Cobb Irvin Shrewsbury
Local Color

CHAPTER X
SMOOTH CROSSING

On this voyage the Mesopotamia was to sail at midnight. It was now, to be precise about it, eleven forty-five P. M. and some odd seconds; and they were wrestling the last of the heavy luggage aboard. The Babel-babble that distinguishes a big liner’s departure was approaching its climax of acute hysteria, when two well-dressed, youngish men joined the wormlike column of eleventh-hour passengers mounting a portable bridge labelled First Cabin which hyphenated the strip of dark water between ship and shore. They were almost the last persons to join the line, coming in such haste along the dock that the dock captain on duty at the foot of the canvas-sided gangway let them pass without question.

Except that these two men were much of a size and at a first glance rather alike in general aspect; and except that one of them, the rearmost, bore two bulging handbags while the other kept his hands muffled in a grey tweed ulster that lay across his arms, there was nothing about them or either of them to distinguish them from any other belated pair of men in that jostling procession of the flurried and the hurried. Oh, yes, one of them had a moustache and the other had none.

Indian file they went up the gangway and past the second officer, who stood at the head of it; and still tandem they pushed and were pushed along through the jam upon the deck. The second man, the one who bore the handbags, gave them over to a steward who had jumped forward when he saw them coming. He hesitated then, looking about him.

“Come on, it’s all right,” said the first man.

“How about the tickets? Don’t we have to show them first?” inquired the other.

“No, not now,” said his companion. “We can go direct to our stateroom.” The same speaker addressed the steward:

“D-forty,” he said briskly.

“Quite right, sir,” said the steward. “D-forty. Right this way, sir; if you please, sir.”

With the dexterity born of long practice the steward, burdened though he was, bored a path for himself and them through the crowd. He led them from the deck, across a corner of a big cabin that was like a hotel lobby, and down flights of broad stairs from B-deck to C and from C-deck to D, and thence aft along a narrow companionway until he came to a cross hall where another steward stood.

“Two gentlemen for D-forty,” said their guide. Surrendering the handbags to this other functionary, he touched his cap and vanished into thin air, magically, after the custom of ancient Arabian genii and modern British steamship servants.

“’Ere you are, sirs,” said the second steward. He opened the door of a stateroom and stood aside to let them in. Following in behind them he deposited the handbags in mathematical alignment upon the floor and spoke a warning: “We’ll be leavin’ in a minute or two now, but it’s just as well, sir, to keep your stateroom door locked until we’re off – thieves are about sometimes in port, you know, sir. Was there anything else, sir?” He addressed them in the singular, but considered them, so to speak, in the plural. “I’m the bedroom steward, sir,” he added in final explanation.

The passenger who had asked concerning the tickets looked about him curiously, as though the interior arrangement of a steamship stateroom was to him strange.

“So you’re the bedroom steward,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Lawrence, sir.”

“Lawrence what?”

“I beg your pardon, sir?” said the steward, looking puzzled.

“He wants to know your first name,” explained the other prospective occupant of D-forty. This man had sat himself down upon the edge of the bed, still with his grey ulster folded forward across his arms as though the pockets held something valuable and must be kept in a certain position, just so, to prevent the contents spilling out.

“’Erbert Lawrence, sir, thank you, sir,” said the steward, his face clearing, “I’ll be ’andy if you ring, sir.” He backed out. “Nothing else, sir? I’ll see to your ’eavy luggage in the mornin’. Will there be any trunks for the stateroom?”

“No trunks,” said the man on the bed. “Just some suitcases. They came aboard just ahead of us, I think.”

“Right, sir,” said the accommodating Lawrence. “I’ll get your tickets in the morning and take them to the purser, if you don’t mind. Thank you, sir.” And with that he bowed himself out and was gone.

As the door closed behind this thoughtful and accommodating servitor the fellow travellers looked at each other for a moment steadily, much as though they might be sharers of a common secret that neither cared to mention even between themselves. The one who stood spoke first:

“I guess I’ll go up and see her pull out,” he said. “I’ve never seen a ship pull out; it’s a new thing to me. Want to go?”

The man nursing the ulster shook his head.

