"That . . ."
"The murder of Alfred Castiogne."
"I know nothing of it. . . ."
"You see, if you do know something, something that might be evidence against the murderer, somebody might try pretty damned hard to push you into the sea."
Again the deep vibration of engines, chugging slowly along through fog and heavy, hidden seas, seemed to fill the small room. Lieutenant Hale, her face disapproving yet intent, tried the latch to be sure the lock was turned. Josh Morgan was so close that she could see the bright dark pupils of his eyes, the few scattered gray hairs in the vigorous black over his temples. He said slowly: "You could have hurt yourself, accidentally, so as to make a red mark there. Or hands could have ..."
Lieutenant Hale said rather sharply: "I beg your pardon, Colonel. My orders are to see Miss Colfax to her cabin."
"You are quite right, I'm sure, Lieutenant. We'll go at once. Would you be kind enough to pick up my cap? I'll help Miss Colfax."
His brown cap with its leather strap lay on the examining table. The nurse took it up, waited for them to go into the hall, straightened the blanket over the cot, turned out the light and followed them, closing the door and trying it to be sure she had locked it.
All that took a few seconds. They were perhaps ten paces ahead of her along the narrow, lighted passageway when she emerged. Josh Morgan, holding Marcia steadily with his left arm, said in a low voice which the nurse could not possibly have heard: "There's a queer contagion about murder. Perhaps it is terror of being discovered; perhaps it's—something else. The man last night was murdered. You were in the lifeboat when he was killed. Captain Svendsen and Colonel Wells are very able men. They'll do things their own way. We'll know about it after they've acted. That's the army and that's sea discipline. But if somebody tried to kill you tonight . . ."
He stopped, and they could hear the click of the latch behind them as the nurse tried it. Her light footsteps came along behind them. Josh Morgan said: "Don't take any chances. If anybody tried to kill you tonight he'll try again."
Nothing that had happened since the storm began seemed real; perhaps nothing that happened since the war began seemed real. Yet all of it had happened. If the murderous attack upon her in the darkness and fog was connected with the tiny, sinister lifeboat from the Lerida and its occupants, then what about Mickey?
She knew that, with her, it was not an accident; someone had actually been there. Josh Morgan had come barely in time to save her, as perhaps she had approached barely in time to save Mickey. For it could not have been accident with Mickey either. The ugly resemblance was too close—darkness, fog, a slippery deck. A sudden murderous attack, so sudden and so stealthy that for Mickey there was not even the split second of warning that she had had.
She said: "I have to see Andre. Now . . ."
The nurse was coming nearer. All around them lay the hushed ship; they neared a bisecting passage. Josh said in a low tone: "Messac was given a stateroom on the deck above your cabin and forward, on the port side—three doors this side of the officers' lounge."
7
He left them both at the door of the cabin. Marcia herself would not have been able to find it; the narrow gray passage looked to Marcia exactly like every other. The nurse, however, knew the ship probably as she knew the palm of her hand. She led them along intersecting passages, through doors, across an entrance to a ward, into another passage and another, stopped before one of the closed doors that lined it, and opened the door briskly. The interior of the cabin was dark.
Josh Morgan said briefly: "Sleep well," took his cap from the nurse and went away.
The nurse put the coat over Marcia's arm. "Are you sure you're all right, Miss Colfax? Or shall I stay?"
"No, no. Thank you. You've been very good. I'm keeping you from other things."
"I'm on night watch. So I'll go along and get my supper before I go back to my ward. Two other nurses are on duty there and two corpsmen. We take turns in going down for supper. If you're sure there's nothing I can do for you . . ."
"No, thank you."
The nurse smiled briefly, turned away and Marcia entered the cabin.
She closed the door. She'd wait until the nurse was out of sight and then find her way to Mickey's cabin.
Where were the lights? The other nurse, Lieutenant Stoddard, had said that Gili and Daisy Belle Cates shared the cabin with her. It occurred to her that they must be already in their bunks in the tiny room, and already asleep, for neither of them spoke to her.
It would be better simply to wait for a few minutes, until she was quite sure the nurse had gone and then slip out again without turning on the light and rousing Gili or Daisy Belle or both. She wondered what time it was. Something about the ship, the hushed atmosphere, the quiet empty stretches of corridors and closed doors had given her a sense of lateness. The nurse had spoken of supper. That would be, she supposed, about midnight, as in a hospital.
There was no sound except the distant throb of engines and the rush of water beyond some open port. She waited, her hand on the round knob of the door, listening, because in the darkness one does listen, and counting. In two minutes, when she had counted twice sixty seconds, it would be safe to leave the cabin without being observed by the nurse.
She had reached thirty when an odd thing happened. She had heard no sound except the mingled sounds of a ship at night. Certainly she heard no footstep in the corridor outside, but the handle of the door turned under her fingers.
It turned very quietly and very steadily. Unconsciously her own hand tightened, resisting that pressure. For an instant there was a queer small combat, silent and quiet, one pressure against the other. Then, as suddenly and as silently as it had begun, that stealthy, steady pressure stopped.
She knew when the hand outside relinquished its hold, for the handle gave to her own. Her heart was pounding so heavily that she could near nothing else.
If anybody tried to kill you tonight, he'll try again. Josh Morgan had said that only a few minutes ago.
But she was safe here, inside the ship with all its lights, with all the nurses and corpsmen and doctors awake and going about their tasks. With Daisy Belle and Gili in the cabin, so she could call them.
Were they in the cabin?
Her fingers still gripped the handle of the door as if frozen. She scrabbled along the wall with her other hand and touched a switch and the cabin sprang into light and nobody was there.
The bunks were made up, flat and neat. Night clothes borrowed from the wards, men's pajamas and men's crimson bathrobes, lay across each bunk above the neatly folded blankets.
Where was Gili, then? Where was Daisy Belle Cates? And who had turned that handle so silently and so stealthily, and then, aware of her own resisting hand, had stopped?
If it had been Gili or Daisy Belle she'd have insisted, knocked, called out. Either of the other two women had a right to enter the cabin openly.
She must look into the corridor quickly. Already seconds had passed.
Again something Josh Morgan had said caught at her for an instant. "There's a queer contagion about murder; perhaps it's terror of being discovered, perhaps something else."
But there was nothing she knew; nothing that could make her a danger or a threat to anyone. Yet she had not imagined the attack upon her in the shadow on deck. And she had not imagined that slow, furtive pressure on the handle of the door. Suppose someone knew that Gili and Daisy Belle were not there; suppose someone knew that she was alone in that tiny empty cabin.