CHAPTER XIV

_(Anne’s Narrative Resumed)_

It was on the night of the Fancy Dress dance that I decided that

the time had come for me to confide in some one. So far I had

played a lone hand and rather enjoyed it. Now suddenly everything

was changed. I distrusted my own judgment and for the first time

a feeling of loneliness and desolation crept over me.

I sat on the edge of my bunk, still in my gipsy dress, and

considered the situation. I thought first of Colonel Race. He had

seemed to like me. He would be kind, I was sure. And he was no

fool. Yet, as I thought it over, I wavered. He was a man of

commanding personality. He would take the whole matter out of my

hands. And it was _my_ mystery! There were other reasons, too,

which I would hardly acknowledge to myself, but which made it

inadvisable to confide in Colonel Race.

Then I thought of Mrs. Blair. She, too, had been kind to me. I did

not delude myself into the belief that that really meant anything.

It was probably a mere whim of the moment. All the same, I had it

in my power to interest her. She was a woman who had experienced

most of the ordinary sensations of life. I proposed to supply her

with an extraordinary one! And I liked her; liked her ease of

manner, her lack of sentimentality, her freedom from any form of

affectation.

My mind was made up. I decided to seek her out then and there. She

would hardly be in bed yet.

Then I remembered that I did not know the number of her cabin. My

friend, the night stewardess, would probably know. I rang the bell.

After some delay it was answered by a man. He gave me the

information I wanted. Mrs. Blair’s cabin was No. 71. He apologized

for the delay in answering the bell, but explained that he had all

the cabins to attend to.

“Where is the stewardess, then?” I asked.

“They all go off duty at ten o’clock.”

“No—I mean the night stewardess.”

“No stewardess on at night, miss.”

“But—but a stewardess came the other night—about one o’clock.”

“You must have been dreaming, miss. There’s no stewardess on duty

after ten.”

He withdrew and I was left to digest this morsel of information.

Who was the woman who had come to my cabin on the night of the

22nd? My face grew graver as I realized the cunning and audacity

of my unknown antagonists. Then, pulling myself together, I left

my own cabin and sought that of Mrs. Blair. I knocked at the door.

“Who’s that?” called her voice from within.

“It’s me—Anne Beddingfeld.”

“Oh, come in, Gipsy girl.”

I entered. A good deal of scattered clothing lay about, and Mrs.

Blair herself was draped in one of the loveliest kimonos I had ever

seen. It was all orange and gold and black and made my mouth water

to look at it.

“Mrs. Blair,” I said abruptly, “I want to tell you the story of my

life—that is, if it isn’t too late, and you won’t be bored.”

“Not a bit. I always hate going to bed,” said Mrs. Blair, her face

crinkling into smiles in the delightful way it had. “And I should

love to hear the story of your life. You’re a most unusual creature,

Gipsy girl. Nobody else would think of bursting in on me at 1 a.m.

to tell me the story of their life. Especially after snubbing my

natural curiosity for weeks as you have done! I’m not accustomed

to being snubbed. It’s been quite a pleasing novelty. Sit down on

the sofa and unburden your soul.”

I told her the whole story. It took some time as I was conscientious

over all the details. She gave a deep sigh when I had finished,

but she did not say at all what I had expected her to say. Instead

she looked at me, laughed a little and said:

“Do you know, Anne, you’re a very unusual girl? Haven’t you ever

had qualms?”

“Qualms?” I asked, puzzled.

“Yes, qualms, qualms, qualms! Starting off alone with practically

no money. What will you do when you find yourself in a strange

country with all your money gone?”

“It’s no good bothering about that until it comes. I’ve got plenty

of money still. The twenty-five pounds that Mrs. Flemming gave me

is practically intact, and then I won the sweep yesterday. That’s

another fifteen pounds. Why, I’ve got _lots_ of money. Forty

pounds!”

