Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 3, August 1959

The Frightened Lady by Theodore Mathieson

Gambling in the Sierra gold towns could measure a man for his coffin. But Jim Troy raised the stakes a notch higher by rubbing elbows with Death on a horseshoe curve.

On a sunny afternoon in late spring, Jim Troy came out of the Nugget House, where he’d been engaged in several sporadic, unproductive games of poker with two solid Cornish miners, and stared bleakly down the narrow, town of Grass Valley.

“Why did I ever come here?” he asked the air, and a blue-coated Chinese, padding past him with slippered feet on the board walk, turned to give him a toothless grin — amused at the tall, lean-faced young white devil who talked to himself.

Troy’s searching gray eyes smiled in return, then he crossed the street and stepped under the shallow marquee of the Criterion to look at the red program-board covered with group photographs.

“You’re the reason, Clara,” he said ruefully, nodding his dark head at the pretty face of a blonde girl who looked out engagingly at him.

She was soft-featured, with full, sensual lips, and high cheek bones, which gave her dark eyes a piquant, exotic look. He’d met Clara Berg on the river boat Yosemite on the way to Sacramento, where the dramatic repertory company she worked for was scheduled to appear. He’d taken her out every night, meeting her with unusual punctuality at the stage doors of the Metropolitan after every performance, and then when the troupe came north for another week’s engagement in Grass Valley, he’d come with it.

But it was over now. A cold campfire. She knew it, and so did he. There was no bitterness, just a tacit agreement. So why did he stand here prolonging his ennui in this profitless town?

Troy shrugged away the memory of a vagrant hope, and glanced at his watch. Four o’clock. The narrow gauge train left in forty-five minutes, and there was no reason for him not to be on it. He could be back on a San Francisco-bound river boat deep in a real game of poker, by eight-thirty this evening. He set off at once for his hotel to pick up his suitcase.

As he mounted the stone steps to the lobby, a round-faced, short-legged little man in a bowler hat and wearing an expensive alpaca overcoat, perhaps in his early forties, pushed excitedly past him on the way out. Thinking he had seen the man before, Troy turned and was surprised to look into pale blue eyes which were filled with unmistakable hostility.

“You are Mister Troy,” the man stated flatly in a guttural accent, laying his gold-handled cane over his arm and drawing on a pair of brown, kid-skin gloves.

“Yes.”

“I will remember you!” the other promised, and without another word set off down the street. There was something ludicrous about the haughty strut of the little man, and Troy walked into the hotel smiling.

Inside the lobby, the desk clerk, a sallow-faced stripling said nasally: “Here is Mr. Troy now,” and leered with prurient eagerness from the gambler to a woman sitting at one end of the lobby. It was Clara.

Looking magnificently blonde in her egret-plumed hat and ermine-trimmed red velvet jacket, she rose to greet him, picked up a suitcase, and then motioned him behind a marble-faced column out of sight of the curious desk clerk.

“I waited for you,” she said breathlessly.

Troy was tempted to tell her straight out of his decision to leave alone on the afternoon train. But Clara looked at him with such naked pleading, that Troy, who could rarely refuse a sincere appeal for help from anybody, sighed and said: “I thought you were at rehearsal.”

“I’ve quit the troupe.”

“What?”

“I had to. I’ve got to get out of town right away, on the afternoon train. I want you to come with me, Jim — please.”

“What’s happened? Has that guy you knew in San Francisco been on your trail?”

“No, no it’s not that,” she said almost too quickly. “It’s a long story, Jim. I’ll tell you on the train.”

“I’ll get my suitcase...”

“Jim?” She put out a small, dimpled hand, and her voice was childishly ingenuous. “Maybe we were wrong to decide, without talking it over, that it was all through between us.”

“Well, isn’t it?” Troy could also be blunt.

She lowered her eyes, looking hurt. “I shan’t ask anything more of you than to go with me to Frisco. I really need you with me, Jim. I’m afraid.”

And when she turned her dark eyes up to him, Troy could see the flickerings of genuine panic in their depths.

“Don’t worry, Clara,” he said soothingly. “I’ll be with you.”