“All right, then,” said the first. He pitched his own topcoat, which he had been carrying under his arm, upon the lone chair. “I’ll be back pretty soon.” He glanced keenly at the one small porthole, looked about the stateroom once more, then stepped across the threshold and closed the door. The lock clicked.

Left alone, the other man sat for a half minute or so as he was, with his head tilted forward in an attitude of listening. Then he stood up and with a series of shrugging, lifting motions, jerked the ulster forward so that it slipped through the loop of his arms upon the floor. Had the efficient Lawrence returned at that moment it is safe to say he would have sustained a profound shock, although it is equally safe to say he would have made desperate efforts to avoid showing his emotions. The man was manacled. Below his white shirt-cuffs his wrists were encircled by snug-fitting, shiny bracelets of steel united by a steel chain of four short links. That explained his rather peculiar way of carrying his ulster and his decidedly awkward way of ridding himself of it.

He stepped across the room and with his coupled hands tried the knob of the door. The knob turned, but the bolt had been set from the outside. He was locked in. With his foot he dragged forward a footstool, kicking it close up against the panels so that should any person coming in open the door suddenly, the stool would retard that person’s entrance for a moment anyway. He faced about then, considering his next move. The circular pane of thick glass in the porthole showed as a black target in the white wall; through it only blankness was visible. D-deck plainly was well down in the ship’s hull, below the level of promenades and probably not very far above the waterline. Nevertheless, the handcuffed man crossed over and drew the short silken curtains across the window, making the seclusion of his quarters doubly secure.

Now, kneeling upon the floor, he undid the hasps of the two handbags, opened them and began rummaging in their cluttered depths. Doing all these things, he moved with a sureness and celerity which showed that he had worn his bonds for an appreciable space of time and had accustomed himself to using his two hands upon an operation where, unhampered, he might have used one or the other, but not both at once. His chain clinked briskly as he felt about in the valises. From them he first got out two travelling caps – one a dark grey cap, the other a cap of rather a gaudy check pattern; also, a plain razor, a safety razor and a box of cigars. He examined the safety razor a moment, then slipped it back into the flap pocket where it belonged; took a cigar from the box and put the box back into the grip; tried on first one of the travelling caps and then the other, and returned them to the places from which he had taken them; and reclosed and refastened the grips themselves. But he took the other razor and dropped it in a certain place, close down to the floor at the foot of one of the beds.

He shoved the footstool away from the door, and, after dusting off his knees, he went and stood at the porthole gazing out into the night through a cranny in the curtains. The ship no longer nuzzled up alongside the dock like a great sucking pig under the flanks of an even greater mother-sow; she appeared to stand still while the dock seemed to be slipping away from her rearward; but the man who looked out into the darkness was familiar enough with that illusion. With his manacled hands crossed upon his waistcoat and the cigar hanging unlighted between his lips, he watched until the liner had turned and was swinging down stream, heading for the mouth of the river and the bay.

He lit the cigar, then, and once more sat himself down upon the edge of the bed. He puffed away steadily. His head was bent forward and his hands dangled between his knees in such ease as the snugness of the bracelets and the shortness of the chain permitted. Looking in at him you would have said he was planning something; that he was considering various problems. He was still there in that same hunching position, but the cigar had burned down two-thirds of its length, when the lock snicked a warning and his companion re-entered, bearing a key with which he relocked the door upon the inner side.

“Well,” said the newcomer, “we’re on our way.” There was no reply to this. He took off his derby hat and tossed it aside, and began unbuttoning his waistcoat.

“Making yourself comfortable, eh?” he went on as though trying to manufacture conversation. The manacled one didn’t respond. He merely canted his head, the better to look into the face of his travel mate.

“Say, look here,” demanded the new arrival, his tone and manner changing. “What’s the use, your nursing that grouch?”

Coming up the gangway, twenty minutes before, they might have passed, at a casual glance, for brothers. Viewed now as they faced each other in the quiet of this small room such a mistake could not have been possible. They did not suggest brothers; for all that they were much the same in build and colouring they did not even suggest distant cousins. About the sitting man there were abundant evidences of a higher and more cultured organism than the other possessed; the difference showed in costume, in manner, in speech. Even wearing handcuffs he displayed, without trying to do so, a certain superiority in poise and assurance. In a way his companion seemed vaguely aware of this. It seemed to make him – what shall I say? – uneasy; maybe a bit envious; possibly arousing in him the imitative instinct. Judging of him by his present aspect and the intonations of his voice, a shrewd observer of men and motives might have said that he was amply satisfied with the progress of the undertaking which he had now in hand, but that he lately had ceased to be entirely satisfied with himself.

