_Cynthia_
STEPS OUT
BY
ERICK BERRY
CHICAGO
_The Goldsmith Publishing
Company_
COPYRIGHT, 1937, BY
THE GOLDSMITH PUBLISHING COMPANY
Made in U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I ALWAYS TRUST YOUR LUCK 11
_Shipboard_
II CORNED BEEF HASH 42
_Paris_
III COLD-IN-THE-HEAD 69
_Brittany_
IV LITTLE MISS FIX-IT 99
_Mont St. Michel_
V THE CUCKOO 127
_Basque Country_
VI ROMANCE IN CARCASSONNE 158
_Carcassonne_
VII THE RACING SNAIL 190
_Siena_
VIII ALL IS NOT LOST 219
_Venice_
CHAPTER 1
_Shipboard_
ALWAYS TRUST YOUR LUCK
“It must be fun to be an artist.” Stasia’s speech was somewhat impeded
by the mouthful of pins she was trying not to swallow.
“Fun?” Cynthia frowned, thinking. “Yes, I suppose it is. I wouldn’t
know how to be anything else. Ouch! That was me you were pinning.” She
braced herself with one arm against the bulkhead as the ship tipped at
a slight angle. “Make that sleeve as short as you can.”
Stasia took the last pin out of her mouth. “Slip off your blouse now,
and I’ll baste it up for you. You’ll make a sweet pirate, if pirates
ever were sweet.”
Cynthia, free of the blouse, turned to experiment before the long
mirror in the door, hesitating between the respective merits of a red
bandana handkerchief over her black curls and the more sinister effect
of a black scarf which could be continued down into a black mask with
eyeholes.
Stasia bit off her thread. “There, that’s ready. When will you break it
to Miss Mitchall that she’s got to wear a costume tonight?”
Cynthia giggled. “You ought to come along and help me. But I guess I’ll
wait till the last minute and rush her into the idea.” She glanced
toward the bed where a tall, witch’s cap, made of green cardboard from
the ship’s barber shop, reposed beside a cape of green broadcloth,
borrowed from Stasia, and a pair of Miss Mitchall’s own shoes, now
adorned with huge buckles of cardboard and silver foil.
“I’ll need some help with my wig,” said Stasia, “and then I think we’re
all finished.” The wig was of bright orange yarn, loosely knitted into
a tight fitting cap of coarse net which completely covered Stasia’s
sleek bob.
“It needs tightening at the back. Wait a moment.” Cynthia braced her
feet. “Dash this boat, I hope she stops rolling before dinner or we
shan’t have any dance. Do they always have a costume party every trip?”
“Uh-huh. Always the second day before we get into Cherbourg, Paris,
day after tomorrow. Aren’t you thrilled?”
Cynthia, pinning the wig into a better fit, murmured a vague assent.
But she didn’t feel at all thrilled. After eight days the ship was
like another home in which she knew, by sight at least, almost every
occupant. Paris was going to be new and strange. Oh yes, a grand new
adventure, but sometimes she got scared at the thought of it. So big,
with all the street signs and the menus in a different language and
so much that was new to learn. What if she failed to make good on the
job that had brought her over, the dozen covers for _Little Ones’
Magazine_? Suppose she didn’t have the money to stay? Suppose she
couldn’t make people understand her French, even though Stasia had been
coaching her all week? Oh shut up, Cynthia!
“Miss Mitchall’s the old girl I admire,” she said suddenly. “She’s got
more courage! You know she’s returning practically without a job and
without money and she’s fifty if she’s a day, though she looks sixty,
poor darling. I don’t believe she’s got ten dollars beyond her fare to
London.”
“What was she doing in the States?” asked Stasia.
Stasia hadn’t, Cynthia thought, much imagination, but perhaps that was
because her father was president of the line. Look at this suite de
luxe, the best in the ship. And if she had never earned her own living
she couldn’t imagine what it was to be like Miss Mitchall.
“Oh, she had some sort of a governess job. But she’s English you know,
and she didn’t come in on the quota and so she had to go back home.
She was with a Canadian family in Buffalo. They are paying her fare
back, but that’s all. I wish ...” she stopped. She was going to say she
wished she could help her.
Stasia looked at her watch, the little platinum watch circled with
diamonds. “It’s six my dear, and dinner’s at half past seven. If you’re
going to get your roommate into her costume ...”
