Down Among the Dead Men

XXVI

“Yair.” Koski leaned against the jamb of the door to the saloon to ease his rib. “The man who got hacked up was Merrill.”

“You must be mistaken!” Barbara’s mouth was pulled down desolately at the corners; her eyes were feverishly brilliant.

“We were mistaken. Long enough.” Koski looked them over: — Berger belligerent before the fireplace, Hurlihan slumping dejectedly in one of the red leather chairs. Fross sitting bolt upright in the other, adjusting his pince-nez. At one end of the transom seat, Barbara with her legs curled under her; at the other, Ellen and Joslin sitting stiffly side by side. “Plenty of reasons for making that kind of mistake...

“Captain Cardiff reported Gjersten as missing. You told me nobody would see Gjersten again, Mrs. Ovett. That Filipino we’ve got down in the Tombs referred to Ansel as dead. Place where the body was dismembered was the sort of dive Gjersten would be likely to visit. He did go there. He was seen. He didn’t take his clothes with him off the yacht. He didn’t draw the pay due him. He was heard arguing with young Ovett. Nobody heard him at all after that. Nobody reported seeing him after this yacht took you over to the Wall Street landing, Hurlihan. All circumstantial, sure. But it sidetracked us. It was calculated to throw us off the track, part of it.”

Hurlihan scrunched lower in his chair; his black curls were matted with sweat. “You told me yourself the body... what you had found of it... corresponded to Gjersten’s description.”

“It did. And it didn’t check with Merrill’s losing so much weight in that lifeboat. He’d lost about forty pounds. Threw our Identification Bureau off on their comparative height tables, too. We had pretty accurate measurements of Merrill.” He didn’t glance at Ellen. “Sections of the body that came out of the water didn’t slow any close comparison to those measurements. They were pretty close to what we knew about Gjersten.”

“The dead man might not be Ansel.” Barbara hung her head in what was intended to be a woe-begone manner. “But you’re just making another mistake if you claim it’s Merrill. Because Merrill wasn’t in Brooklyn. -He jumped off the yacht at Wall Street. Captain Cardiff saw him.”

Koski shook his head with a minimum of movement. “Cardiff made that error. Unassisted. He thought he saw Merrill. But he didn’t get a real look at him. Didn’t notice him until the Seavett was five or six feet out from the float. All he saw then was a man in a blue serge suit, sprawling on the float after jumping. It was night. It was foggy. And the suit was Merrill’s. But the man inside it must have been Ansel Gjersten.”

“It isn’t plausible,” Barbara insisted. “Nobody saw Ansel on board after we left Rodd’s Yard.”

“Nobody would have seen him, Mrs. Ovett. If he’d been in Merrill’s stateroom, changing into Merrill’s clothes.”

“Right after Clem left at Wall Street, Merrill jumped ashore.” Barbara sighed with impatience. “Otherwise, he’d have been aboard next morning.”

Koski said: “He left while you were still at the dock in Brooklyn. Right after Gjersten came back to the yacht. Chances are Gjersten gave him some decoy message to get him to go to this disreputable house. Gjersten might have told him some pal of his was in trouble there. Probably this union lad, here. The murder room was taken in Joslin’s name. It would have had to be some frameup like that to get Merrill into that Red Hook rat-hole. One thing sure, he wasn’t aboard this tub; he wasn’t seen aboard it after you left Rodd’s. You told me he was sulking in his tent, Mrs. Ovett. You were way off. He probably thought he was rushing to rescue a friend.”

Berger cleared his throat, gruffly. “I can’t contradict you on what happened here on the boat or in Brooklyn. What sets wrong in my craw is that Merrill was alive this morning. His father talked to him on the phone.”

“Thought he did.” Koski nodded. “Be natural to expect a man to recognize his son’s voice. But there were what the parole people call mitigating circumstances.”

“Lawford didn’t mention any to me, sir.”

“First place, the old man is half deaf.”

“Not so deaf anyone could fool him, pretending to be Merrill.”

“Yair. When you take second place into account. Second place was, he’d had a shot of dope the night before. It hadn’t worn off by the time he got to your office, — an hour or so after the call.”

“That’s so.” Berger stared at Clem. “That is so.”

