The After House
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Mary Roberts Rinehart >> The After House
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The barecas of water were lashed amidships. In the bow and stern
were small air-tight compartments, and in the stern was also a
small locker from which the biscuit tins had been taken. I was
about to abandon my search, when I saw something gleaming in the
locker, and reached in and drew it out. It appeared to be an
ordinary white sheet, but its presence there was curious. I turned
the light on it. It was covered with dark-brown stains.
Even now the memory of that sheet turns me ill. I shook it out,
and Mac, at my exclamation, came to me. It was not a sheet at all,
that is, not a whole one. It was a circular piece of white cloth,
on which, in black, were curious marks--a six-pointed star
predominating. There were others--a crescent, a crude attempt to
draw what might be either a dog or a lamb, and a cross. From edge
to edge it was smeared with blood.
Of what followed just after, both McWhirter and I are vague. There
seemed to be, simultaneously, a yell of fury from the rigging
overhead, and the crash of a falling body on the deck near us. Then
we were closing with a kicking, biting, screaming thing, that bore
me to the ground, extinguishing the little electric flash, and that,
rising suddenly from under me, had McWhirter in the air, and almost
overboard before I caught him. So dazed were we by the onslaught
that the thing--whatever it was--could have escaped, and left us
none the wiser. But, although it eluded us in the darkness, it did
not leave. It was there, whimpering to itself, searching for
something--the sheet. As I steadied Mac, it passed me. I caught
at it. Immediately the struggle began all over again. But this
time we had the advantage, and kept it. After a battle that seemed
to last all night, and that was actually fought all over that part
of the deck, we held the creature subdued, and Mac, getting a hand
free, struck a match.
It was Charlie Jones.
That, after all, is the story. Jones was a madman, a homicidal
maniac of the worst type. Always a madman, the homicidal element
of his disease was recurrent and of a curious nature.
He thought himself a priest of heaven, appointed to make ghastly
sacrifices at certain signals from on high. The signals I am not
sure of; he turned taciturn after his capture and would not talk.
I am inclined to think that a shooting star, perhaps in a particular
quarter of the heavens, was his signal. This is distinctly
possible, and is made probable by the stars which he had painted
with tar on his sacrificial robe.
The story of the early morning of August 12 will never be fully
known; but much of it, in view of our knowledge, we were able to
reconstruct. Thus--Jones ate his supper that night, a mild and
well-disposed individual. During the afternoon before, he had read
prayers for the soul of Schwartz, in whose departure he may or may
not have had a part I am inclined to think not, Jones construing
his mission as being one to remove the wicked and the oppressor,
and Schwartz hardly coming under either classification.
He was at the wheel from midnight until four in the morning on the
night of the murders. At certain hours we believe that he went
forward to the forecastle-head, and performed, clad in his priestly
robe, such devotions as his disordered mind dictated. It is my
idea that he looked, at these times, for a heavenly signal, either
a meteor or some strange appearance of the heavens. It was known
that he was a poor sleeper, and spent much time at night wandering
around.
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.
I believe he tried to get Singleton later, and failed. But he
continued his devotions on the forward deck, visible when clad in
his robe, invisible when he took it off. It was Jones, of course,
who attacked Burns and secured the key to the captain's cabin;
Jones who threw the axe overboard after hearing the crew tell that
on its handle were finger-prints to identify the murderer; Jones
who, while on guard in the after house below, had pushed the key
to the storeroom under Turner's door; Jones who hung the
marlinespike over the side, waiting perhaps for another chance
at Singleton; Jones, in his devotional attire, who had frightened
the crew into hysteria, and who, discovered by Mrs. Johns in the
captain's cabin, had rushed by her, and out, with the axe. It is
noticeable that he made no attempt to attack her. He killed only
in obedience to his signal, and he had had no signal.
Perhaps the most curious thing, after the murderer was known, was
the story of the people in the after house. It was months before
I got that in full. The belief among the women was that Turner,
maddened by drink and unreasoning jealousy, had killed Vail, and
then, running amuck or discovered by the other victims, had killed
them. This was borne out by Turner's condition. His hands and
parts of his clothing were blood-stained.
