Well," laughed Hardress; "that is what a busy man like your father
might be expected to do. In fact, I suppose most Englishmen would have
done so; but, as it happens, in this case virtue was rewarded--for we
have discovered what may be a mystery."
"A mystery! Oh, do say, Viscount. That's just too lovely for words--a
yacht, dead body at sea, and a mystery----"
"Yes," said Lamson; "and in a tin box, attached firmly by cords to
corpse aforesaid."
"Don't, Mr Lamson; please don't," interrupted Lady Olive, somewhat
severely. Then she went on, with a little shiver, "I hope, Shafto, you
will get us to Southampton as quickly as you can. I don't want to be
shipmates any longer than I can help with--with--ah--remains. It isn't
lucky at sea, you know."
"My dear Olive," replied her brother, "about the first thing I thought
of was that very idea; that is why we are now steaming full
speed--twenty knots instead of eight--so that you and Miss Vandel may
be relieved of this disquieting presence on board as soon as possible.
And now, by way of passing the inconvenient hours that our new
passenger will be with us, suppose we go to breakfast."
"A nice appetising sort of remark that, I must say, Viscount," said
Miss Chrysie; "still I suppose we may as well go. This morning air at
sea does make living people feel alive; I guess that's why I'm so
hungry."
"And after breakfast, Shafto," said Lady Olive, "I presume that you
will tell us all about the mystery of the tin box."
"My dear Olive," replied her brother, "it may be anything or nothing;
and, as Lamson found it and gave it to me, instead of having it buried
with the unknown deceased, I've agreed with him that we shall go
through the contents, whatever they are, together; and, of course, if
there's anything really interesting in them, then we shall tell you
all about it."
"Now, that's real kind," said Miss Chrysie. "I guess if we don't have
quite an interesting conversation over lunch it'll be the fault of our
new passenger."
"My dear Chrysie," said Lady Olive, frigidly, "how can you! Really,
you remind me rather strongly of what Kipling says about the
Americans."
"And what might that be, Lady Olive?" she replied, looking up, with
the flicker of a smile round her lips, and the twinkle of a challenge
in her eyes.
"I don't think I remember the exact words just now, but I've got the
'Seven Seas' downstairs," replied Lady Olive; "but I think it's
something about the cynic devil in his blood that bids him mock his
hurrying soul."
"Thanks!" replied Miss Chrysie, with a toss of her shapely head, and
an unmistakable sniff; "I think I've read that poem, too. Isn't there
a verse in it that runs something this way?--
"'Inopportune, shrill-accented,
The acrid Asiatic mirth
That leaves him careless 'mid his dead,
The scandal of the elder earth.'"
She repeated the lines with such an exquisite exaggeration of the
"shrill accent" that the two men burst out laughing, and Lady Olive
first flushed up to her brows, and then also broke into a saving fit
of laughter.
"That's a distinct score for Miss Vandel, Olive," said Hardress. "If
you knew the whole poem a bit better, I don't think you'd have made
that last remark of yours. But, of course, Miss Vandel will be
generous and allow you to take the only way there is out of the
difficulty--the way to breakfast."
"Why, certainly," said Miss Chrysie, who was trying hard not to laugh
at her little triumph. "Kipling's good, but breakfast's better, in an
air like this."
And so, as she would have put it, they "let it go at that," and went
down into the saloon to breakfast.