“Then you told me Mister Ovett thought the call came from a saloon. Only way he’d have known that would have been because of the racket. Good place for Gjersten to talk from if he was pretending to be Merrill. Another reason for being sure the call was phony, — the guy at the other end of the line didn’t talk long. Not long enough to arouse the old man’s suspicions. Damn queer way to talk to your own father when you’d just been rescued. After twelve days in a lifeboat. Merrill would have had more than that to say. Joslin told me Merrill tried to phone his father Sunday afternoon. Not just to say three sentences.” He shifted his position; the pain in his side was suddenly sharper. “Idea was the same as a wire he was supposed to have sent. Make everybody look for Merrill, — instead of Gjersten.”

Clem chewed on his lower lip, dubiously. “I had a different idea about the murder, but say you’re right. It still doesn’t prove Ansel was the murderer.” He leaned back to keep Barbara within his range of vision. “It might have been someone else, — who paid Ansel to do away with the... uh... remains, to make that phone call. Somebody who hoped, with Merrill out of the way—”

“—to get control of the Line,” Berger broke in sharply. “Yes... indeed!”

“No.” Koski’s voice was dull with fatigue. “Nothing to do with all this security hocus-pocus. If the idea’d been to get hold of Merrill’s shares, or his estate, or his inheritance, — the body wouldn’t have been cut up to conceal its identity. Other way ’round. Body would have to be identified before there’d be any sense to the crime. Purpose of the mutilation was to hide the dead man’s identity long enough to let Gjersten get out of the country. Aboard the Santa Pobrico. Killer might have stood to profit by Merrill’s death. But not by having it known.”

“There is a discrepancy.” Foss smoothed his mustache. “You say Gjersten sailed on the Pobrico?”

“As an oiler, yair.”

“Then it couldn’t have been Gjersten who assaulted Morrie Schlauff. Because the officers who came around to my office sometime after... after you left... I presume they were acting on your instructions?—”

“Go on. Presume.”

“—told me Morrie must have been attacked at just about the time the Pobrico was pulling away from her pier.”

“Yair.”

Koski waited until the Penfield Reef siren ceased its periodic groan. “Gjersten didn’t slug Schlauff. Schlauff was after information about Merrill. Doped it out that it ought to be worth something to know the whereabouts of a rich man’s son, accused of murder. Had no idea what he was going up against. Accidentally went right to the head man behind this business. He asked the wrong question, guessed the right answer. So maybe the key man tried to buy him off. Maybe he just decided to knock him off. Gjersten wasn’t mixed up in that.”

Barbara asked: “Why are you hunting for him, then? Why don’t you go after this... this head man you talk about?”

“Oh, Gjersten was a killer.” Koski felt the Seavett heel to starboard, knew the yacht must be turning on the inshore leg of the patrol. “He was in on Merrill’s murder. Worked with the boss-guy. Helped put over the message about Joslin. They knew Merrill was a friend of Joslin. Would probably have gone to his aid if word came this union lad was in dutch. So Gjersten let the other man use his room at the dive. But he was probably afraid he’d be identified by the girl he’d taken to the same room in the afternoon. So today, when he learned from the papers the body had been discovered, he must have found where she lived, got in her room up the fire-escape, shot her when she came in. Gjersten was deadly, but he didn’t have the knowledge to do the big job the head man was doing.”

“Knowledge?” Fross took off his glasses, put them on again, and coughed delicately.

“Special kind of information. Information that would be useful to enemy subs off our coast.”

The quietness of the saloon was deepened by the dismal bellow of the siren on the reef. Koski went on:

“Man would have to know about ships. Ship sailings. Ship routes. Might know more about Ovett ships than any others. Have to be familiar with radio. Shortwave. Sending and receiving. Either have one himself or have access to it.” Koski wasn’t watching Barbara, but he could hear her breathing, — like a runner at the finish of a sprint. “He’d have to be able to dress like a seaman. Act like one. Know his way around the waterfront, or how to find his way around without being noticed. He was smart enough to tie a bandage around his chin. So everyone noticed the bandage. Nobody noticed him.”

Ellen stood up, rigidly. “He doesn’t have a swastika mark on his arm, like Gjersten. He has it branded into his heart.”

Joslin came up off the seat, too. “He’s worse than a Nazi. Because he doesn’t wear the lousy label where it can be seen. He’s the dirtiest dog on earth. A Quisling.”

They both looked at Berger.