“Say, Bronston,” he repeated, “I tell you there’s no good nursing the grouch. I haven’t done anything all through this matter except what I thought was necessary. I’ve acted that way from the beginning, ain’t I?”

“Have you heard me complain?” parried the gyved man. He blew out a mouthful of smoke.

“No, I haven’t, not since you made the first kick that day I found you out in Denver. But a fellow can’t very well travel twenty-five hundred miles with another fellow, sharing the same stateroom with him and all that, without guessing what’s in the other fellow’s mind.”

There was another little pause.

“Well,” said the man upon the bed, “we’ve got this far. What’s the programme from this point on regarding these decorations?” He raised his hands to indicate what he meant.

“That’s what I want to talk with you about,” answered the other. “The rest of the folks on this boat don’t know anything about us – not a blessed thing. The officers don’t know – nor the crew, nor any of the passengers, I reckon. To them we’re just two ordinary Americans crossing the ocean together on business or pleasure. You give me your promise not to make any breaks of any sort, and I’ll take those things off you and not put them on again until just before we land. You know I want to make this trip as easy as I can for you.”

“What earthly difference would it make whether I gave you my promise or not? Suppose, as you put it, I did make a break? Where would I break for out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? Are you still afraid of yourself?”

“Certainly not; certainly I ain’t afraid. At that, you’ve been back and forth plenty of times across the ocean, and you know all the ropes on a ship and I don’t. Still, I ain’t afraid. But I’d like to have your promise.”

“I won’t give it,” said he of the handcuffs promptly. “I’m through with making offers to you. Four days ago when you caught up with me, I told you I would go with you and make no resistance – make no attempt to get away from you – if you’d only leave my limbs free. You knew as well as I did that I was willing to waive extradition and go back without any fuss or any delay, in order to keep my people in this country from finding out what a devil’s mess I’d gotten myself into over on the other side. You knew I was not really a criminal, that I’d done nothing at all which an American court would construe as a crime. You knew that because I was an American the British courts would probably be especially hard upon me. And you knew too – you found that part out for yourself without my telling you – that I was intending to go back to England at the first chance. You knew that all I needed was a chance to get at certain papers and documents and produce them in open court to prove that I was being made a scapegoat; you knew that if I had just two days free on British soil, in which to get the books from the place those lying partners of mine hid them, I could save myself from doing penal servitude. That was why I meant to go back of my own accord. That was why I offered to give you my word of honour that I would not attempt to get away. Did you listen? No!”

“Well, didn’t I make the whole thing as easy for you as I could?” protested his companion. He spoke as if in self-defence, or at least in extenuation.

“Easy? Didn’t you put these things on me? Haven’t I worn them every minute since then, awake or asleep, except when I was dressing or undressing?”

“What’s the use of going into all that all over again? This was too big a case for me to be taking any risks. I’d had a hard enough job locating you; I couldn’t afford to lose you. Let me ask you a few questions: Didn’t we travel all the way from Denver in a stateroom, so that outside of the conductors and a couple of porters there wasn’t a soul knew you was in trouble? Didn’t I show you how to carry that overcoat over your arms when we were changing cars at Chicago, and again coming across New York to-night, so’s nobody would catch on? Didn’t I steer clear of reporters all along the line? Didn’t I keep it all a secret when I was sending the wire on ahead to book the passage?”

He paused; then remembered something else:

“Didn’t I go to the trouble of buying a lighter pair of cuffs than the ones I usually use and having an extra link set in the chain so as to keep your arms from cramping, wearing them? Yes, I did – I did all those things and you can’t deny it.

