Detective and mystery stories; Murder -- Fiction; Yachts -- Fiction
The cook, taking down the dinner on Friday evening, reported Mr. Turner
up and about and partly dressed. The heat was frightful. All day we had
had a following breeze, and it had been necessary to lengthen the
towing-rope, dropping the jolly-boat well behind us. The men, saying
little or nothing, dozed under their canvas; the helmsman drooped at
the wheel. Under our feet the boards sent up simmering heat waves, and
the brasses were too hot to touch.
At four o’clock Elsa Lee came on deck, and spoke to me for the first
time in several days. She started when she saw me, and no wonder. In
the frenzied caution of the day after the crimes, I had flung every
razor overboard, and the result was as villainous a set of men as I
have ever seen.
“Have you been ill again?” she asked.
I put my hand to my chin. “Not ill,” I said; “merely unshaven.”
“But you are pale, and your eyes are sunk in your head.”
“We are very short-handed and—no one has slept much.”
“Or eaten at all, I imagine,” she said. “When do we get in?”
“I can hardly say. With this wind, perhaps Tuesday.”
“Where?”
“Philadelphia.”
“You intend to turn the yacht over to the police?”
“Yes, Miss Lee.”
“Every one on it?”
“That is up to the police. They will probably not hold the women. You
will be released, I imagine, on your own recognizance.”
“And—Mr. Turner?”
“He will have to take his luck with the rest of us.”
She asked me no further questions, but switched at once to what had
brought her on deck.
“The cabin is unbearable,” she said. “We are willing to take the risk
of opening the after companion door.”
But I could not allow this, and I tried to explain my reasons. The crew
were quartered there, for one; for the other, whether they were willing
to take the risk or not, I would not open it without placing a guard
there, and we had no one to spare for the duty. I suggested that they
use the part of the deck reserved for them, where it was fairly cool
under the awning; and, after a dispute below, they agreed to this.
Turner, very weak, came up the few steps slowly, but refused my
proffered help. A little later, he called me from the rail and offered
me a cigar. The change in him was startling.
We took advantage of their being on deck to open the windows and air
the after house. But all were securely locked and barred before they
went below again. It was the first time they had all been on deck
together since the night of the 11th. It was a different crowd of
people that sat there, looking over the rail and speaking in
monosyllables: no bridge, no glasses clinking with ice, no elaborate
toilets and carefully dressed hair, no flash of jewels, no light
laughter following one of poor Vail’s sallies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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