“You’re right, you’re perfectly right.” Cynthia struggled into her wool
dress, grabbed the black scarf, the buckled shoes, threw the blouse
over her arm. “Here, give me a hand with the other stuff, will you?
I’ll take the hat.”
Cynthia’s small cabin was down, down, two steep flights below the
cabins de luxe. Clean white corridors smelling of soap and sea and
ship, doors shut and white, doors open and dark, doors open and
lighted, a narrow corridor turning down to the left, two doors facing
each other, the left one always closed. Cynthia often wondered about
that door. She knew the cabin was occupied because the room steward
went in and out but no one else ever did. The door to the right was
Cynthia’s and Miss Mitchall’s.
“Here we are. Thanks a lot. Can I help with make-up or anything?”
Cynthia dumped her things on the bunk, turned on the lights.
“No, thanks. The stewardess and Lilia will help if I want it.” Lilia
was Stasia’s maid. Cynthia smiled. Think of having a maid to yourself!
Stasia was gone. Cynthia hustled out of her dress again, turned on the
hot water, whistled happily. This was going to be fun tonight. Like the
old Art Academy days when everybody dressed up and the dances lasted
till morning.
Someone in the cabin across the corridor coughed, a man’s cough.
Cynthia turned off the hot water and listened, caught herself staring
with wide gray eyes at the wide gray eyes in the mirror over the wash
basin.
The night she had come on board that left hand door had been wide open
and in the corridor there had been a suitcase, big and black, with lots
of stickers on it. Cynthia hurrying along the hall with an arm full of
last minute fruit and flowers and books, Chick and Judy and the others
of the old Art School bunch at her heels, had tripped and fallen full
length over that suitcase. When Chick had picked her up, unhurt, and
brushed her off, she had noted the suitcase and a huge Ottawa Hotel
paster on its side, bright with greens and blues and oranges. Chick had
noticed it too. “A good poster design, that,” he had said.
And Cynthia, thinking about Chick, sat down on the lower bunk and for
three minutes was devastatingly and overwhelmingly homesick for New
York and the studio, for Judy and Chick. Chick had, in this very room,
standing on that very same rug, kissed her good-bye with his arms tight
around her and wished her good luck and told her how rotten it was for
him to have to stay behind like this. “Keep my ring on your finger and
my face in your heart,” he had said.
Cynthia twisted the pretty emerald, which had belonged to Chick’s
mother, now so ill that he couldn’t get away for the trip they had
planned together. It was a sweet ring. Cynthia’s eyes were getting
teary when the dressing gong sounded. Goodness, was it as late as that!
The pirate costume had long black trousers--full ones from Cynthia’s
beach pyjamas. A wide sash of twisted red and green bristled with an
arsenal of silver paper pistols and knives. The white blouse, with
sleeves tacked very short, bore a black silk skull and crossbones over
the heart. She was tying heavy thread on brass curtain rings to loop
over her ears when Miss Mitchall pattered in, closing the door gently
behind her.
Miss Mitchall’s small sloping shoulders, claw-like hands and thin blond
hair, now a dusty gray, were the characteristics of the story-book
English governess, but her eyes gleamed brightly behind her spectacles
and one felt that her spirit was unconquerable.
“Oh my dear, how sweet you look,” she twittered.
Cynthia hung an earring over one ear and patted it with a slim finger
to see if it would swing free. In a minute she’d have to break the news
to her roommate. But Miss Mitchall had news of her own.
“I just heard a voice across the corridor, talking to the steward. It’s
a man and he talks with a Canadian accent,” she whispered.
They had both wondered about that room, for on this small ship everyone
seemed to know everyone else, with that exception. Was he ill, perhaps,
that he never came out, not even for meals? But there wasn’t time to
discuss him now.
“Hurry and get into your costume for the party,” directed Cynthia.
“Costume? Oh yes.” Miss Mitchall was going to appreciate the small
jest. “You mean my black dress.” She turned, bustling a little, to put
her purse and book and scarf and sweater on the long couch beneath the
porthole.
“No, I don’t mean just the black dress,” stated Cynthia in what she
hoped was a firm tone. “I mean your costume. Stasia Carruthers and I
made one for you this afternoon. You’re going as a Green Witch. See
here.” She took down the tall peaked hat, clapped it on the small gray
head and turned her roommate to face the mirror. “Then the cape, like
this.” She flung the long cape around the thin shoulders. “Of course we
must make you up. A little powder on your nose, probably some rouge on
your cheeks. But put on your black dress first. And hurry.”
