“Ah!” Captain Bannerman said. “A monster. There’s unnatural things turn up where you’d least expect to find them in most human souls. That I will agree to. But not in my ship.”
The two men looked at each other, and Alleyn’s heart sank. He knew pigheadedness when he met it.
The ship’s engines, now at full speed, drove her, outward bound, upon her course. There was no more fog; a sunny seascape accepted her as its accident. Her wake opened obediently behind her and the rhythm of her normal progress established itself. England was left behind and the Farewell, sailing on her lawful occasions, set her course for Las Palmas.
“What,” Captain Bannerman asked, “do you want me to do? The thing’s flat-out ridiculous, but let’s hear what you want. I can’t say fairer than that, can I? Come on.”
“No,” Alleyn agreed, “that’s fair enough and more than I bargained for. First of all, perhaps I ought to tell you what I don’t want. Particularly, I don’t want to be known for what I am.”
“Is that so?”
“I gather that supercargoes are a bit out-of-date, so I’d better not be a supercargo. Could I be an employee of the company going out to their Durban office?”
Captain Bannerman stared fixedly at him and then said, “It’d have to be something very senior.”
“Why? On account of age?”
“It’s nothing to do with age. Or looks. Or rather,” Captain Bannerman amended, “it’s the general effect.”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite—”
“You don’t look ill, either. Voyage before last, outward bound, we carried a second cousin of the managing director’s. Getting over d.t.’s, he was, after taking one of these cures. You’re not a bit like him. You’re not a bit like a detective, either, if it comes to that,” Captain Bannerman added resentfully.
“I’m sorry.”
“Have you always been a ’tec?”
“Not absolutely.”
“I know,” Captain Bannerman said, “leave it to me. You’re a cousin of the chairman and you’re going out to Canberra via Durban to one of these legations or something. There’s all sorts of funny jobs going in Canberra. Anybody’ll believe anything, almost.”
“Will they?”
“It’s a fact.”
“Fair enough. Who is your chairman?”
“Sir Graeme Harmond.”
“Do you mean a little fat man with pop eyes and a stutter?”
“Well,” said Captain Bannerman, staring at Alleyn, “if you care to put it that way.”
“I know him.”
“You don’t tell me!”
“He’ll do.”
“Do!”
“I’d better not use my own name. There’s been something in the papers. How about C. J. Roderick?”
“Roderick?”
“It happens to be the first chunk of my own name, but it’s never appeared in print. When you do this sort of thing you answer more readily to a name you’re used to.” He thought for a moment. “No,” he said. “Let’s play safer and make it Broderick.”
“Wasn’t your picture in last night’s Herald?”
“Was it? Hell!”
“Wait a bit.”
The captain went into his stateroom and came back with a copy of the paper that had so intrigued Mr. Cuddy. He folded it back at the snapshot of piquant Beryl Cohen and Superintendent R. Alleyn (inset).
“Is that like me?” Alleyn said.
“No.”
“Good.”
“There may be a very slight resemblance. It looks as if your mouth was full.”
“It was.”
“I see,” said Captain Bannerman heavily.
“We’ll have to risk it.”
“I suppose you’ll want to keep very much to yourself?”
“On the contrary. I want to mix as much as possible with the passengers.”
“Why?”
Alleyn waited for a moment and then asked, “Have you got a good memory for dates?”
“Dates?”
“Could you, for instance, provide yourself with a cast-iron alibi plus witnesses for the fifteenth of last month between ten and eleven P.M., the twenty-fifth between nine P.M. and midnight, and for last night during the half-hour before you sailed?”
Captain Bannerman breathed stertorously and whispered to himself. At last he said, “Not all three, I couldn’t.”
“There you are, you see.”
Captain Bannerman removed his spectacles and again advanced his now empurpled face to within a short distance of Alleyn’s.
“Do I look like a sex monster?” he furiously demanded.
“Don’t ask me,” Alleyn rejoined mildly. “I don’t know what they look like. That’s part of the trouble. I thought I’d made it clear.”
As Captain Bannerman had nothing to say to this, Alleyn went on. “I’ve got to try and check those times with all your passengers and — please don’t misunderstand me, sir — I can only hope that most of them manage to turn in solider alibis than, on the face of it, yours looks to be.”
“Here! I’m clear for the fifteenth. We were berthed in Liverpool and I was aboard with visitors till two in the morning.”
“If that can be proved we won’t pull you in for murder.”
Captain Bannerman said profoundly, “That’s a queer sort of style to use when you’re talking to the master of the ship.”
“I mean no more than I say, and that’s not much. After all, you don’t come aboard your own ship clutching an embarkation notice.”
Captain Bannerman said, “Not as a rule. No.”
Alleyn stood up. “I know,” he said, “what a bind this is for you and I really am sorry. I’ll keep as quiet as I reasonably may.”
“I’ll bet you anything you like he hasn’t shipped with us. Anything you like! Now!”
“If we’d been dead certain we’d have held you up until we got him.”
“It’s all some perishing mistake.”
“It may be.”
“Well,” Captain Bannerman said grudgingly as he also rose. “I suppose we’ll have to make the best of it. No doubt you’d like to see your quarters. This ship carries a pilot’s cabin. On the bridge. We can give you that if it suits.”
Alleyn said it would suit admirably. “And if I can just be treated as a passenger—”
“I’ll tell the chief steward.” He went to his desk, sat down behind it, pulled a slip of paper towards him and wrote on it, muttering as he did so, “Mr. C. J. Broderick, relative of the chairman, going out to a post at the British Embassy in Canberra. That it?”
“That’s it. I don’t, of course, have to tell you anything about the need for complete secrecy.”
“You do not. I’ve no desire to make a fool of myself, talking daft to my ship’s complement.”
A fresh breeze had sprung up and was blowing through the starboard porthole. It caught the memorandum that the Captain had just completed. The paper fluttered, turned over, and was revealed as a passenger’s embarkation notice for the Cape Farewell.
Staring fixedly at Alleyn, the captain said, “I used it yesterday in the offices. For a memo.” He produced a curiously uncomfortable laugh. “It’s not been torn, anyway,” he said.