The After House
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Mary Roberts Rinehart >> The After House
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I wakened with a sense of oppression, of smothering heat. I had
struggled slowly back to consciousness, to realize that the door of
the pantry was closed, and that I was stewing in the moist heat of
the August night. I got up, clad in my shirt and trousers, and felt
my way to the door.
The storeroom and pantry of the after house had been built in during
the rehabilitation of the boat, and consisted of a short passageway,
with drawers for linens on either side, and beyond, lighted by a
porthole, the small supply room in which I had been sleeping.
Along this passageway; then, I groped my way to the door at the end,
opening into the main cabin near the chart-room door and across from
Mrs. Turner's room. This door I had been in the habit of leaving
open, for two purposes--ventilation, and in case I might be, as Mrs.
Johns had feared, required in the night.
The door was locked on the outside.
I was a moment or two in grasping the fact. I shook it carefully
to see if it had merely caught, and then, incredulous, I put my
weight to it. It refused to yield. The silence outside was absolute.
I felt my way back to the window. It was open, but was barred with
iron, and, even without that, too small for my shoulders. I listened
for the mate. It was still dark, and so not yet time for the watch to
change. Singleton would be on duty, and he rarely came aft. There
was no sound of footsteps.
I lit a match and examined the lock. It was a simple one, and as my
idea now was to free myself without raising an alarm, I decided to
unscrew it with my pocket-knife. I was still confused, but inclined
to consider my imprisonment a jest, perhaps on the part of Charlie
Jones, who tempered his religious fervor with a fondness for practical
joking.
I accordingly knelt in front of the lock and opened my knife. I was
in darkness and working by touch. I had extracted one screw, and,
with a growing sense of satisfaction, was putting it in my pocket
before loosening a second, when a board on which I knelt moved under
my knee, lifted, as if the other end, beyond the door, had been
stepped on. There was no sound, no creak. Merely that ominous
lifting under my knee. There was some one just beyond the door.
A moment later the pressure was released. With a growing horror of
I know not what, I set to work at the second screw, trying to be
noiseless, but with hands shaking with excitement. The screw fell
out into my palm. In my haste I dropped my knife, and had to grope
for it on the floor. It was then that a woman screamed--a low,
sobbing cry, broken off almost before it began. I had got my knife
by that time, and in desperation I threw myself against the door.
It gave way, and I fell full length on the main cabin floor. I was
still in darkness. The silence in the cabin was absolute. I could
hear the steersman beyond the chart-room scratching a match.
As I got up, six bells struck. It was three o'clock.
Vail's room was next to the pantry, and forward. I felt my way to
it, and rapped.
"Vail," I called. "Vail!"
His door was open an inch or so. I went in and felt my way to his
bunk. I could hear him breathing, a stertorous respiration like
that of sleep, and yet unlike. The moment I touched him, the sound
ceased, and did not commence again. I struck a match and bent over
him.
He had been almost cut to pieces with an axe.
CHAPTER VI
IN THE AFTER HOUSE
The match burnt out, and I dropped it. I remember mechanically
extinguishing the glowing end with my heel, and then straightening
to such a sense of horror as I have never felt before or since. I
groped for the door; I wanted air, space, the freedom from lurking
death of the open deck.
I had been sleeping with my revolver beside me on the pantry floor.
Somehow or other I got back there and found it. I made an attempt
to find the switch for the cabin lights, and, failing, revolver in
hand, I ran into the chart-room and up the after companionway.
Charlie Jones was at the wheel, and by the light of a lantern I saw
that he was bending to the right, peering in at the chartroom window.
He turned when he heard me.
"What's wrong?" he asked. "I heard a yell a minute ago. Turner on
the rampage?" He saw my revolver then, and, letting go the wheel,
threw up both his hands. "Turn that gun away, you fool!"
I could hardly speak. I lowered the revolver and gasped: "Call the
captain! Vail's been murdered!
"Good God!" he said. "Who did it?" He had taken the wheel again,
and was bringing the ship back to her course. I was turning sick
and dizzy, and I clutched at the railing of the companionway.
"I don't know. Where's the captain?"
"The mate's around." He raised his voice. "Mr. Singleton!" he
called.
There was no time to lose, I felt. My nausea had left me. I ran
forward to where I could dimly see Singleton looking in my direction.
"Singleton! Quick!" I called. "Bring your revolver."
He stopped and peered in my direction.
"Who is it?"
"Leslie. Come below, for God's sake!"
