Local Color Part 36

"Nothing," she answered, but her fingers continued to explore the depths of the pocket, and into her eyes came a half-puzzled, half-excited look.

She opened her lips as though to speak, then closed them with an effort.

Bronston proposed another go at horse billiards--just a short game before luncheon. Again the Major volunteered to score for them. The game was still going on when Keller appeared. He stopped within easy hailing distance of the trio.

"About ready for luncheon?" he called out, addressing Bronston.

"Just a minute or so," answered Bronston, and went on showing his pupil how to make a certain shot.

Keller took a turn up and down the deck. He felt rather out of the picture somehow. His appet.i.te was active too; trust the North Atlantic air for that. He took a turn or two more, growing hungrier with every step. Five minutes pa.s.sed, and still the game showed no sign of breaking up. He swung about and approached them.

"Say," he said, seeking to put a subtle shade of meaning into his words, "I'd like to go to lunch--if you don't mind."

"Oh, very well," said Bronston; "we'll stop, then." Keller advanced until he was quite near them. As he did so he became aware that Miss Cartwright was staring hard at him. Bronston, all of a sudden, seemed to remember the small proprieties of the occasion.

"Miss Cartwright, Major Sloc.u.m," he said, "this is my--this is Mr.--" he hesitated the merest fraction of a second--"Mr. Cole, who is travelling with me this trip."

Miss Cartwright nodded, the Major bowed, Keller pulled off his cap. They descended the steps in a straggling procession, Miss Cartwright and Bronston being in front, the Major next and Keller bringing up the rear.

At the foot of the stairs Bronston addressed the young lady.

"I'll relieve you of my coat now," he said. "I'm afraid you did find it rather heavy." He looked straight into her eyes as he spoke and touched his lips with a forefinger. She nodded back to show she thoroughly understood the signal, and then he took the ulster across his arm and he and Keller moved on ahead.

"Look here, Bronston," grumbled Keller when they were out of earshot of the Major and his niece, "you acted kind of funny up yonder. It looked to me like you didn't care much about introducing me to your swell friends."

"To tell you the truth," apologised Bronston, "I forgot for the moment what your travelling name was--couldn't remember whether it was Cole, or something else. That's why I hung fire. It did make the situation a bit awkward, didn't it? I'm sorry."

"Oh, all right," said Keller; "that explains it. But I was a little sore just for a minute."

At the door leading into the first cross hall Bronston glanced back over his shoulder. Miss Cartwright and her uncle were not following them.

They had halted upon an untenanted stretch of deck, and the young woman was saying something to her uncle and accenting with gestures what she said. Her hands moved with the briskness which generally accompanies an eager disclosure of important tidings. The Major, his stately head bent to hear her, was nevertheless looking at the vanishing figures of the two men.

Bronston smiled gently to himself as he and Keller crossed the threshold and headed for the dining saloon. He didn't go near Miss Cartwright or Major Sloc.u.m again that day, but in the course of the afternoon he, watching from a distance, saw her in earnest conversation with two of her friends from Evanston--and both of these two were women. Immediately Bronston went below and stayed there. He didn't even get up for dinner.

The excuse he gave Keller, when Keller came in at dinnertime, was that he wanted to go over some papers connected with his case. The small desk at which he sat was littered with papers and he was steadily making notes upon a scratch pad. He asked Keller to ask their dining-room steward to bring him a light meal upon a tray.

At this point we digress, in order to drag in the fact that this ship, the _Mesopotamia_, was one of the largest ships afloat at this time. The following year there would be bigger ones in commission, but for the moment she ranked among the largest. She was over eight hundred feet long and of a beam measurement and a hull depth to correspond; but even upon a craft of such amplified proportions as this was news travels with amazing rapidity, especially if it be news calculated to arouse and to excite. Such a ship might be likened to a small, compact town set afloat, with all the social ramifications of a small town and with all of a small town's curiosity regarding the private affairs of the neighbours. Ash.o.r.e gossip flies swiftly enough, goodness only knows; at sea it flits from point to point, as if on the wings of the swallow.

What one knows every one else knows, and knows it very soon too.

The digression is concluded. Let us return to the main thread of our narrative. Let us go back to the joint occupants of D-forty.

It was nine-twenty that same evening when Keller broke in upon his companion, who sat at the little desk, still busied with his writing.

Keller seemed fl.u.s.tered, not to say indignant. He slammed the door behind him viciously.

"Somebody's on," he stated, speaking with disconsolate conviction. "I know I haven't said anything, and it don't stand to reason that you'd be talking; but they're on."

"On what?" inquired Bronston calmly.

"On to us--that's what! It's leaked out who we are."

"What makes you think that?"

"I don't think anything about it--I know. I've got the proofs. We had our little game all fixed up for to-night--me and the same three fellows I've been playing with right along; but when I looked them up in the smoking room after dinner they all three excused themselves--said they didn't feel like playing. Well, that was all right, but a little later I saw Latham and Levy joining in a game with two other men, both strangers to me. So I tried to get into another game that was just starting up, and the fellows there horned me out. I could tell they didn't want to be playing with me. And going through the lounge I tumbled, all of a sudden, to the fact that all the people there, men and women both, were looking hard at me and nodding to one another--get what I mean? Maybe they didn't think I saw them--I didn't let on, of course--but I did see 'em. I tell you they're on. Say, what do you know about a lot of stuck-up people pa.s.sing up a man cold, just because they've found out some way that he's a private detective?"