As the funnel-stacked narrow gauge locomotive puffed noisily out of the Grass Valley station, Troy, who sat in an end seat facing Clara, could look over her shoulder down the length of the coach at all the other passengers.

There were only eight or nine besides themselves, and midway down the car, staring aloofly out of the window, was the man in the bowler hat, who’d brushed past him at the hotel. Troy frowned, and then turned his attention to Clara.

“Now then, why are you running away? It must be pretty serious, if it made you decide to walk out on a repertory company. They’ll blackball you for sure.”

“I don’t care,” Clara whispered, and with trembling fingers she opened her purse and took out a slip of yellow paper with pale green lines and handed it to the gambler. Printed in block letters in ink was the name: sir Francis Levinson. That was all.

“I got that in the mail this morning. It was sent to the theatre.”

Troy glanced at the envelope she held out to him, and saw it was postmarked Grass Valley.

“Who is Sir Francis Levinson?”

“He’s a character in a play in which I took my first part back in New York. The play was East Lynne. The man who played the part of Sir Francis Levinson, the villain, became my husband. His real name is Nate Mitchell. We were married only a year; he was unbelievably cruel, he often beat me, and he drank heavily. He was a brute, Jim.”

“When I got my divorce he threatened he’d never let me be loved by any other man, he’d kill me first. I believed him, so I ran away, came out West. That was five years ago, and just when I thought I’d never hear of Nate again, I got that note. It’s his way of letting me know he’s found me. He wants me to suffer, and after I’ve suffered enough, he’ll kill me, as he promised!”

Tears of fright and self-pity rolled down Clara’s smooth cheeks.

Tory patted her hand. “Five years is a long time,” he said. “Do you really think Nate would feel as strongly about it now? Maybe he just wants to scare you.”

“Oh, no, Nate never forgot or forgave the smallest slight! He told me he waited fifteen years once to get even on an uncle who had struck him when he was a boy. Nate is cruel — unforgiving. Unless I can get away from him again and hide, I’m sure he’ll kill me.”

“Would you know him if you saw him?”

“I don’t know. Nate was almost ten years older than I was, and he had the kind of face that could look any way he wanted it to. He was an impersonator for years before he became an actor.”

Troy fell silent and listened to the rhythmic rattle of the wheels turn hollow as the train crossed a trestle over a manzanita-filled glen. Clara repaired her makeup while Troy studied the passengers speculatively.

Besides the man in the bowler hat there were two other men, four women and a little boy. One of the men, the closest to them, was a preacher in a broad-brimmed hat and high white collar, with the angular face of an ascetic, wearing a full black mustache that drooped over his compressed lips like the black mouth of a tragic mask. He was reading a newspaper and his expression left little doubt that he was privately condeming the worldly activities of his fellow men.

The other man, sitting a few seats behind the bowler hat, was a red-faced, sandy haired fellow with bushy eyebrows, who played a two-handed string game, which the little boy across the aisle watched with fascination. From time to time, the player shot an amused glance at the child, but the way he fumbled occasionally with the string, and lurched in his seat as the coach took a curve, made it apparent he’d had too much to drink. He wore a faded blue mackinaw and a heavy woolen cap, and Troy got the impression the man was, or had been, a sailor.

Troy leaned forward towards Clara and whispered: “It’s possible you might be followed. There are three men in the car. Turn around and see if you think any one of them is Nate Mitchell.”

She shook her shoulders helplessly. “I couldn’t tell from here, Jim. I’m near-sighted.”

“Then I’m going to walk you to the back of the car. As we go down the aisle, look at each man. The first is a preacher, the second a business man of some kind, and the third, I think, could be a sailor. Ready?”

“All right, Jim.”

The preacher looked up from his paper as they passed and transferred his disapproval from the printed word to the sight of Clara in her brightly-colored jacket and painted face. Troy could see his mind work. Painted face meant fallen woman, or her equivalent, an actress. As the preacher’s censorious stare passed on to him, Troy felt like saying aloud: And I’m a gambler. But instead he merely smiled, the kind of tolerant smile he hoped would infuriate the preacher. It did. The man flushed and snapped his eyes back to the newspaper.