He came slowly toward me, and in a dozen words I told him what had
happened. I saw then that he had been drinking. He reeled against
me, and seemed at a loss to know what to do.
"Get your revolver," I said, "and wake the captain."
He disappeared into the forward house, to come back a moment later
with a revolver. I had got a lantern in the mean time, and ran to
the forward companionway which led into the main cabin. Singleton
followed me.
"Where's the captain?" I asked.
"I didn't call him," Singleton replied, and muttered something
unintelligible under his breath.
Swinging the lantern ahead of me, I led the way down the companionway.
Something lay huddled at the foot. I had to step over it to get down.
Singleton stood above, on the steps. I stooped and held the lantern
close, and we both saw that it was the captain, killed as Vail had
been. He was fully dressed except for his coat, and as he lay on his
back, his cap had been placed over his mutilated face.
I thought I heard something moving behind me in the cabin, and
wheeled sharply, holding my revolver leveled. The idea had come to
me that the crew had mutinied, and that every one in the after house
had been killed. The idea made me frantic; I thought of the women,
of Elsa Lee, and I was ready to kill.
"Where is the light switch?" I demanded of Singleton, who was still
on the companion steps, swaying.
"I don't know," he said, and collapsed, sitting huddled just above
the captain's body, with his face in his hands.
I saw I need not look to him for help, and I succeeded in turning
on the light in the swinging lamp in the center of the cabin. There
was no sign of any struggle, and the cabin was empty. I went back
to the captain's body, and threw a rug over it. Then I reached over
and shook Singleton by the arm.
"Do something!" I raved. "Call the crew. Get somebody here, you
drunken fool!"
He rose and staggered up the companionway, and I ran to Miss Lee's
door. It was closed and locked, as were all the others except
Vail's and the one I had broken open. I reached Mr. Turner's door
last. It was locked, and I got no response to my knock. I
remembered that his room and Vail's connected through a bath, and,
still holding my revolver leveled, I ran into Vail's room again,
this time turning on the light.
A night light was burning in the bath-room, and the door beyond was
unlocked. I flung it open and stepped in. Turner was lying on his
bed, fully dressed, and at first I thought he too had been murdered.
But he was in a drunken stupor. He sat up, dazed, when I shook him
by the arm.
"Mr. Turner!" I cried. "Try to rouse yourself, man! The captain has
been murdered, and Mr. Vail!"
He made an effort to sit up, swayed, and fell back again. His face
was swollen and purplish, his eyes congested. He made an effort to
speak, but failed to be intelligible. I had no time to waste.
Somewhere on the Ella the murderer was loose. He must be found.
I flung out of Turner's cabin as the crew, gathered from the
forecastle and from the decks, crowded down the forward companionway.
I ran my eye over them. Every man was there, Singleton below by the
captain's body, the crew, silent and horror-struck, grouped on
the steps: Clarke, McNamara, Burns, Oleson, and Adams. Behind the
crew, Charlie Jones had left the wheel and stood peering down, until
sharply ordered back. Williams, with a bandage on his head, and Tom,
the mulatto cook, were in the group.
I stood, revolver in hand, staring at the men. Among them, I felt
sure, was the murderer. But which one? All were equally pale,
equally terrified.
"Boys," I said, "Mr. Vail and your captain have been murdered. The
murderer must be on the ship--one of ourselves." There was a murmur
at that. "Mr. Singleton, I suggest that these men stay together in a
body, and that no one be allowed to go below until all have been
searched and all weapons taken from them."
Singleton had dropped into a chair, and sat with his face buried in
his hands, his back to the captain's body. He looked up without
moving, and his face was gray.
"All right," he said. "Do as you like. I'm sick."
He looked sick. Burns, who had taken Schwartz's place as second
mate, left the group and came toward me.
"We'd better waken the women," he said. "If you'll tell them,
Leslie, I'll take the crew on deck and keep them there."
Singleton seemed dazed, and when Burns spoke of taking the men on
deck, he got up dizzily.
"I'm going too," he muttered. "I'll go crazy if I stay down here
with that."
The rug had been drawn back to show the crew what had happened.
I drew it reverently over the body again.
After the men had gone, I knocked at Mrs. Turner's door. It was
some time before she roused; when she answered, her voice was
startled.
"What is it?"
"It's Leslie, Mrs. Turner. Will you come to the door?"
"In a moment."
She threw on a dressing-gown, and opened the door.
"What is wrong?"