Overcome by his feelings he snorted in disgust. Then added, as an afterthought: "Well, what's the next move? What do you think we'd better do now?"

Bronston considered a moment before answering.

"If your suspicions are correct I take it the best thing for us to do is to stay away from the other pa.s.sengers as much as we possibly can during the rest of this trip. At least that's what I figure on doing--with your consent."

"How about that Miss What's-her-name, the girl who was with you this morning?" asked Keller. "How are you going to cut her out?"

"That's simple enough--merely by not going near her, that's all," said Bronston. "Admitting that you are right and that we have been recognised, the young woman probably wouldn't care to be seen in my company anyhow. As things seem to stand now it might be embarra.s.sing for her."

"I guess you've got the right dope," said Keller. "If anybody objects to my company they know what they can do. What do you figure on doing--sticking here in the room?"

"Remaining in a stateroom for a day or so won't be much of a privation to a man who faces the prospect of being locked up in an English jail indefinitely," said Bronston. "It'll merely be a sort of preliminary training. Besides, we ought to reach sh.o.r.e to-morrow night or the next morning. I shall certainly stay where I am."

"Me too, I guess," said Keller dolorously. "I sure was enjoying that little game, though."

After all, as it turned out, Keller wouldn't have cared to leave his quarters anyhow on the next day. For overnight the sea, so placid and benignant until now, developed a pa.s.sing fit of temperament. In the morning the sea wasn't exactly what you would call rough, but on the other hand it wasn't exactly what you would call absolutely smooth; and Keller, being a green traveller, awoke with a headache and a feeling of squeamishness in his stomach, and found it no privation to remain upon the flat of his back. Except for a trip to the bathroom Bronston did not venture out of the room either. He read and wrote and smoked and had his meals brought to him. Keller couldn't touch food.

So the situation stood in the middle of the afternoon when there came a gentle knock at the door. Keller was dozing then, but roused himself as Bronston called out to know what was wanted. The voice which answered through the panels was the voice of their bedroom steward, Lawrence.

"I've a wireless, sir," he said; "just received from the coast. It's addressed to 'Sharkey Agency's Operative, aboard Steamship _Mesopotamia_,' and the wireless operator brought it to the purser, sir, and the purser told me to bring it to this stateroom. Was that right, sir?"

Keller sat up with a groan. His head was swimming.

"Stay where you are," said Bronston; "I'll get it for you"; and before Keller could swing his feet to the floor Bronston had unbolted the door and had taken the message from Lawrence's hand. The steward, standing outside, had time only to murmur his inevitable "Thank you, sir," and catch one peep at the interior of the stateroom before the door was closed in his face. Bronston turned and handed the sealed envelope to Keller.

"What did I tell you last night about 'em all being on?" said Keller. "A message comes with no name on it, and yet they know right where to send it. And, say, did you get a flash at the look on that steward's face?

Somebody's been telling that guy something too."

He opened the brown envelope and glanced at the small sheet that it contained. "The London officer will meet us at Liverpool," he said, as he crumpled the paper and tossed it aside. "We land at the other place first, don't we--Fishhawk, or whatever its name is?"

"Fishguard," Bronston told him. "Or rather, we stop off Fishguard, and tenders come out to meet us and to take off mail and pa.s.sengers. Then the ship goes on to Liverpool."

"Good enough," said Keller. "You and me will stay right here in this stateroom until we get to Liverpool; that'll be some time to-morrow, won't it?"

"To-morrow afternoon, probably," said Bronston. He went back to his writing, whistling a little tune to himself.

The precaution of the overcareful Keller proved unnecessary, because in the morning word was brought by the bathroom steward that a notice had just been posted in the gangway opposite the purser's desk announcing that because of the roughness of the channel the liner would proceed straight to Liverpool without stopping off Fishguard at all.

Nevertheless, the detective kept the stateroom door locked. With land in sight he was taking no chances at all.

Since their stateroom was on the port side and the hills of Wales stood up out of the sea upon the other side, they saw nothing of Fishguard as the _Mesopotamia_ steamed on up the choppy channel. Mainly they both were silent; each was busy with his own thoughts and speculations.

Hampered in their movements by the narrow confines of their quarters they packed their large bags and their small ones, packing them with care and circ.u.mspection, the better to kill the time that hung upon their hands. Finally Bronston, becoming dissatisfied with his own bestowal of his belongings, called in the handy Lawrence to do the job all over again for him.

As the shifting view through their porthole presently told them, they left the broad channel for the twistywise river. The lightships which dot the Mersey above its mouth, like street-lamps along a street, were sliding by when Lawrence knocked upon the door to ask if the luggage was ready for sh.o.r.e. He was told to return in a few minutes; but instead of going away he waited outside in the little corridor.

"Well," said Keller, "I guess we'd better be getting up on deck, hadn't we?" He glanced sidewise at the shiny steel cuffs, which he had fished out from an ulster pocket and which lay upon the rumpled covers of his bed. Alongside them was the key of the door.

"I suppose so," said Bronston indifferently; "I'll be with you in a minute." With his back half turned to Keller he was adjusting the seemingly refractory buckle of a strap which belonged about one of the valises. He had found it necessary to remove the strap from the bag.