A WHITE SKIRT
It was in mid-ocean that Neeland finally came to the conclusion that
nobody on board the _Volhynia_ was likely to bother him or his box.
The July weather had been magnificent--blue skies, a gentle wind, and
a sea scarcely silvered by a comber.
Assorted denizens of the Atlantic took part in the traditional
vaudeville performance for the benefit of the _Volhynia_ passengers;
gulls followed the wake to mid-ocean; Mother Carey's chickens skimmed
the baby billows; dolphins turned watery flip-flaps under the bows;
and even a distant whale consented to oblige.
Everybody pervaded the decks morning, noon, and evening; the most
squeamish recovered confidence in twenty-four hours; and every
constitutional lubber concluded he was a born sailor.
Neeland really was one; no nausea born from the bad adjustment of that
anatomical auricular gyroscope recently discovered in man ever
disturbed his abdominal nerves. Short of shipwreck, he enjoyed any
entertainment the Atlantic offered him.
So he was always on deck, tranquilly happy and with nothing in the
world to disturb him except his responsibility for the olive-wood
box.
He dared not leave it in his locked cabin; he dared not entrust it to
anybody; he lugged it about with him wherever he went. On deck it
stood beside his steamer chair; it dangled from his hand when he
promenaded, exciting the amazement and curiosity of others; it
reposed on the floor under the table and beneath his attentive feet
when he was at meals.
These elaborate precautions indicated his wholesome respect for the
persistence of Scheherazade and her friends; he was forever scanning
his fellow-voyagers at table, in the smoking room, and as they
strolled to and fro in front of his steamer chair, trying to make up
his mind concerning them.
But Neeland, a clever observer of externals, was no reader of
character. The passenger list never seemed to confirm any conclusions
he arrived at concerning any of the passengers on the _Volhynia_. A
gentleman he mistook for an overfed broker turned out to be a popular
clergyman with outdoor proclivities; a slim, poetic-looking youth who
carried a copy of "Words and Wind" about the deck travelled for the
Gold Leaf Lard Company.
Taking them all in all, Neeland concluded that they were as harmless a
collection of _reconcentrados_ as he had ever observed; and he was
strongly tempted to leave the box in his locked stateroom.
He decided to do so one afternoon after luncheon, and, lugging his
box, started to return to his stateroom with that intention, instead
of going on deck, as usual, for a postprandial cigarette.
There was nobody in the main corridor as he passed, but in the short,
carpeted passage leading to his stateroom he caught a glimpse of a
white serge skirt vanishing into the stateroom opposite to his, and
heard the door close and the noise of a key turned quickly.
His steward, being questioned on the first day out, had told him that
this stateroom was occupied by an invalid gentleman travelling alone,
who preferred to remain there instead of trusting to his crutches on
a temperamental deck.
Neeland, passing the closed and curtained door, wondered whether the
invalid had made a hit, or whether he had a relative aboard who wore a
white serge skirt, white stockings and shoes, and was further endowed
with agreeable ankles.
He fitted his key to his door, turned it, withdrew the key to pocket
it; and immediately became aware that the end of the key was sticky.
He entered the stateroom, however, and bolted the door, then he sat
down on his sofa and examined his fingers and his door key
attentively. There was wax sticking to both.
When he had fully digested this fact he wiped and pocketed his key and
cast a rather vacant look around the little stateroom. And immediately
his eye was arrested by a white object lying on the carpet between the
bed and the sofa--a woman's handkerchief, without crest or initials,
but faintly scented.
After he became tired of alternately examining it and sniffing it, he
put it in his pocket and began an uneasy tour of his room.
If it had been entered and ransacked, everything had been replaced
exactly as he had left it, as well as he could remember. Nothing
excepting this handkerchief and the wax on the key indicated
intrusion; nothing, apparently, had been disturbed; and yet there was
the handkerchief; and there was the wax on the end of his door key.
"Here's a fine business!" he muttered to himself; and rang for his
steward.
The man came--a cockney, dense as his native fog--who maintained that
nobody could have entered the stateroom without his knowledge or the
knowledge of the stewardess.
"Do you think _she's_ been in my cabin?"
"No, sir."
"Call her."
The stewardess, an alert, intelligent little woman with a trace of
West Indian blood in her, denied entering his stateroom. Shown the
handkerchief and invited to sniff it, she professed utter ignorance
concerning it, assured him that no lady in her section used that
perfume, and offered to show it to the stewardesses of other sections
on the chance of their identifying the perfume or the handkerchief.
"All right," said Neeland; "take it. But bring it back. And here's a
sovereign. And--one thing more. If anybody pays you to deceive me,
come to me and I'll outbid them. Is that a bargain?"
"Yes, sir," she said unblushingly.
When she had gone away with the handkerchief, Neeland closed the door
again and said to the steward:
"Keep an eye on my door. I am positive that somebody has taken a wax
impression of the keyhole. What I said to that stewardess also holds
good with you. I'll outbid anybody who bribes you."
"Very good, sir."
"Sure it's good! It's devilish good. Here's a beautiful and newly
minted gold sovereign. Isn't it artistic? It's yours, steward."
"Thanky, sir."
"Not at all. And, by the way, what's that invalid gentleman's name?"
"'Awks, sir."
"Hawks?"
"Yes, sir; Mr. 'Erbert 'Awks."
"American?"
"I don't know, sir."