“Oh my dear, I couldn’t--I’m too old--what will people think?” Mildly
clucking, continuing to protest, Miss Mitchall was shoved into her
costume, into the shoes with the silver buckles, into the long green
cape. Cynthia, against the other’s mild opposition, patted rouge on the
pale cheeks, then flung a towel over the cape and shook half a box of
white talcum powder on the gray hair.
“But my dear,” beamed Miss Mitchall, “it ... it makes me look so ... so
young.”
Indeed it did. The contrast of green cloth against the white hair was
dramatic. “Very successful,” purred Cynthia. “You’ll be the belle of
the ball. And it’s not immoral to look young you know. Now sit down
there and be good till I get this scarf tied. Or no, ring for the
steward, we must get a broom to go with the witch.”
By the time they hurried out of their cabin the echoes of the dinner
gong had been dead for ten minutes. But the corridors were full of
laughing groups: harlequins, monks, pierrots, Turkish ladies, Dutch
girls and nondescript costumes that defied a label. For fear that the
Green Witch might bolt back to the cabin, Cynthia kept close behind her
but after a few minutes realized this was unnecessary. Their passage
was a minor triumphal procession for everyone turned to look at them
and made some delighted exclamation over the novel costumes. Cynthia
was amused to note that Miss Mitchall’s sharp little chin went higher,
her step became firmer as the approbation grew and by the time they
reached the stairway to the dining saloon she walked like a princess
approaching her throne.
Cheers and a spatter of applause greeted their descent and three tables
claimed their company but Cynthia looked around and made a quick
decision. In a far corner sat Harvey O’Neill, as the Tin Woodman, and
Johnnie Graham, in sackcloth and straw, presumably a scarecrow. Miss
Mitchall needed what only an Irish tongue could supply. Cynthia steered
toward the small table.
“May I introduce the Green Witch of Greenwich Village?” sang Cynthia
above the hubbub. “Did you know that Green Witches had special magic
and charms, much stronger than black and white ones?”
“Special charms, certainly,” agreed the Irishman. “Come and cast a
spell on me, Miss Witch,” and he pulled out a chair for her. Cynthia
took the one next to Johnnie.
“Smart of you,” he whispered in her ear, “to give her a costume that
went with her specs. It’s one of the best on the floor.”
There was an almost continual pageant down the wide stairs. Stasia made
her entrance alone and effectively in the long, slinky costume of a
modern French doll. From the bright orange wig of knitted yarn, through
the high bodice and long full skirt of brilliant reds and raw blues
to the absurdly high heeled slippers of green satin and the painted
circles on her cheeks beneath the wide lashed baby stare, she was
perfect in every detail. Even to a price tag on her shoulder stating
“twenty five francs.” She was followed by a Spanish señorita on the arm
of a George Belchers, charlady, red nosed, apron-garbed, three dingy
violets nodding in his bonnet as he stumbled apologetically, paused
to mop up the steps before the señorita and dramatized the amusing
entrance.
How she hated to have this end, Cynthia thought. Paris, surely, wasn’t
going to be half so much fun. And never to see any of these nice people
again. ... Miss Mitchall for instance. It didn’t seem possible that you
could get to know a person so well and then let them slip out of your
life. Stasia was going to stay in Cherbourg for a week. Johnnie ...
“Where do you go, Johnnie?” she asked.
“Straight through Paris and down to Provence. I’m studying the poetry
of Mistral, who, if you don’t happen to know, was the greatest poet of
southern France. Why?”
But she turned to O’Neill. “And you’re going to Ireland, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Better come along,” he suggested, “it’s a bit of heaven.”
“Oh yes, there’s a song about that, isn’t there,” she laughed. Weren’t
any of these people going to be in Paris? Suppose she couldn’t get
in touch with the editor she had come to see? Suppose the job didn’t
materialize? Suppose ... well, these were nice cheerful meditations to
have in the middle of a party! She bet Miss Mitchall wasn’t harboring
any such gloomy thoughts. Suddenly Cynthia wished there was some way,
some nice, tactful, subtle manner in which she could help the little
governess without her knowing it. But a loan was out of the question.
Cynthia herself hadn’t much more than the price of a ticket home. And
you don’t pick up purses in mid ocean.