Clara paused as they reached the seat of the man in the bowler hat, and the object of their scrutiny switched his attention from the passing scenery first to Clara, and then to Troy. The gambler felt again the wave of enmity from the man’s cold blue eyes, and wondered why the man should hate him. The next moment Clara moved on down the aisle.

But before they reached the Mackinawed man, the little boy, whose interest in that gentleman’s string manipulations had waned, ran into the aisle, looking up into Clara’s face, and piped in a childish treble: “Oo-oh! Look at the pretty lady!”

He ran towards Clara and threw his arms around her.

“Bobby!” A plain, sallow-faced mother, shock showing in every lineament of her face, half rose from her seat.

But Clara reached down coolly, her lovely face expressionless, and pulled the little boy’s arms from around her knees as one might disengage an impending branch of a blackberry bush, and returned the child wordlessly to his mother. Whatever else Clara might be, Troy thought amused, she was not in the least maternal.

“Ah, Miss Clara Berg, the enchanting actress!” the Mackinawed man said, rising with clumsy gallantry as they reached him, and pulling off his woolen cap. He stood blinking and grinning with his hair tousled, like some insolent leprechaun. Then the train took another curve and he went sprawling back against the window frame with a mighty thump.

Out on the vestibule platform, Troy let the coach door swing shut behind him before he spoke.

“Did you recognize any one of them?” he asked.

Clara shook her head, staring as if hypnotized at the twin ribbons of rails which unrolled behind them.

“Then why did you pause at the man with the bowler hat?”

Clara stiffened and turned with a gasp. “I — didn’t.” Then when she saw Troy’s evident disbelief, she said impatiently: “All right, I know him. But he is not Nate. Of that much, at least, I’m sure.”

“Why?”

“Because his name is Franz Auslander. He lives in Frisco and deals in mining equipment.”

“And he’s the man whom you knew there?” Troy remembered how Auslander had come rushing impatiently out of the hotel lobby. “And you’ve already talked to him this afternoon?”

“Yes. He asked me for the fiftieth time, I think, to come back to him, but I turned him down. I’m sick of him.”

“And are you afraid of him?”

“Of Franz?” Clara’s lip curled contemptuously. “He’s the last man I’d be afraid of. He doesn’t count.”

“Just the same, I’d hate to meet him alone in a dark mine.”

“He might try to get even with you, Jim, but he’d never harm me. He’s even a little bit ridiculous, in spite of his money. It’s Nate I’ve got to look out for!”

“Then could one of the other two be Nate? The sailor, maybe? He knew your name.”

“He could have seen me on the stage, like a hundred others.”

“The preacher then?”

“Either of them could be Nate, really. They’re both the same build, and Nate dyed his hair even when I knew him! They’ve both got gray eyes, too, just like Nate.”

The door from the coach opened suddenly, and the sailor, looking raffish now with his woolen cap tilted over one bushy eyebrow, poked his head out at them, ducking it in mock sobriety at Troy.

“The little boy was right, Mister,” he said thickly. “She’s a mighty pretty lady!”

Troy and Clara had returned to their seats, when Troy rose some twenty minutes later, and excusing himself, went back again to the vestibule to smoke his cigar. Here in broad daylight in a public coach no danger could threaten Clara, and although he had committed himself to protecting her, he found her insistent demands upon him a weight upon his spirit. He was also aware that he didn’t like her any more. Now that Clara knew their brief relationship was over, she did not bother to camouflage with coquetry her less charming characteristics — her self-absorption, her deceptiveness, her lack of charity towards others.

So it was with relief that Troy stood alone, clinging to the handrail halfway down the vestibule steps, sucking his cigar and watching the train glide through smooth cuts of warm, red earth, past cinnabar trunks of yellow pine and the thick, green foliage of the live oak. He remembered from his northbound trip this tree-tunneled passage, the steep ravine below. It came just before the loop to the bridge over the Bear River.

Then suddenly he was aware there was somebody behind him. But before he could turn he felt the violent blow from a foot applied to the small of his back, and he went sailing out and over the embankment. Even though he fell upon soft pine needles and aromatic tar weed, he was moraentarily stunned. But he came to on his feet, shouting. The train was still in sight, but going too fast for him to catch up with it. And upon the back of the coach, grinning with a small-boy triumph stood Franz Auslander. He even had the effrontery to raise his cane and wave it derisively.

