Detective and mystery stories; Murder -- Fiction; Yachts -- Fiction
On the night of the crimes it is probable that he performed his
devotions early, and then got the signal. This is evidenced by
Singleton’s finding the axe against the captain’s door before midnight.
He had evidently been disturbed. We believe that he intended to kill
the captain and Mr. Turner, but made a mistake in the rooms. He clearly
intended to kill the Danish girl. Several passages in his Bible, marked
with a red cross, showed his inflamed hatred of loose women; and he
believed Karen Hansen to be of that type.
He locked me in, slipping down from the wheel to do so, and pocketing
the key. The night was fairly quiet. He could lash the wheel safely,
and he had in his favor the fact that Oleson, the lookout, was a
slow-thinking Swede who notoriously slept on his watch. He found the
axe, not where he had left it, but back in the case. But the case was
only closed, not locked—Singleton’s error.
Armed with the axe, Jones slipped back to the wheel and waited. He had
plenty of time. He had taken his robe from its hiding-place in the
boat, and had it concealed near him with the axe. He was ready, but he
was waiting for another signal. He got it at half-past two. He admitted
the signal and the time, but concealed its nature—I think it was a
shooting star. He killed Vail first, believing it to be Turner, and
making with his axe, the four signs of the cross. Then he went to the
Hansen girl’s door. He did not know about the bell, and probably rang
it by accident as he leaned over to listen if Vail still breathed.
The captain, in the mean time, had been watching Singleton. He had
forbidden his entering the after house; if he caught him disobeying, he
meant to put him in irons. He was without shoes or coat, and he sat
waiting on the after companion steps for developments.
It was the captain, probably, whom Karen Hansen mistook for Turner.
Later he went back to the forward companionway, either on his way back
to his cabin, or still with an eye to Singleton’s movements.
To the captain there must have appeared this grisly figure in flowing
white, smeared with blood and armed with an axe. The sheet was worn
over Jones’s head—a long, narrow slit serving him to see through, and
two other slits freeing his arms. The captain was a brave man, but the
apparition, gleaming in the almost complete darkness, had been on him
before he could do more than throw up his hands.
Jones had not finished. He went back to the chart-room and possibly
even went on deck and took a look at the wheel. Then he went down again
and killed the Hansen woman.
He was exceedingly cunning. He flung the axe into the room, and was up
and at the wheel again, all within a few seconds. To tear off and fold
up the sheet, to hide it under near-by cordage, to strike the ship’s
bell and light his pipe—all this was a matter of two or three minutes.
I had only time to look at Vail. When I got up to the wheel, Jones was
smoking quietly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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