“I wish there was a Duchess on board, with a million pounds sterling
and eighteen children, and that she would fall overboard and I could
save her life,” was her fantastic thought. She must have said it out
loud for Johnnie murmured, “Heaven help us!” and then glanced at the
little governess. “Oh, you mean for Miss Mitchall. But why stop at
eighteen when you’re wishing!”
Cynthia spluttered into giggles and felt better. In fact she could
scarcely eat her dinner for all that was going on around her. Bright
balloons bumped her elbow, a rain of multicolored confetti sprinkled
the table cloth and brilliant streamers of paper flying through the
air, must be picked up and returned, lacing the dining saloon with
carnival colors.
After dinner there was a dance in the lounge. Cynthia had looked
forward to it all day and the day before, but after a few waltzes and
foxtrots it began, somehow, to fall flat. Everyone else seemed to
be having a perfectly gorgeous time. Even little Miss Mitchall was
plentifully supplied with partners but their enjoyment seemed only to
increase Cynthia’s gloom as every step she made took her nearer to the
time of leaving the ship, to the dreaded unknown.
She knew what it was. She had done too little work for days. This
wasn’t the first time that idleness had made her miserable, and it
would be useless to explain this to her puzzled partners. Between
dances she would slip off and dive below for her sketch pad. Drawing
would bring the relief it always had brought and as for models, they
were all about her. All she needed was her book to make a record, not
just of the clever costumes around her, but of the movement and the
groups that the dancers made. Why not get it? Left, for the moment,
between dances without a partner, Cynthia decided that she would, and
sped down to the cabin.
As she came along the main corridor, deserted now since all of the room
stewards were at their dinner, she heard a door banging, banging, with
the slow swing of the ship and irritatedly wondered why no one had
fastened it.
Turning down the small corridor that led to her own cabin she noted
that the swinging door was that opposite her own. If someone were ill
in there, the door must be extremely annoying. She opened her own door,
switched on the cabin light, found her sketch book and stepped out
again. Again the door opposite slammed back. The cabin light was on.
She tapped gently on the doorframe. Perhaps the occupant was too ill to
get up. But no one answered.
Cynthia put her hand on the knob to close it, but the door was partly
wedged by a suitcase which had slid against it--the suitcase which she
recognized as the same she had tripped over when she first came on
board. Or was it the same? There was that Mexican Airways label, and
next to it a circular yellow paster which formed a pattern her mind
had already recorded, but something was missing. She closed the door
gently, shoved it to see that it was firmly latched, and hurried along
the corridor. But as she ran up the stairway she remembered what was
missing. The Ottawa label had been sponged off. There was a darker spot
on the leather where it had been.
At the entrance to the lounge, the color and light and music burst on
her like a shower of thrown confetti. Figures whirled and swayed to the
music, the room was a shifting patchwork of bright color. Even Miss
Mitchall had been persuaded to dance and jigged round and round happily
with a little Hungarian whose bent knees and extreme speed were relics
of an older era.
Cynthia passed behind the row of chairs at the end of the dance floor
and skirted the room to where, in a remote corner behind an empty card
table, she could be comfortably inconspicuous yet have a good view of
the dancers. She leafed through her sketch book, found some blank
pages and began to work.
Between encores the couples paused, chatted, and applauded. That
scarecrow with his whitened face and clay pipe ... Cynthia got it with
a few strokes of the pencil. Then Miss Mitchall’s rapt expression as
she gazed into her partner’s face, radiant, unconscious. Oh darn! The
music had started again.
Cynthia made a dozen rapid action sketches of the dancing couples (some
of them so close to caricatures she wouldn’t have cared to have the
models see them), yawned, and looked about her. Perhaps it would be
more fun to go back to dancing.
Most of the older people had drifted away and were talking at the
further end of the room, or had gone in to the card tables. How
different some of them looked in costume. She would scarcely have
recognized Mrs. Moody, for instance, in the white hair and patches of
a colonial belle. And the man with her ... Cynthia frowned, trying to
place him. Oh yes, it was the hat that had put her off. He was the
man in the golf cap who tramped the deck all day long ... “walking
to Europe,” Johnnie Graham had said. But the middle aged man who sat
alone, not far from Cynthia? Surely she had never seen him before,
surely she would have remembered that beak-like nose, the hollow cut
deeply on either side of it and the thin lipped mouth.