Troy stood motionless for several seconds, rubbing the back of his neck before he remembered about the loop. Then he was running, clambering up the embankment to the right-of-way, and stumbling back fifty yards over the sleepers to a rutty, dirt road, that led steeply down into the ravine. Past deer brush that whipped cruelly across his face he fled, down the red earth slickened by spring rains, across the rickety wooden bridge that spanned a swollen stream.

To his left perhaps half a mile away, he could hear the warning squeal of wheel flanges as the train took the top of the horseshoe curve. In a few seconds it would be starting back towards him again!

Now he left the road, which turned to meander uncooperatively along the stream, and struggled up a slope through dense chaparral. Instantly he was in trouble. Sharp, skeletal fingers of the manzanita clawed at his clothes and raked his face, but Troy persevered, clutching his hat, and breasting frantically through the resistant thicket. Progress was difficult. For a few seconds he would be comparatively free, following an open deer trail, then the way would close up and he would struggle nightmarishly against the vegetable enemy that seemed determined to delay him.

Finally as the sounds of the engine laboring up the grade approached his position upon the hillside, Troy found an open way that led directly to the railroad embankment. He still had a few seconds to make up his mind what he would do.

Auslander, having probably discovered with dismay that the train was doubling back, would doubtless remain upon the rear platform to see that Troy did not clamber aboard. Troy decided to catch the engine, if he could...

When he re-entered the coach from the baggage car, the train was passing over the high bridge, and Auslander was already back in his seat. The German was breathing heavily and looked tense, although he had the air of a man who feels he has done well. He was smiling to himself as he peered out of the window down into the depths of the canyon. Suddenly he turned his head, saw Troy standing in the aisle and his mouth went slack. Fear crept into his blue eyes.

“You’ve been gone a long time, Jim,” Clara exclaimed petulantly.

Disregarding her, Troy stepped past the preacher to Auslander, and with an amiable smile, leaned over and removed the bowler from his head. The man was bald as an egg! Auslander watched Troy in fascinated horror as the latter, still smiling, picked up his cane which hung from the top of the forward seat, and raising it deliberately, brought the head of it down with a smart crack upon his occiput.

“Let that teach you not to push people off trains!” Troy said severely, speaking as if to a little child.

Auslander’s thick underlip quivered and he looked as if he were about to cry. The preacher, who had turned to watch the chastisement, clicked his tongue disapprovingly. The sailor had fallen asleep and observed none of it. The women were chittering nervously, and Clara burst suddenly into a shriek of derisive laughter that made Troy’s spine prickle.

When the Delta King swung out into mid-channel from the Front Street docks in Sacramento that evening at eight forty-five, Troy and Clara stood soberly at the stern among the other passengers, watching the dense lights of the city give way to the meager sprinkling of farm lights, and finally to unbroken darkness.

“They’re both on board, aren’t they?” Clara said in a taut voice after a while, when the others had gone.

“Yes. And Auslander.”

“I saw you speaking to them in the waiting room.”

“I introduced myself. One is John Ferris. And he was a seaman, a captain, he told me, of one of these river boats about ten years ago. The way he closed up on details makes me suspect that there was some scandal. He isn’t a captain any more. He works for a marine outfitting company in San Francisco. I don’t think he’s very sure of himself; he has a hard time looking you in the eye.”

“And the preacher?”

“A traveling Septaguint minister. Revivalist sort, from up Seattle way, he says. Name’s Winter.”

“Do they seem all right?”

“So far as I can see.”

Clara put her hand to her throat. “I don’t feel well, Jim. Take me back to my stateroom.”

Troy piloted her up the iron steps to the upper deck to her cabin on the starboard side. She had left the oil lamp on, and the minute they entered, the yellow piece of paper upon the floor near the door gave them both a start. Troy picked it up.

“Sir Francis Levinson,” he read aloud, and put the paper in his pocket. Clara gasped, and sank down weakly upon her bunk, looking so pathetically fearful that Troy felt sorry for her.