“Nobody on this boat suspects anything,” he went on. “Nobody here knows you’re Bronston, wanted in London for that Atlas Investment Company swindle, and I’m Keller, chief operative for the Sharkey Agency. So far as anybody else knows we’re just Mr. Brown and Mr. Cole, a couple of friends travelling together. Until the day we land over there on the other side you can keep on being Mr. Brown and I’ll keep on being Mr. Cole. I’ll keep this stateroom door locked at night just to be on the safe side. And seeing as we’ve got seats together at the same table I guess we’d better make a point of taking our meals together at the same time. Otherwise, you can do just what you please and go where you please and I won’t bother you. These folks on this boat will think we’re just a couple of pretty close friends.” He fished a key ring out of his pocket, selected a certain key and bent over the other man. “Here, hold your hands up for a minute. You ought to be glad enough to get rid of those darbies. There!”

He lifted the opened bracelets off his prisoner’s wrists and pitched them, clinking, upon the bedcover.

“Have it your own way,” said the freed Bronston. “But remember, I’ve had my say. I’m making no pledges, now or hereafter.” With his fingers, which were long and slender, he chafed his flesh where the steel had bruised it red.

“Oh, all right, all right,” answered Keller; “I’m willing to take the chance – although there ain’t really any chance to take. I’ll get these things out of sight first thing.”

He picked up the handcuffs and dropped them into a pocket of his ulster where it lay on the one chair in the room, and wadded a handkerchief down into the pocket upon them. “Now, then, everything is shipshape and proper. There’s no reason why we can’t be pals for three or four days anyway. And now what do you say to turning in and getting a good night’s rest? I’m good and tired and I guess you are too.”

Whistling to himself like a man well satisfied with the latest turn in a difficult situation, he began to undress. The other followed suit. They were both in their pajamas and both were in bed and the lights had been put out before Bronston spoke:

“Mind you, Keller,” he said, “I’m not fooled to any great extent by this change in attitude on your part.”

“What do you mean?” asked Keller sharply.

“Well,” said Bronston, “I can’t help but realise that you’ve got a selfish and a personal motive of your own for doing what you’ve just done. You’re bound to know that if the truth about us were to get out the people on this boat probably wouldn’t value your company any higher than they’d value mine – maybe not so highly as they might value mine.”

Keller sat up in bed.

“I don’t get you,” he said. “Just what do you mean by that?”

“You’re a private detective, aren’t you?”

“Well, what of it?” demanded Keller. “What’s wrong with my being a private detective?”

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” said Bronston, suddenly grown drowsy. He settled his head down in the pillow and rolled over on his side, turning his back to his roommate. “Let’s go to sleep.”

Instantly he seemed to be off; he began drawing long, heavy breaths. With a snort Keller settled down, uttering grumbled protests in an injured and puzzled tone. Presently he slept, too, with the choky snores of a very weary man.

So far as we know they both slept the sleep of travel-worn men until morning. It was seven o’clock and the sunlight was flooding in at the porthole when their bathroom steward knocked upon the outer panels of their door, at first softly, then more briskly. When they had roused and answered him, he told them that their baths were ready and waiting for them; also that the weather was fine and the sea smooth. It was Bronston who went first to the bathroom. He had come back, and was dressing himself when Keller, after clearing his throat several times, reopened a subject which seemingly had laid uppermost in his dormant mind while he slept.

“Say, Bronston,” he began in an aggrieved voice, “what made you say what you said just after we turned in last night – about private detectives, you know?”

“Oh, let it drop,” answered Bronston, as though the topic were of no consequence.

“No,” pressed Keller, “I won’t let it drop. I’d like to know what you meant. I don’t care much for that sort of talk.”

Bronston had his shaving kit open and was soaping his cheeks in front of a small mirror at a stationary washstand in the corner of the room. He turned with the lather brush in his hand.

“If you insist then,” he said, “I’ll tell you what I meant. If the facts about our relationship should get out – if the truth should leak out in any way – I’m inclined to think there might be some sympathy for me aboard this ship. People are apt to have a sympathy for any man who’s in trouble through no real fault of his own, especially as there are apt to be people on this boat – Americans – who’ve heard some of the inside history of this trouble I’m in. They might believe me when I told them that I was an innocent party to the transaction, especially as there is no way, as things stand now, of my proving my innocence. But you’re a private detective, and at the risk of wounding your feelings I’m going to repeat something which you probably realise already, and that is that people at large don’t particularly fancy a person of your calling in life. No, nor the calling either. I presume you remember, don’t you, what the biggest detective in America said not so very long ago in a signed article? He said most of the private detective agencies were recruited from among ex-convicts – said a big percentage of the private detectives in the United States were jailbirds and evidence-fixers and blackmailers and hired thugs!”