She made a few strokes of her pencil on the blank page of her sketch
book, then, noting how still her unconscious model sat, became absorbed
in the portrait. Not a good face, but a strong one. The brows were
as heavy as her pencil could etch, the graying hair at the temples
disappeared beneath the tightly drawn edge of a stocking cap and the
long chin dipped into a wide pierrot ruff. The costume was that of a
harlequin and had probably been rented from the ship’s barber, who
carried a stock of fancy costumes for these parties.
Cynthia, absorbed in her sketch, worked rapidly. The claw-like hand
that had reached up to pull away the ruff ... the long white scar just
showing at the side of the chin, not an old scar, she thought, for it
still showed pink at the edges. Her model sat quietly, unaware of the
attention he was receiving.
No, that chin wasn’t right. Cynthia flipped over another page and made
a more detailed study of the lower part of the face. This was a type
she could use, sometime, in an illustration. She wondered vaguely what
the man did when he wasn’t on ship board. Then the music stopped.
Perhaps it was that his attention had wandered from the dancers or
perhaps it was a sudden sense of being watched, but the man turned
quickly in his seat and sent such a glare of enmity at the astonished
Cynthia that she started and dropped her book. When she emerged from
groping beneath the table her model had disappeared. He must have moved
very quickly for he was already slipping through the door. Cynthia
shook herself. That man certainly didn’t like artists! But this was a
good waltz, why not enjoy it.
It was after midnight when she tiptoed into the cabin. Miss Mitchall
was already asleep. Her tall green hat and the long cape were neatly
disposed on the couch beneath the window. She was still asleep when
Cynthia dressed silently next morning, when she left for breakfast.
The dining saloon was almost deserted. Nearly everyone seemed to be
sleeping late or breakfasting in bed.
“My last day on shipboard,” thought Cynthia a little mournfully. What
to do to stretch it out to its full length? She decided to spend the
morning on deck, sketching; the afternoon in the lounge with a book,
or perhaps a game of deck tennis with Stasia. But in the middle of
the morning a thunder shower drove everyone indoors and Cynthia found
Stasia and her father over coffee and toast in the lounge.
“This is Dad’s second breakfast and my first,” announced Stasia. “Have
some coffee, Cynthia?”
Cynthia declined the coffee. “I was up with the larks, or at least
the seagulls,” she said. “Do you mind if I sketch you while you eat?
I’ve wanted to get you all week.” But what she really wanted was Mr.
Carruthers with his rugged beak of a nose, his thin, slightly curling
mouth. In fact she became so intent on her sketch that she forgot she
was supposed to be drawing Stasia till the tall girl laughed:
“Dad, she’s found you more beautiful than I am!”
“What, what? That so?” Mr. Carruthers had been the ideal model,
absolutely unconscious of Cynthia’s flying pencil. It seemed only fair,
however, to show him the drawing when it was finished.
“And this is my roommate. Look, Stasia, I got her last night when she
was dancing with the Hungarian.”
Stasia murmured, “wish I could draw like that.” Mr. Carruthers, too,
seemed impressed. “Good work, young lady,” he nodded. But Cynthia
felt he wouldn’t have much use for artists. He would have all the
conventional ideas about them; temperament and talk and starving in
garrets.
Stasia was turning the leaves slowly, making here and there a comment,
Mr. Carruthers looking over her shoulder till he stopped her with a
large forefinger suddenly on one page.
“Who is this? Where did you sketch him?” he asked.
Cynthia leaned across the table. “Oh, that man? Isn’t it a wicked face?
I wish you could have seen ...”
But Mr. Carruthers was impatient. He took the book from Stasia. “Tell
me about this. When did you sketch this? Last night? And what was this,
part of the costume? Make-up?”
“No,” Cynthia laughed, “it was a bad scar, a fairly new one for it was
still pink and raw-looking. I think he had tried to cover it with that
harlequin ruff, but when he grew warm he forgot about it, and pushed
the ruff away from his face.”
Mr. Carruthers had already pushed the little electric bell with an
insistent finger. Before the hurrying steward had reached the table,
Mr. Carruthers barked, “Ask Captain Wain if we can see him immediately,
in his office, and tell the purser to join us there.” Then he turned to
Cynthia, “I’d like you to come along and tell the Captain what you just
told me. And may we borrow your sketch book for an hour or two?”