“Look,” he said, “did you ever tell Auslander about Nate?”

“Never!” Clara cried, and her voice carried such conviction that Troy could not disbelieve her. “You’re the only one I have ever told about Nate. No, no, Franz would never have the imagination to try to frighten me this way. Nate is on this boat. I know it. And you mustn’t leave me, not for a moment, Jim!”

Troy made her lie down on the bunk and covered her with a blanket. Then he sat down at a table and taking out a deck of cards played several games of poker solitarie until Clara’s quiet breathing told him she was asleep.

Then he stopped playing, and picking up a single card, blew thoughtfully upon the edge of it.

His rumination was halted by the sound of a footstep outside the door. He sprang silently to his feet, watched the doorknob turn; then he seized it and pulled the door open.

Ferris, the ex-captain stood there swaying slightly, with a foolish grin on his face.

The incident had not awakened Clara, so Troy held his fingers to his lips and then stepped out on deck, closing the door behind him. The night was clear and mild, and a gentle breeze from the starboard bow blew most of the sound of the chunking and splashing of the rear paddle wheel far astern, so the dark was almost quiet.

“Why are you sneaking around this cabin?” Troy demanded.

“Well, now, I didn’t know you were her watchdog, Mister Troy,” Ferris said, murkily aggrieved. “I got to thinking about Miss Berg, that’s all. Saw her act at the Criterion last night. She’s a mighty pretty lady. I understood she’s not married. Honestly, you didn’t look too interested, and I figured that it’s a free country—”

“Not that free, Ferris.”

“No, I guess not.”

“You stay clear of Miss Berg.”

“Yes, sir!” The man laughed softly. “That’s funny, y’know. The crew of the old Ada Hancock used to say ‘Yes, sir’ to me. I was their cap’n, y’know.”

“What happened to the Ada Hancock?” Troy asked.

“She blew up. I went right up with her, pilot house and all, and came down on the texas deck, near the smokestack, with me still intact! Nine people killed. And I should have died too, Mr. Troy. Yes, sir, I should have died, too!” And with that he wobbled aft.

Troy stepped back to the stateroom door then and tried to open it, but found the lock had snapped shut behind him.

“Who is it?” Clara’s voice hinted at hysteria.

“Jim.”

Her face appeared at the cabin window, peering fearfully through the louvers. Troy stepped obligingly under the deck light, and when she identified him, she turned the lock and he entered.

“Take this, Clara,” he said pushing his Derringer into her hand. “It only has one shot, but it’s enough to discourage even Nate Mitchell. I’m going to my stateroom to get my revolver.”

“Who were you talking to?”

“Ferris. It seemes you made a conquest.”

“I’m afraid of him and of the preacher, too.”

“Just stay that way. I’ll be right back.”

“Hurry, Jim.”

As the cabin door closed behind him, he heard Clara snap the lock, and to make sure he tried the door, then strode quickly down the deck forward to his stateroom. Inside his cabin he lit the oil lamp swinging in gimbals over the wash-stand, but had barely time to unlock his suitcase before a knock sounded on the door.

“Come in,” he said, and was surprised to see the preacher, Winter, enter. There was something wrong with the man. His features looked sharpened to a razor’s edge, his eyes glittered, and Troy could see droplets of sweat on his pale high forehead.

“Mr. Troy,” the preacher said in a tight, breathless voice, “when you took the trouble to speak to me in the waiting room earlier this evening, I though you must be a kind man, one who would not turn away from a direct supplication from God.”

Troy’s eyes narrowed. “I haven’t much time right now, Mr. Winter.”

“Enough, I hope, to hear one or two words. I am a champion against sin, because God has chosen me to be his warrior. Even when it seems I interfere with private affairs, nevertheless I—”

All the while he spoke, Winter shuffled step by step closer to Troy.

“Stand where you are, Winter,” Troy snapped.

The preacher, close to a chair, dropped into it like a puppet whose master had loosened the strings. He breathed gustily, his eyes gleaming brighter than ever.

“I wanted to speak to you especially about Miss Berg.”

“What about her?”