“I don’t care what Burns or anybody else said.” Keller’s voice betokened indignation. “I may not have had as much education as some other people, but I’ve made my own way in the world and I’m no crook, nor no old lag neither. There’s nobody got anything on me. Besides, unless somebody tells ’em, how’re they going to know what line of business I’m in, any more than they’ll know, just from looking at you, that you’re on your way back to London to stand trial for a felony?”

“My friend,” said Bronston gently, “everything about you spells private detective. You’ve got it written all over you in letters a foot high.”

“What now, for instance, gives me away?” There was incredulity in the question, but also there was a tinge of doubtfulness too.

“Everything about you, or nearly everything, gives you away – your clothes, your shoes, your moustache. But particularly it’s your shoes and your moustache. I wonder why all detectives wear those broad-toed, heavy-soled shoes?” he added, half to himself.

“What’s wrong with my moustache?” asked Keller, craning to contemplate himself over Bronston’s shoulder in the mirror. “Seems to me you used to wear a moustache yourself. The description that was sent to our people said you wore one, and your not wearing it made it all the harder for me to trail you when I was put on the case.”

“Oh, I cut mine off months ago,” said Bronston, “and besides it was always a modest, close-cropped affair. I never wore the ends of my moustache turned up like a cow’s horns.” He glanced at Keller quizzically. “Honestly, aside from any other considerations, I think you’d look better without one.”

“Let’s drop the moustache part,” said Keller, who seemed nettled. “Tell me, what’s wrong with my clothes?”

“To be frank,” criticised Bronston, “you run just a bit to extremes. There’s that cap you bought yesterday evening when we stopped at that store on our way across town. It struck me as being – well, a trifle loud.”

“I don’t see anything wrong with this cap, if you’re asking me,” said Keller. He drew it forth from his opened handbag and slipped it on his head. It slipped down until his ears stopped it; its owner whistled in astonishment. “Yes, by gee!” he exclaimed, “there is something wrong with it too – it’s too large.” He drew it off and examined the little tag pasted in the crown. “Why, it’s a full half size too large.” He turned to Bronston.

“You told the clerk what numbers we wanted. Remember, don’t you, offering to attend to that while I was getting me a bathrobe, so as to save time? See if he made any mistake in yours?”

Bronston slid on the cap he had bought, a plain grey one; it stuck on the top of his head.

“Yes,” he said, “the idiot must have got the sizes twisted. This one is a half size too small for me.”

“And mine’s a half size too large,” said Keller. “I suppose we’ll have to trade.”

“There’s nothing else to do,” said Bronston, “although I can’t say I fancy this plaid design much.”

In accordance with the plan of Keller, as stated the night before, they went to breakfast together to find that they had been assigned places at a five-seated, circular table on the balcony of the dining saloon. Their tablemates were an elderly couple, who said little to each other and nothing at all to strangers, and a tall, reserved, exceedingly silent Englishman. The indefinable something that marked these two men as hailing from different circles and different environments was accentuated in their table manners. Keller ate correctly enough, but there was a suggestion of grossness about him, an awkwardness in his fashion of holding his fork while he cut his ham. But he watched Bronston closely, and before the end of the meal had begun to copy Bronston’s method of handling a fork.

They had quit the dining room and sought out the location of their deck chairs when, for the first time, the detective seemed to become aware that Bronston’s cheeks were rosy and smooth, whereas a roughened stubble covered his own jowls. “I think I’ll go below and take a shave,” he said, running the palm of his hand over his chops.

“Use my safety, if you feel like it,” suggested Bronston casually. “There’s a new blade in it.”

Half an hour later, when Bronston invaded the stateroom to get a pocketful of cigars, Keller stood facing the mirror, putting on his collar and tie.