Puzzled and excited, Cynthia followed Stasia and her father out of
the lounge, down the corridor towards the captain’s office. Captain
Wain was a plump little man with a ruddy complexion that had weathered
many storms, white walrus whiskers, and a blue uniform with lots
of glittering buttons. Behind him stood the purser whom Cynthia
already knew, a lean, hatchet-faced man, with small sharp eyes and an
apologetic manner.
Mr. Carruthers held the door for the two girls, then closed it firmly
behind him and plunged immediately into his subject.
“It’s this matter of Goncourt,” he stated, and opened Cynthia’s
sketchbook where his thumb had been keeping the place. “I want you two
to see this.”
The Captain leaned to look at the portrait of the man in the ruff, and
passed it to the purser with no comment save a brief “Mmumph!”
The purser examined it somewhat longer. “Miss Wanstead made this?” he
asked.
Cynthia, bewildered, explained when and where she had made the sketch,
and questioned further, explained about the scar.
“He really had such a scar? It wasn’t grease paint, or whatever it is
you use on your face?”
Cynthia shook her head. You didn’t put things like that in a sketch
when you were making notes from real life. It was, she told them,
exactly as she had drawn it. She didn’t have any reason to make it up.
Mr. Carruthers sat down and waved the others to chairs. “Might we,” he
suggested, “see Goncourt’s passport again?”
Yes, the purser would bring it. He seemed glad to get away. Stasia,
who had quietly watched all this now said, “Don’t you think it would
be a good plan, Dad, if we told Cynthia what this was all about?”
And, at her father’s nod of assent, explained: “Dad is owner of this
steamship line, you see, and the night we sailed from New York the head
of the Police Department came down to see us off. He had come, he said,
especially to get track of a man with a scar on his face. It was then
late in the evening, you see, and most of the passengers were on board,
but the purser examined all passports for a man with a scar like that.
It was said to be very conspicuous, and the men at the gate watched all
other passengers who came in after that, but they decided that no such
man was on board.”
“He’s wanted by the police?” asked Cynthia, feeling very much like a
murder-mystery tale.
“Yes, for smuggling ... in ...”
“Here is the passport.” The purser, returning, had a little blue book,
not a dark red one, such as Cynthia’s, in his hand. He passed the book
to the Captain who gave it a brief glance, grunted non-committally
and shoved it towards Mr. Carruthers. Stasia’s father compared the
photograph to the face in Cynthia’s sketch book, but as one was full
face, the other in profile, little could be gained by the comparison.
“Is this the man?” he asked Cynthia, indicating the passport photograph.
Cynthia got up and came around the desk. Passport in hand she moved
to the window for a better light. As she examined the picture she was
aware of the silent tenseness behind her and suddenly had an idea of
how important all this was, important to several people. Closing her
eyes, she tried to remember more fully the face she had sketched, not
from the side as she had drawn him, but as he had quickly turned to
gaze at her, full face, under the dark frowning brows. Then she looked
again at the picture in her hand. It was very like. Still ...
“No, it’s not the same man.”
There was a little stir in the room and Mr. Carruthers got up and came
to stand beside her.
“But it’s very like him.” Something teased at her brain. Like and not
like ... like and not like ...
“It might be a relation,” she hazarded dubiously. “This man,” she
tapped the passport, “has had a broken nose at some time. We had a
model with one at the Academy, so I recognized the peculiar shape.” It
was not at all like the beaky feature she had sketched.
Absently she gazed at the cover of the passport. “What cabin is this
man in? The one with the passport.”
“He’s in 376, Miss,” the purser answered.
And Cynthia was in 374, right across the little corridor. The passport
in her hand was Canadian, and Miss Mitchall had said ... “Look here,”
Cynthia said suddenly, “could my roommate be called? I think she might
be able to help us;” and added, “you can be sure she won’t talk.”
The captain glanced dubiously at Stasia’s father. “The less people who
know about this ...” then, at the other’s nodded gesture toward the
purser, “ask her to come here,” he commanded gruffly.
Miss Mitchall, slightly fluttering, was produced almost immediately.
Cynthia didn’t try to explain the circumstances, just showed her the
passport. “Did you ever see this man? I mean, does he look familiar?”
Squinting near-sightedly, the little governess examined the picture,
then passed it back with a shake of her head. “No, my dear. I’ve never
seen him.”
There was a sigh in the cabin. But Cynthia had not finished. That
teasing idea of hers ... Miss Mitchall had once told her something that
bore on this. ... “Then if not that man, someone very like him?”