I told her, as gently as I could. I thought she would faint; but
she pulled herself together and looked past me into the cabin.
"That is--?"
"The captain, Mrs. Turner."
"And Mr. Vail?"
"In his cabin."
"Where is Mr. Turner?"
"In his cabin, asleep."
She looked at me strangely, and, leaving the door, went into her
sister's room, next. I heard Miss Lee's low cry of horror, and
almost immediately the two women came to the doorway.
"Have you seen Mr. Turner?" Miss Lee demanded.
"Just now."
"Has Mrs. Johns been told?"
"Not yet."
She went herself to Mrs. Johns's cabin, and knocked. She got an
immediate answer, and Mrs. Johns, partly dressed, opened the door.
"What's the matter?" she demanded. "The whole crew is tramping
outside my windows. I hope we haven't struck an iceberg."
"Adele, don't faint, please. Something awful has happened."
"Turner! He has killed some one finally!"
"Hush, for Heaven's sake! Wilmer has been murdered, Adele--and the
captain."
Mrs. Johns had less control than the other women. She stood for an
instant, with a sort of horrible grin on her face. Then she went
down on the floor, full length, with a crash. Elsa Lee knelt beside
her and slid a pillow under her head.
"Call the maids, Leslie," she said quietly. "Karen has something for
this sort of thing. Tell her to bring it quickly."
I went the length of the cabin and into the chartroom. The maids'
room was here, on the port-side, and thus aft of Mrs. Turner's and
Miss Lee's rooms. It had one door only, and two small barred windows,
one above each of the two bunks.
I turned on the chart-room lights. At the top of the after
companionway the crew had been assembled, and Burns was haranguing
them. I knocked at the maids' door, and, finding it unlocked, opened
it an inch or so.
"Karen!" I called--and, receiving no answer: "Mrs. Sloane!" (the
stewardess).
I opened the door wide and glanced in. Karen Hansen, the maid, was
on the floor, dead. The stewardess, in collapse from terror, was in
her bunk, uninjured.
CHAPTER VII
WE FIND THE AXE
I went to the after companionway and called up to the men to send
the first mate down; but Burns came instead.
"Singleton's sick," he explained. "He's up there in a corner, with
Oleson and McNamara holding him."
"Burns," I said cautiously--"I've found another!"
"God, not one of the women!"
"One of the maids--Karen."
Burns was a young fellow about my own age, and to this point he had
stood up well. But he had been having a sort of flirtation with the
girl, and I saw him go sick with horror. He wanted to see her, when
he had got command of himself; but I would not let him enter the
room. He stood outside, while I went in and carried out the
stewardess, who was coming to and moaning. I took her forward, and
told the three women there what I had found.
Mrs. Johns was better, and I found them all huddled in her room. I
put the stewardess on the bed, and locked the door into the next
room. Then, after examining the window, I gave Elsa Lee my revolver.
"Don't let any one in," I said. "I'll put a guard at the two
companionways, and we'll let no one down. But keep the door locked
also."
She took the revolver from me, and examined it with the air of one
familiar with firearms. Then she looked up at me, her lips as
white as her face.
"We are relying on you, Leslie," she said.
And, at her words, the storm of self-contempt and bitterness that I
had been holding in abeyance for the last half hour swept over me
like a flood. I could have wept for fury.
"Why should you trust me?" I demanded. "I slept through the time
when I was needed. And when I wakened and found myself locked in
the storeroom, I waited to take the lock off instead of breaking
down the door! I ought to jump overboard."
"We are relying on you," she said again, simply; and I heard her
fasten the door behind me as I went out.
Dawn was coming as I joined the crew, huddled around the wheel.
There were nine men, counting Singleton. But Singleton hardly
counted. He was in a state of profound mental and physical
collapse. The Ella was without an accredited officer, and, for
lack of orders to the contrary, the helmsman--McNamara now--was
holding her to her course. Burns had taken Schwartz's place as
second mate, but the situation was clearly beyond him. Turner's
condition was known and frankly discussed. It was clear that, for
a time at least, we would have to get along without him.
Charlie Jones, always an influence among the men, voiced the
situation as we all stood together in the chill morning air:
"What we want to do, boys," he said, "is to make for the nearest
port. This here is a police matter."
"And a hanging matter," someone else put in.
"We've got to remember, boys, that this ain't like a crime on land.
We've got the fellow that did it. He's on the boat all right."