“Lots of money! My God!” murmured Mrs. Blair. _“I_ couldn’t do it,

Anne, and I’ve plenty of pluck in my own way. I couldn’t start off

gaily with a few pounds in my pocket and no idea as to what I was

doing and where I was going.”

“But that’s the fun of it,” I cried, thoroughly roused. “It gives

one such a splendid feeling of adventure.”

She looked at me, nodded once or twice, and then smiled.

“Lucky Anne! There aren’t many people in the world who feel as you

do.”

“Well,” I said impatiently, “what do you think of it all, Mrs.

Blair?”

“I think it’s the most thrilling thing I ever heard! Now, to begin

with, you will stop calling me Mrs. Blair. Suzanne will be ever so

much better. Is that agreed?”

“I should love it, Suzanne.”

“Good girl. Now let’s get down to business. You say that in Sir

Eustace’s secretary—not that long-faced Pagett, the other one—you

recognized the man who was stabbed and came into your cabin for

shelter?”

I nodded.

“That gives us two links connecting Sir Eustace with the tangle.

The woman was murdered in _his_ house, and it’s _his_ secretary

who gets stabbed at the mystic hour of one o’clock. I don’t suspect

Sir Eustace himself, but it can’t be all coincidence. There’s a

connection somewhere even if he himself is unaware of it.”

“Then there’s the queer business of the stewardess,” she continued

thoughtfully. “What was she like?”

“I hardly noticed her. I was so excited and strung up—and a

stewardess seemed such an anticlimax. But—yes—I did think her face

was familiar. Of course it would be if I’d seen her about the

ship.”

“Her face seemed familiar to you,” said Suzanne. “Sure she wasn’t

a man?”

“She was very tall,” I admitted.

“Hum. Hardly Sir Eustace, I should think, nor Mr. Pagett——Wait!”

She caught up a scrap of paper and began drawing feverishly. She

inspected the result with her head poised on one side.

“A very good likeness of the Rev. Edward Chichester. Now for the

etceteras.” She passed the paper over to me. “Is that your

stewardess?”

“Why, yes,” I cried. “Suzanne, how clever of you!”

She disdained the compliment with a light gesture.

“I’ve always had suspicions of that Chichester creature. Do you

remember how he dropped his coffee-cup and turned a sickly green

when we were discussing Crippen the other day?”

“And he tried to get Cabin 17!”

“Yes, it all fits in so far. But what does it all _mean?_ What was

really meant to happen at one o’clock in Cabin 17? It can’t be the

stabbing of the secretary. There would be no point in timing that

for a special hour on a special day in a special place. No, it must

have been some kind of appointment and he was on his way to keep

it when they knifed him. But who was the appointment with? Certainly

not with you. It might have been with Chichester. Or it might have

been with Pagett.”

“That seems unlikely,” I objected, “they can see each other any

time.”

We both sat silent for a minute or two, then Suzanne started off

on another tack.

“Could there have been anything hidden in the cabin?”

“That seems more probable,” I agreed. “It would explain my things

being ransacked the next morning. But there was nothing hidden

there, I’m sure of it.”

“The young man couldn’t have slipped something into a drawer the

night before?”

I shook my head.

“I should have seen him.”

“Could it have been your precious piece of paper they were looking

for?”

“It might have been, but it seems rather senseless. It was only a

time and a date—and they were both past by then.”

Suzanne nodded.

“That’s so of course. No, it wasn’t the paper. By the way, have

you got it with you? I’d rather like to see it.”

I had brought the paper with me as Exhibit A, and I handed it over

to her. She scrutinized it, frowning.

“There’s a dot after the 17. Why isn’t there a dot after the 1

too?”

“There’s a space,” I pointed out.

“Yes, there’s a space, but——”

Suddenly she rose and peered at the paper, holding it as close

under the light as possible. There was a repressed excitement in

her manner.