“Someone like him, surely. But not that man. Probably a twin brother. I
was a twin myself.”
So that was it. Cynthia’s memory had almost, but not quite, done the
trick.
“By Gad!” barked the Captain, “the woman has brains! Where did you see
this man, madame?” His tone was weighty with respect.
“In the cabin across from 374. Once the door was open as I passed and
he was shaving, with the light full on his face. There was quite a scar
on his cheek. He shut the door with a slam when he saw me.”
Cynthia was still looking at the passport in her hand. “Was this man
from Ottawa, the one you wanted?” she asked. Then gasped.
It was almost as though she had sprung a mine, so laughably surprised
were the faces about her. “How did you know that?” the Captain’s gruff
tones held suspicion.
But Cynthia had suddenly remembered the suitcase she had stumbled over
the first day, and the dark patch that showed some label had been
removed from it. “You see,” she explained further, “I’m accustomed to
remembering the shapes and colors of things, perhaps more than most
people do because that’s part of my job. I remembered an Ottawa paster
on the suitcase because of a certain clever arrangement of colors,
green and blue and orange.”
Mr. Carruthers stopped her with a gesture. Stepping into the doorway he
spoke a moment in a low voice to the steward outside then returned to
the room. “Will you describe this label for us, or could you draw it?”
“It’s something like this.” Cynthia took the pencil out of her pocket
and made a little diagram on a blank page of her note book. “It had an
orange moon and a tower, rather medieval, dark blue against it. Then
there was a jiggley border of green, in this manner.”
The steward with something in his hand, stood in the doorway. Mr.
Carruthers rose and brought in a suitcase, not the black one, but a
small, light-tan airplane case. He turned it around so that all might
see the Ottawa label, exactly as Cynthia had sketched it.
“We were in Ottawa a few weeks ago,” he explained, “and I remembered
this label on our bag. You see,” he turned to Cynthia, “this man is
wanted in Canada for jewel stealing. The police of Ottawa had wired the
police of New York to watch for him on any boat leaving port within the
next few days. I believe he has sailed on this line before, but we have
to be awfully sure before we can make an arrest. The publicity, if the
man were innocent, would be unpleasant for the steamship company.”
“I’ll go and make the arrest myself.” The Captain departed, taking the
purser with him.
Stasia, who had been quiet as a mouse all this time, prodded her father
with a finger. “Daddy, tell Cynthia the rest of it.”
“Oh yes ... ah,” Mr. Carruthers cleared his throat. “A hum ... we are
extremely grateful to you ladies, Miss Wanstead, and Miss Mitchall.
It would have been awkward if he had escaped by our line. Of course
you understand that there is a reward for information leading to his
arrest. And I think we can say that the reward will be yours if this is
Goncourt, as we now fully believe.”
* * * * *
“And to think that it really was Goncourt and that he has been in that
cabin all the week,” thrilled Miss Mitchall for the hundredth time.
Cynthia grinned. “And to think of your suggesting the twin business, of
your knowing it was a Canadian accent. That was really as important as
the sketch. You see he got the scar in Ottawa, when he made a big haul
of some jewels, about a year ago, and then he went to Quebec and did
the same thing. But then he used the picture of a twin brother on his
passport and covered the scar with a muffler when he came on board. I
suppose he was afraid to go out of his cabin very much.”
“How like a Wallace novel!”
Cynthia went on folding things to put into her suitcase. In another
minute she could close it, not to be opened again until she was in
France. “I wonder,” she asked without turning, “if you would do me a
great favor?”
“Why of course my dear, what is it?”
“Well, you see this reward business is rather a bother.” Cynthia didn’t
say that Stasia had warned her it might be some weeks before the check
got through. “I wonder if you would take some of my money now, as part
of your share. If I have too much I’m liable to spend it on Paris hats
and foolish things, you see. Perhaps a hundred now, and when the check
comes I’ll send you the rest of your half.”
For a moment Cynthia was afraid Miss Mitchall would see through her
plan and refuse, but the little governess smiled and nodded. Yes, she
knew how tempting Paris was if you had money. Yes, she’d be glad to
take some of it now.
Cynthia snapped off the light and hauled herself into the upper bunk.
Paris tomorrow! But she wasn’t afraid of her luck any more. She’d
proved it would stand by her.