“I couldn’t find my razor,” he said, with his head turned away from Bronston; “I must’ve left it on that Chicago train. And yet I’d have sworn I put it into my valise. So I had to use yours. But you were wrong when you said it had a new blade in it. If that’s a new blade I’ll eat it. It mighty near pulled my upper lip off.”

“Your upper lip?” echoed Bronston instantly.

“Sure,” said Keller. There was a touch of embarrassment in his tone as he faced Bronston. “I took your advice about this moustache of mine – clipped it close with the scissors and then gave myself the twice-over with your safety.” His upper lip showed bare; the skin had a bleached look and was raw from the scraping it had just undergone.

As Keller passed out of the room, caressing the place where his moustache had been, Bronston noted that Keller had made other changes in his person. Keller had exchanged the bright green tie which he wore at breakfast for a dull brown bow; and he had put on a lighter pair of shoes – patent-leather shoes, with thin soles and buttoned uppers. His broad-toed, heavy-soled pair showed under his bed where he had shoved them.

Conceding the weather to be fair, as in this instance it assuredly was, the majority of the passengers upon a big liner eastward bound give over their first day at sea to getting used to their new and strange surroundings, to getting lost in various odd corners of the ship and finding themselves again, to asking questions about baggage gone astray, to wondering why they are not seasick. As regards the two principal characters of this narrative, nothing of interest occurred during the first day except that Keller went below late in the afternoon to take a nap, and that shortly before dark, when he had waked, Bronston limped in with a look of pain upon his face, to report that while watching a lifeboat drill he had got a foot hurt.

“A clumsy ass of a coal passer dropped his oar and hit me right on the big toe with the butt of it,” he explained. “I didn’t give him away, because the second officer was right there and I judged he would have given the poor devil fits for being so careless. But it hurts like the very mischief.”

He got his left shoe off and sat for a bit caressing the bruised member.

“The skin isn’t broken evidently,” he continued, in response to Keller’s inquiries concerning the extent of the injury; “but there’s some swelling and plenty of soreness.” He started to put his shoe back on his stockinged foot, but halted with a groan.

“If you don’t mind,” he said to Keller, “I’m going to wear those heavy shoes of yours for a day or two. They’re easier than mine and broader in the toe.”

“Help yourself,” agreed Keller. “Seeing as we’ve swapped caps we might as well swap shoes too. Anyhow, I kind of like this pair I’ve got on, even if they do pinch a little.” He contemplated his shining extremities admiringly. Shortly afterward they went up to dinner. After dinner Bronston found reason for returning to the stateroom. Here he did a strange thing. He dropped a pair of perfectly good shoes out of the porthole.

Conceding further that on a big liner’s second day out the weather continues fine, the Americans among the first-cabin passengers begin making acquaintances; and, under official guidance, go on trips of exploration and discovery to the engine room and the steerage and the steward’s domain. Card games are organised and there is preliminary talk of a ship’s concert. The British travellers, on the other hand, continue for the most part to hold themselves aloof. This also was true of the second day’s passage of the Mesopotamia.

Keller – or Cole, to use the name which he now used – met some congenial fellow countrymen in the smoking room and played bridge with them for small stakes during most of the afternoon. Bronston, who apparently did not care for cards, saw his warder only at the lunch hour, preferring to spend the time in his steamer chair upon the deck, enjoying the air, which was balmy and neither too warm nor yet too cool, but just right. Presently as he sat there he fell into a conversation – which was at first desultory, although it shortly took on a more animated character – with a rather fluffy young lady who occupied the steamer chair next his own. She dropped a book which she had been reading; he picked it up and returned it to her. That was how it started, at first with an interchange of polite commonplaces, then with a running bestowal of small confidences on the part of the young lady, who proved to be talkative.

By bits and snatches it developed that her name was Miss Lillian Cartwright and that her home was in Evanston, Illinois. There were several other Evanston people on the boat – she pointed out a group of them some distance down the deck – but she was not travelling with them. She was travelling with her uncle, Major Slocum. Perhaps her new acquaintance had heard of her uncle, Major Slocum? He was a prominent attorney in Chicago, quite a prominent attorney, and he was also on the staff of the present governor of Illinois, and in former years had taken a deep interest in the welfare of the Illinois National Guard.