"British?"
"Shall I inquire, sir?" starting to go.
"Not of _him_! Don't be a lunatic, steward! Please try to understand
that I want nothing said about this matter or about my inquiries."
"Yes, sir."
"Very well, then! Find out, if you can, who Mr. Herbert Hawks is. Find
out all you can concerning him. It's easy money, isn't it?"
"Oh, yes, sir----"
"Wait a moment. Has he any friends or relatives on board?"
"Not that I know, sir."
"Oh, no friends, eh? No ladies who wear white serge skirts and white
shoes and stockings?"
"No, sir, not as I knows of."
"Oh! Suppose you step across to his door, knock, and ask him if he
rang. And, if the door is opened, take a quick slant at the room."
"Very good, sir."
Neeland, his door at the crack, watched the steward cross the corridor
and knock at the door of Mr. Herbert Hawks.
"Well, what iss it?" came a heavy voice from within.
"Mr. 'Awks, sir, did you ring?"
"No, I did not."
"Oh, beg pardon, sir----"
The steward was starting to return to Neeland, but that young man
motioned him violently away from his door and closed it. Then,
listening, his ear against the panel, he presently heard a door in the
passage creak open a little way, then close again, stealthily.
He possessed his soul in patience, believing that Mr. Hawks or his
fair friend in the white skirt had merely taken a preliminary survey
of the passage and perhaps also of his closed door. But the vigil was
vain; the door did not reopen; no sound came from the stateroom across
the passageway.
To make certain that the owner of the white shoes and stockings did
not leave that stateroom without his knowledge, he opened his door
with many precautions and left it on the crack, stretching a rubber
band from knob to bolt, so that the wind from the open port in the
passage should not blow it shut. Then, drawing his curtain, he sat
down to wait.
He had a book, one of those slobbering American novels which serve up
falsehood thickly buttered with righteousness and are consumed by the
morally sterilised.
And, as he smoked he read; and, as he read he listened. One eye always
remained on duty; one ear was alert; he meant to see who was the owner
of the white shoes if it took the remainder of the voyage to find
out.
The book aided him as a commonplace accompaniment aids a
soloist--alternately boring and exasperating him.
It was an "uplift" book, where the heroine receives whacks with
patient smiles. Fate boots her from pillar to post and she blesses
Fate and is much obliged. That most deadly reproach to degenerate
human nature--the accidental fact of sex--had been so skilfully
extirpated from those pages that, like chaste amoebæ, the characters
merely multiplied by immaculate subdivision; and millions of lineal
descendants of the American Dodo were made gleeful for $1.50 net.
It was hard work waiting, harder work reading, but between the two and
a cigarette now and then Neeland managed to do his sentry go until
dinner time approached and the corridors resounded with the trample of
the hungry.
The stewardess reappeared a little later and returned to him his
handkerchief and the following information:
Mr. Hawks, it appeared, travelled with a trained nurse, whose
stateroom was on another deck. That nurse was not in her stateroom,
but a similar handkerchief was, scented with similar perfume.
"You're a wonder," said Neeland, placing some more sovereigns in her
palm and closing her fingers over them. "What is the nurse's name?"
"Miss White."
"Very suitable name. Has she ever before visited Herr--I mean
_Mr._--Hawks in his stateroom?"
"Her stewardess says she has been indisposed since we left New York."
"Hasn't been out of her cabin?"
"No."
"I see. Did you inquire what she looked like?"
"Her stewardess couldn't be certain. The stateroom was kept dark and
the tray containing her meals was left at the bedside. Miss White
smokes."
"Yes," said Neeland reflectively, "she smokes Red Light cigarettes, I
believe. Thank you, very much. More sovereigns if you are discreet.
And say to my steward that I'll dine in my stateroom. Soup, fish,
meat, any old thing you can think of. Do you understand?"
"Perfectly, sir."
When she had withdrawn he kneeled down on his sofa and looked out
through the port at the sunset sea.
There was a possibility that Scheherazade and her friends might be on
board the _Volhynia_. Who else would be likely to take wax impressions
of his keyhole and leave a scented scrap of a handkerchief on his
stateroom floor?
That they had kept themselves not only out of sight but off the
passenger list merely corroborated suspicion. That's what they'd be
likely to do.
And now there was no question in his mind of leaving the box in his
cabin. He'd cling to it like a good woman to alimony. Death alone
could separate his box from him.
As he knelt there, sniffing the salt perfume of the sea, his ears on
duty detected the sound of a tray in the corridor.
"Leave it on the camp-table outside my door!" he said over his
shoulder.
"Very good, sir."
He was not hungry; he was thinking too hard.
"Confound it," he thought to himself, "am I to squat here in ambush
for the rest of the trip?"
The prospect was not agreeable for a man who loved the sea. All day
and most of the starry night the hurricane deck called to him, and his
whole anatomy responded. And now to sit hunched up here like a rat in
the hold was not to his taste. Suppose he should continue to frequent
the deck, carrying with him his box, of course. He might never
discover who owned the white serge skirt or who owned the voice which
pronounced is as "iss."
Meanwhile, it occurred to him that for a quarter of an hour or more
his dinner outside his door had been growing colder and colder. So he
slid from the sofa, unstrapped the rubber band, opened the door,
lifted table and tray into his stateroom with a sharp glance at the
opposite door, and, readjusting the rubber band, composed himself to
eat.