There was a stirring among the men, and some of them looked aft to
where, guarded by the Swede Oleson, Singleton was sitting, his head
in his hands.
"And, what's more," Charlie Jones went on, "I'm for putting Leslie
here in charge--for now, anyhow. That's agreeable to you, is it,
Burns?"
"But I don't know anything about a ship," I objected. "I'm willing
enough, but I'm not competent."
I believe the thing had been discussed before I went up, for
McNamara spoke up from the wheel.
"We'll manage that somehow or other, Leslie," he said. "We want
somebody to take charge, somebody with a head, that's all. And
since you ain't, in a manner of speaking, been one of us, nobody's
feelings can't be hurt. Ain't that it, boys?"
"That, and a matter of brains," said Burns.
"But Singleton?" I glanced aft.
"Singleton is going in irons," was the reply I got.
The light was stronger now, and I could see their faces. It was
clear that the crew, or a majority of the crew, believed him guilty,
and that, as far as Singleton was concerned, my authority did not
exist.
"All right," I said. "I'll do the best I can. First of all, I want
every man to give up his weapons. Burns!"
"Aye, aye."
"Go over each man. Leave them their pocket-knives; take everything
else."
The men lined up. The situation was tense, horrible, so that the
miscellaneous articles from their pockets--knives, keys, plugs of
chewing tobacco, and here and there, among the foreign ones, small
combs for beard and mustache unexpectedly brought to light, caused
a smile of pure reaction. Two revolvers from Oleson and McNamara
and one nicked razor from Adams completed the list of weapons we
found. The crew submitted willingly. They seemed relieved to have
some one to direct them, and the alacrity with which they obeyed my
orders showed how they were suffering under the strain of inaction.
I went over to Singleton and put my hand on his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Singleton," I said, "but I'll have to ask you for
your revolver."
Without looking at me, he drew it from his hip pocket and held it
out. I took it: It was loaded.
"It's out of order," he said briefly. "If it had been working
right, I wouldn't be here."
I reached down and touched his wrist. His pulse was slow and rather
faint, his hands cold.
"Is there anything I can do for you?"
"Yes," he snarled. "You can get me a belaying-pin and let me at
those fools over there. Turner did this, and you know it as well
as I do!"
I slid his revolver into my pocket, and went back to the men.
Counting Williams and the cook and myself, there were nine of us.
The cook I counted out, ordering him to go to the galley and
prepare breakfast. The eight that were left I divided into two
watches, Burns taking one and I the other. On Burns's watch were
Clarke, McNamara, and Williams; on mine, Oleson, Adams, and Charlie
Jones.
It was two bells, or five o'clock. Burns struck the gong sharply
as an indication that order, of a sort, had been restored. The
rising sun was gleaming on the sails; the gray surface of the sea
was ruffling under the morning breeze. From the galley a thin
stream of smoke was rising. Some of the horror of the night went
with the darkness, but the thought of what waited in the cabin
below was on us all.
I suggested another attempt to rouse Mr. Turner, and Burns and
Clarke went below. They came back in ten minutes, reporting no
change in Turner's condition. There was open grumbling among the
men at the situation, but we were helpless. Burns and I decided to
go on as if Turner were not on board, until he was in condition to
take hold.
We thought it best to bring up the bodies while all the crew was on
duty, and then to take up the watches. I arranged to have one man
constantly on guard in the after house--a difficult matter where
all were under suspicion. Burns suggested Charlie Jones as probably
the most reliable, and I gave him the revolver I had taken from
Singleton. It was useless, but it made at least a show of authority.
The rest of the crew, except Oleson, on guard over the mate, was
detailed to assist in carrying up the three bodies. Williams was
taken along to get sheets from the linen room.
We brought the captain up first, laying him on a sheet on the deck
and folding the edges over him. It was terrible work. Even I,
fresh from a medical college, grew nauseated over it. He was heavy.
It was slow work, getting him up. Vail we brought up in the sheets
from his bunk. Of the three, he was the most mutilated. The maid
Karen showed only one injury, a smashing blow on the head, probably
from the head of the axe. For axe it had been, beyond a doubt. I
put Williams to work below to clear away every evidence of what had
happened. He went down, ashy-faced, only to rush up again, refusing
to stay alone. I sent Clarke with him, and instructed Charlie Jones
to keep them there until the cabin was in order.
At three bells the cook brought coffee, and some of the men took it.
I tried to swallow, but it choked me.
