"Beg leave to report, sir," said the crisp voice of the second officer. "And" — his eyes flashed over—"and to Mr. Morgan, as you ordered. Two of us have made a complete round of the ship. We have investigated every passenger and member of the crew. There was nobody hurt last night."
A vein was beginning to beat in Morgan's temple. He controlled his voice. "Right-ho, Mr. Baldwin. But we're not looking for a person who was merely hurt. We're looking for a woman who is murdered and missing… "
Baldwin stiffened. "Well, sir, you may be," he said in a tone of regret. "But you won't find her. I have checked over personally everybody on this ship, and there is nobody missing, either."
"Is that so, Mr. Baldwin?" inquired Whistler, almost genially. "Well, well."
Warren was escorted to the brig, under heavy guard, at exactly 11:45 Eastern daylight-saving time.
INTERLUDE
Observations of Dr. Fell
In run great book-lined room above Adelphi Terrace the warm May sun threw flat shadows on the floor and the river glittered under its blaze. Through the open windows they could hear the distant bang of the clock in Westminster Tower beating out twelve. Cigar stumps had accumulated, and Morgan was growing hoarse from his recital.
Sitting back in the chair, his eyes half-closed behind the eyeglasses on the ribbon, his chins upheaving in chuckles under the bandit's moustache, Dr. Fell shifted his gaze from the distant traffic along the Embankment.
"Noon," said Dr. Fell. "Now, break off for a minute and I'll order up some lunch. A long cool draught of beer will do you an uncommon amount of good." Wheezing, he pulled a bell-cord. "First, my boy, allow me to say that I would have given a year of my already wasted life to have been with you on that voyage. Heh! Heh-heh-heh! And at the moment I will ask only one question. Is there more to come? Is it really possible for any given group of people to get in more trouble than your excellent band has already done?"
Morgan croaked slightly.
"Sir," he said, with a deep gesture of earnestness, "what I've already told you is a — a microscopic atom, an invisibility, a microbe concealed in a drop of water in the vast comprehensive ocean of trouble which is to come. You have heard nothing yet, nothing. That my brain is still whole I am prepared to admit, but why it is still whole 1 can't tell you. After the sinister episode of the gold watches… but that's yet to come."
He hesitated.
"Look here, sir. I know your interest in detective plots, and if I came to ask your aid, I'd want to get everything straight first. That is, I like my own plots to be clean-cut. If it's going to be really a murder story, in spite of all entangled nonsense, I want to know that so that I can be prepared, and not have the whole thing sprung on me as a hoax. I like to see the body on the floor. When somebody disappears in a story, you've nothing solid to go on. It might be — and generally is — a dastardly trick to prove that there's been no murder, or that the wrong person's been murdered, or something that only annoys you… That's from the analytic side, you understand, and not the human side. But, as to the murder, if you ask me at this moment whether there's really been a murder, I've got to admit I can't tell you."
Dr. Fell grunted. He had a pencil in one hand, with which he had been tapping some notes.
"Well, then," he said, blinking over his eye-glasses, "in that case, why don't you ask me?"
"You — er — think—?"
"Yes, there's been a murder," replied Dr. Fell. He scowled. "I dislike having to tell you that. I dislike having to think of it, and I hope I may be wrong. There is one thing that, inevitably, you have got to tell me, which will settle any doubts. But one thing I insist on. Don't be afraid of the nonsense. Don't apologise for the vast Christian joy of laughing when an admiral slips on a cake of soap and sits on his own cocked hat. Don't say that it has no place in a murder case, or that a murderer himself can't laugh. Once you set him up as a waxworks horror, leering over his red hands, you will never be able to understand him and you will probably never see who he is. Damn him if you will, but don't say that he isn't human or that real life ever attains the straight level of ghastliness to be found in a detective-story. That's the way to produce dummy murderers, and dummy detectives as well. And yet—"
He stabbed at the notes with his pencil.
"… and yet, my lad, it's both logical and ironical that this particular case should produce what is in a sense a dummy murderer… "
"A dummy murderer?"
"I mean a professional criminal; an expert mimic; a mask. In short, a murderer who kills for the sake of expediency. How can a person who's playing a part as somebody else be anything more or less than a good or bad copy of the original? So he eludes us in his own personality, ltd till we've got to judge by is how well he speaks stolen lines. H'm! It makes for better analysis, I dare say, and the mask is undoubtedly lifelike. But, as for seeing his real self in the mask, you might as well question one of M. Fortinbras's marionettes… " He stopped. The small, lusty eyes narrowed. "You jumped a little there. Why?"
"Well — er," said Morgan, "as a matter of fact, they've — er- they've got old Uncle Jules in the brig."
For a moment Dr. Fell stared, and then his vast chuckle blew a cloud of sparks from his pipe. He blinked thoughtfully.
"Uncle Jules in the brig?" he repeated. "Most refreshing. Why?"
"Oh, not for murder or anything like that. I'll tell you nil about it. Of course they're going to let him out to-day. They—"
"Humf. Harrumph! Now let me see if I understand this. Let him out to-day? Hasn't the boat docked yet?"
"That's what I was getting at, sir. It hasn't. Thank the Lord for what you've said, anyhow, because that's why I'm here… You know Captain Whistler, don't you? And he knows of you?"
"I have had some experience," replied Dr. Fell, shutting up one eye meditatively, "with the old — um — cuttlefish. Heh! Heh-heh-heh! Yes, I know him. Well?"
"We were to dock early this morning. The trouble was that at the last minute there was a mix-up about our dock or berth or whatever they call it; the Queen Anne didn't get under way so that we could move in, and we were left lying in the harbour, with no chance of docking until about two o'clock this afternoon… "
Dr. Fell sat up. "And the Queen Victoria is still—?"
"Yes. Due to something you shall hear of in due course, I was able to persuade Whistler to let me go ashore with the pilot; I had to sneak it, of course, or the others would have been wild. But," he drew a deep breath, "Whistler knowing you, I contrived to convince him that, if I could get to you before the passengers left that ship, there might be kudos in it for him. Actually, sir, you'll say I had the hell of a nerve, but what I did was practically promise him you'd land him an outstanding crook with credit for it if I could get to you before the passengers left the Queen Victoria."
He sat back and shrugged his shoulders; but he watched Dr. Fell closely.
"Nerve? Ha! Heh-heh-heh!" Nonsense!" rumbled the doctor, affably. "What's Gideon Fell, for, I ask you, if not for that? Besides, I owe Hadley one for doing me in the eye over that Blumgarten business last week. Thank'ee, my boy, thank'ee."
"You think—?"
"Why, between ourselves, I rather think we'll land the Blind Barber. I have rather a strong suspicion," said Dr. Fell, scowling, with a long rumbling sniff through his nose, "who this Blind Barber is. If I'm wrong, there'll be no harm done aside from a little outraged dignity… But, look here, why is it necessary? What about this New York man who was supposed to arrive on the Etrusca this morning?"