19000 Pound Part 25

"Other man?"

"Yes; there were two bodies found in the one cabin."

"I only saw one."

That brought the farmer to his feet. He said:

"You saw? How on earth could you see?"

But the woman, annoyed at having been betrayed into speech, was silent.

Gerald spoke again.

"Susan, don't be a fool. If your husband is dead, I did not kill him.

Your common sense ought to tell you that. But if he is dead, you ought to know how, and by what means.

"I never saw either of the pa.s.sengers who were found dead, and do not know their names--if I ever heard them. But it is surely a duty for you to find out the true story. Dead men tell no tales, but live ones do.

"Find out the truth. Come, let me help you. I bear you no malice--not a sc.r.a.p. Tell me all about it--tell me."

She spoke at last.

"I don't trust you."

"I see that, Susan," he answered cheerfully; "and it is that distrust I want to wipe away. Why, do you know, over in England, I was in the office of a private detective agency, and there is no knowing how I might be able to help you."

Again she said:

"I don't trust you."

"I know. But why? You have got in your mind some reason for this distrust. It's a wrong reason, absolutely wrong, Susan. Anyway, tell me what causes you to suspect me, and see if it cannot be explained away."

"You are wearing my dear husband's clothes."

"What!"

He sprang to his feet in such genuine amazement, that even Susan's belief in his guilt was shaken.

"Your husband's clothes!" he blurted out; "why, I bought this suit the very week I left England at Samuels', on Ludgate Hill."

"I meant your underclothes," she said shortly.

"Underclothes!" he answered. "Those I certainly did not buy. Friends got the outfit for me. It came on board in my portmanteau, save those things I wore on board. How on earth you can suppose that I am wearing another man's clothes, I can't think."

"All the same, you have been wearing my husband's shirt."

"Your husband who was on the boat? Stay, though. A light breaks in on me. I changed on board. I got wet through in jumping overboard after a child. I sent one of the men to the hold for my portmanteau. What is your husband's name?"

The woman did not answer--the farmer did:

"Josh Todd."

"That's not it, then," said Danvers. "That is not the explanation. No sailor would be such an a.s.s as to make a mistake like that. I told him to go to a long, brown portmanteau with the initials 'G. D.' on."

"My initials," said the farmer.

"So they are," said Danvers. "I did not notice it. But that does not affect the matter. No sailor would be fool enough when I told him to go to a bag labeled 'G. D.' to go to one bearing the initials 'J. T.' That throws no light on the thing."

The woman turned uneasily on her bed. Danvers spoke again, earnestly now.

"Susan, tell us everything. You have some knowledge. You know something. I can see you do. What is it? Lying here you will never find the man who murdered your husband, and you seem sure that he is dead."

"Or he would have written me; I know it, I know it, I know it."

"Yes, yes, I understand. You think he was on the steamer?"

"I did. Then I didn't. I do now."

"Why now?"

"Because when I was there I heard nothing of two bodies."

"Why were you there?"

"I went to meet my husband."

"He was on the boat, then?"

"He cabled me from England that he was coming by it."

"England?"

"Yes; he has been over there."

"You say you saw one body on the boat?"

"Yes; the boat people showed it me, then I fainted from relief that it was not my husband."

"Did they not tell you of the other?"

"No, I did not wait. I came away, back home here as quickly as possible."

"And," interposed the farmer, "that is all she would know. We are right off the map here. There is no one to carry the news. Some weeks we get a N'York paper, other weeks we don't, and I question if Susan ever picked one up."

"Tell me," she said, "the description of the other dead man."

"I can't, Susan, for I don't know it. I certainly, as a matter of curiosity, read it, but I don't remember."