“Anne, that isn’t a dot! That’s a flaw in the paper! A flaw in the

paper, you see? So you’ve got to ignore it, and just go by the

spaces—the spaces!”

I had risen and was standing by her. I read out the figures as I

now saw them.

“1 71 22.”

“You see,” said Suzanne, “it’s the same, but not quite. It’s one

o’clock still, and the 22nd—but it’s Cabin 71! _My_ cabin, Anne!”

We stood staring at each other, so pleased with our new discovery

and so rapt with excitement that you might have thought we had

solved the whole mystery. Then I fell to earth with a bump.

“But, Suzanne, nothing happened here at one o’clock on the 22nd?”

Her face fell also. “No—it didn’t.”

Another idea struck me.

“This isn’t your own cabin, is it, Suzanne? I mean not the one you

originally booked?”

“No, the purser changed me into it.”

“I wonder if it was booked before sailing for some one—some one

who didn’t turn up. I suppose we could find out.”

“We don’t need to find out, Gipsy girl,” cried Suzanne. “I know!

The purser was telling me about it. The cabin was booked in the

name of Mrs. Grey—but it seems that Mrs. Grey was merely a pseudonym

for the famous Madame Nadina. She’s a celebrated Russian dancer,

you know. She’s never appeared in London, but Paris has been quite

mad about her. She had a terrific success there all through the

War. A thoroughly bad lot, I believe, but most attractive. The

purser expressed his regrets that she wasn’t on board in a most

heart-felt fashion when he gave me her cabin, and then Colonel Race

told me a lot about her. It seems there were very queer stories

afloat in Paris. She was suspected of espionage, but they couldn’t

prove anything. I rather fancy Colonel Race was over there simply

on that account. He’s told me some very interesting things. There

was a regular organized gang, not German in origin at all. In fact

the head of it, a man always referred to as ‘the Colonel’ was

thought to be an Englishman, but they never got any clue as to his

identity. But there is no doubt that he controlled a considerable

organization of international crooks. Robberies, espionages,

assaults, he undertook them all—and usually provided an innocent

scapegoat to pay the penalty. Diabolically clever, he must have

been! This woman was supposed to be one of his agents, but they

couldn’t get hold of anything to go upon. Yes, Anne, we’re on the

right tack. Nadina is just the woman to be mixed up in this

business. The appointment on the morning of the 22nd was with her

in this cabin. But where is she? Why didn’t she sail?”

A light flashed upon me.

“She meant to sail,” I said slowly.

“Then why didn’t she?”

_“Because she was dead._ Suzanne, Nadina was the woman murdered at

Marlow!”

My mind went back to the bare room in the empty house, and there

swept over me again that indefinable sensation of menace and evil.

With it came the memory of the falling pencil and the discovery of

the roll of films. A roll of films—that struck a more recent note.

Where had I heard of a roll of films? And why did I connect that

thought with Mrs. Blair?

Suddenly I flew at her and almost shook her in my excitement.

“Your films! The ones that were passed to you through the

ventilator? Wasn’t that on the 22nd?”

“The ones I lost?”

“How do you know they were the same? Why would any one return them

to you that way—in the middle of the night? It’s a mad idea.

No—they were a message, the films had been taken out of the yellow

tin case, and something else put inside. Have you got it still?”

“I may have used it. No, here it is. I remember I tossed it into

the rack at the side of the bunk.”

She held it out to me.

It was an ordinary round tin cylinder, such as films are packed in

for the tropics. I took it with trembling hand, but even as I did

so my heart leapt. It was noticeably heavier than it should have

been.

With shaking fingers I peeled off the strip of adhesive plaster

that kept it air-tight. I pulled off the lid, and a stream of dull

glassy pebbles rolled onto the bed.

“Pebbles,” I said, keenly disappointed.

“Pebbles?” cried Suzanne.

The ring in her voice excited me.

“Pebbles? No, Anne, not pebbles! _Diamonds!_”