Burns had served as second mate on a sailing vessel, and thought he
could take us back, at least into more traveled waters. We decided
to head back to New York. I got the code book from the captain's cabin,
and we agreed to run up the flag, union down, if any other vessel came
in sight. I got the code word for "Mutiny--need assistance," and I
asked the mate if he would signal if a vessel came near enough. But
he turned sullen and refused to answer.
I find it hard to recap calmly the events of that morning: the three
still and shrouded figures, prone on deck; the crew, bareheaded,
standing around, eyeing each other stealthily, with panic ready to
leap free and grip each of them by the throat; the grim determination,
the reason for which I did not yet know, to put the first mate in
irons; and, over all, the clear sunrise of an August morning on the
ocean, rails and decks gleaming, an odor of coffee in the air, the
joyous lift and splash of the bowsprit as the Ella, headed back on
her course, seemed to make for home like a nag for the stable.
Surely none of these men, some weeping, all grieving, could be the
fiend who had committed the crimes. One by one, I looked in their
faces--at Burns, youngest member of the crew, a blue-eyed,
sandy-haired Scot; at Clarke and Adams and Charlie Jones, old in
the service of the Turner line; at McNamara, a shrewd little
Irishman; at Oleson the Swede. And, in spite of myself, I could not
help comparing them with the heavy-shouldered, sodden-faced man below
in his cabin, the owner of the ship.
One explanation came to me, and I leaped at it--the possibility of
a stowaway hidden in the hold, some maniacal fugitive who had found
in the little cargo boat's empty hull ample room to hide. The men,
too, seized at the idea. One and all volunteered for what might prove
to be a dangerous service.
I chose Charlie Jones and Clarke as being most familiar with the ship,
and we went down into the hold. Clarke carried a lantern. Charlie
Jones held Singleton's broken revolver. I carried a belaying pin.
But, although we searched every foot of space, we found nothing. The
formaldehyde with which Turner had fumigated the ship clung here
tenaciously, and, mixed with the odors of bilge water and the
indescribable heavy smells left by tropical cargoes, made me dizzy
and ill.
We were stumbling along, Clarke with the lantern, I next, and Charlie
Jones behind, on our way to the ladder again, when I received a
stunning blow on the back of the head. I turned dizzy, expecting
nothing less than sudden death, when it developed that Jones, having
stumbled over a loose plank, had fallen forward, the revolver in his
outstretched hand striking my head.
He picked himself up sheepishly, and we went on. But so unnerved
was I by this fresh shock that it was a moment or two before I could
essay the ladder.
Burns was waiting at the hatchway, peering down. Beside him on the
deck lay a bloodstained axe.
Elsa Lee, on hearing the story of Henrietta Sloane, had gone to the
maids' cabin, and had found it where it had been flung into the berth
of the stewardess.
CHAPTER VIII
THE STEWARDESS'S STORY
But, after all, the story of Henrietta Sloane only added to the
mystery. She told it to me, sitting propped in a chair in Mrs.
Johns's room, her face white, her lips dry and twitching. The crew
were making such breakfast as they could on deck, and Mr. Turner
was still in a stupor in his room across the main cabin. The four
women, drawn together in their distress, were huddled in the center
of the room, touching hands now and then, as if finding comfort in
contact, and reassurance.
"I went to bed early," said the stewardess; "about ten o'clock, I
think. Karen had not come down; I wakened when the watch changed.
It was hot, and the window from our room to the deck was open. There
is a curtain over it, to keep the helmsman from looking in--it is
close to the wheel. The bell, striking every half-hour, does not
waken me any more, although it did at first. It is just outside the
window. But I heard the watch change. I heard eight bells struck,
and the lookout man on the forecastle head call, 'All's well.'
"I sat up and turned on the lights. Karen had not come down, and I
was alarmed. She had been--had been flirting a little with one of
the sailors, and I had warned her that it would not do. She'd be
found out and get into trouble.
"The only way to reach our cabin was through the chart-room, and
when I opened the door an inch or two, I saw why Karen had not come
down. Mr. Turner and Mr. Singleton were sitting there. They were--"
She hesitated.
"Please go on," said Mrs. Turner. "They were drinking?"
"Yes, Mrs. Turner. And Mr. Vail was there, too. He was saying that
the captain would come down and there would be more trouble. I shut
the door and stood just inside, listening. Mr. Singleton said he
hoped the captain would come--that he and Mr. Turner only wanted a
chance to get at him."
Miss Lee leaned forward and searched the stewardess's face with
strained eyes.
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