Their condition was pitiable. Unable to speak for himself, he
lay raving in his room, talking to Vail and complaining of a
white figure that bothered him. The key that Elsa Lee picked up
was another clue, and in their attempt to get rid of it I had
foiled them. Mrs. Johns, an old friend and, as I have said, an
ardent partisan, undertook to get rid of the axe, with the result
that we know. Even Turner's recovery brought little courage. He
could only recall that he had gone into Vail's room and tried to
wake him, without result; that he did not know of the blood until
the next day, or that Vail was dead; and that he had a vague
recollection of something white and ghostly that night--he was
not sure where he had seen it.
The failure of their attempt to get rid of the storeroom key was
matched by their failure to smuggle Turner's linen off the ship.
Singleton suspected Turner, and, with the skillful and not
over scrupulous aid of his lawyer, had succeeded in finding in Mrs.
Sloane's trunk the incriminating pieces.
As to the meaning of the keys, file, and club in Singleton's
mattress, I believe the explanation is simple enough. He saw
against him a strong case. He had little money and no influence,
while Turner had both. I have every reason to believe that he
hoped to make his escape before the ship anchored, and was
frustrated by my discovery of the keys and by an extra bolt I
put on his door and window.
The murders on the schooner-yacht Ella were solved.
McWhirter went back to his hospital, the day after our struggle,
wearing a strip of plaster over the bridge of his nose and a new
air of importance. The Turners went to New York soon after, and
I was alone. I tried to put Elsa Lee out of my thoughts, as she
had gone out of my life, and, receiving the hoped-for hospital
appointment at that time, I tried to make up by hard work for a
happiness that I had not lost because it had never been mine.
A curious thing has happened to me. I had thought this record
finished, but perhaps--
Turner's health is bad. He and his wife and Miss Lee are going to
Europe. He has asked me to go with him in my professional capacity!
It is more than a year since I have seen her.
The year has brought some changes. Singleton is again a member of
the Turner forces, having signed a contract and a temperance pledge
at the same sitting. Jones is in a hospital for the insane, where
in the daytime he is a cheery old tar with twinkling eyes and a huge
mustache, and where now and then, on Christmas and holidays, I send
him a supply of tobacco. At night he sleeps in a room with opaque
glass windows through which no heavenly signals can penetrate. He
will not talk of his crimes,--not that he so regards them,--but
now and then in the night he wraps the drapery of his couch about
him and performs strange orisons in the little room that is his.
And at such times an attendant watches outside his door.
CHAPTER XXV
THE SEA AGAIN
Once more the swish of spray against the side of a ship, the tang
of salt, the lift and fall of the rail against the sea-line on the
horizon. And once more a girl, in white from neck to heel, facing
into the wind as if she loved it, her crisp skirts flying, her hair
blown back from her forehead in damp curls.
And I am not washing down the deck. With all the poise of white
flannels and a good cigar, I am lounging in a deck-chair, watching
her. Then--
"Come here!" I say.
"I am busy."
"You are not busy. You are disgracefully idle."
"Why do you want me?"
She comes closer, and looks down at me. She likes me to sit, so
she may look superior and scornful, this being impossible when one
looks up. When she has approached--
"Just to show that I can order you about."
"I shall go back!"--with raised chin. How I remember that raised
chin, and how (whisper it) I used to fear it!
"You cannot. I am holding the edge of your skirt."
"Ralph! And all the other passengers looking!"
"Then sit down--and, before you do, tuck that rug under my feet,
will you?"
"Certainly not."
"Under my feet!"
She does it, under protest, whereon I release her skirts. She is
sulky, quite distinctly sulky. I slide my hand under the rug into
her lap. She ignores it.
"Now," I say calmly, "we are even. And you might as well hold my
hand. Every one thinks you are."
She brings her hands hastily from under her rug and puts them over
her head. "I don't know what has got into you," she says coldly.
"And why are we even?"
"For the day you told me the deck was not clean."
"It wasn't clean."
"I think I am going to kiss you."
"Ralph!"
"It is coming on. About the time that the bishop gets here, I shall
lean over and--"
She eyes me, and sees determination in my face. She changes color.
"You wouldn't!"
"Wouldn't I!"
She rises hastily, and stands looking down at me. I am quite sure
at that moment that she detests me, and I rather like it. There
are always times when we detest the people we love.
"If you are going to be arbitrary just because you can--"
"Yes?"
"Marsh and the rest are in the smoking room. Their sitting-room is
empty."
Quite calmly, as if we are going below for a clean handkerchief or
a veil or a cigarette, we stroll down the great staircase of the
liner to the Turners' sitting-room, and close the door.
And--I kiss her.
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