“Obviously you are not married to her. I saw no ring upon her finger.”

“No, we are not married.”

“And yet you act towards her as if you were her husband.”

Troy snorted. “So much so, we occupy separate cabins.”

“But you are possessive!”

“Let’s just call it protective. And now I’ll ask you to get out.”

The preacher rose stiffly, like a spring coiled, ready to release itself. “You will not listen to what I have to say?”

Troy, about to make a sharp retort, caught a faint glimmer of anguished pleading behind the strange man’s eyes, and relaxed suddenly with a capitulatory laugh.

“Look, Reverend. Right now I’ve got my hands full with a very frightened lady, and I’ve got to get back to her. So if you don’t mind, I’ll be glad to talk about my sins to you a little later.”

The preacher stared at him wordlessly, his eyes blinking, and Troy could see the passion or determination, or whatever it was, recede like a neap tide, until in just a few seconds Winter stood there wilted and spiritless.

“Very well, Mr. Troy,” he murmured and went slowly out of the cabin.

Troy looked after him with a thoughtful frown, then with renewed haste, dug into his suitcase for the revolver with the rosewood stock. As he loaded it, the Delta King tooted twice in greeting to another river boat bound upstream. Troy could hear the wash of her side paddles and the weary creak of her superstructure close by, and then a strident return greeting from her whistle.

The Capital City, probably. He wished fleetingly that he were on it, sweeping in the winnings from a well-established game, then shrugged away the wish guiltily. He was only making a just payment. A man didn’t get something for nothing in this world.

Leaving his lamp burning, Troy put the pistol in his pocket and stepped out of her door. That was the last thing he knew. A blow from a heavy object swung out of the darkness, striking him upon the forehead, and he crashed back insensible and fell full length upon the deck of his cabin.

The sun had been shining dimly in a strange sky for aeons before Troy became aware that it was his own cabin lamp, seen against a blue-tinted, tongue-ingroove bulkhead. He lay upon his back on the deck, his body trembling with the vibration of the ship, and felt a heavy weight lying across his legs. He raised his head slowly, feeling agonizing stabs in it that splayed bars of blackness across his vision. But what he saw cleared his mind instantly of its dark fog.

It was Clara, lying face down across his legs, and she was dead.

Her face, turned towards him, with one cheek pressed pitifully against the deck, was dark and twisted.

With a cry of instinctive dread, Troy pulled himself frantically from under the dreadful weight, and sat shaking upon his bunk. For five minutes he sat there, drawing on all his resources to keep himself from running in panic out of the cabin. But then suddenly his shaking stopped and his mind was his own again.

He got up and went to the washstand mirror to look at his wound. He’d been struck above the hair line, so the swelling did not show, but a small smear of blood stretched diagonally across his forehead. He dabbed at it, with a moistened towel, after which he took a bottle of whiskey out of his suitcase, tilted it twice and then sat quietly as he felt with gratification the spread of its analgesic warmth.

He glanced at his watch. Ten thirty-five. So far as he could judge, he’d come to get his gun around nine-thirty. Winter had detained him at least five minutes. That meant he’d been unconscious a full hour! What had happened meanwhile? Why was Clara here?

He went over and lifted Clara gently from the floor and laid her in his bunk, seeking in vain for a trace of pulse or the faintest breath. As his hands passed over her, a paper crackled at her bosom, and reaching down he pulled out a crumpled yellow sheet covered with small, compact writing.

Troy folded the letter and put it thoughtfully into his pocket. Slowly, like ice forming crystals, he reconstructed what had happened. Clara had probably received this letter shortly after the first Levinson warning. She would not show it to Troy because Nate’s words would make it clear she was lying about her relationship with her husband. But it would account for her being so sure Mitchell was after her.

Then tonight Clara’s murderer had wanted him out of the way, so he could be free to attack Clara. But the murderer had barely finished slugging Troy, perhaps was standing over him to make sure he would stay out of the picture long enough, when Clara herself, impatient at Troy’s delay, had left the safety of her cabin and come to his.

She certainly wouldn’t have admitted anyone into her own stateroom in her fearful mood! And she must have run directly into the arms of her murderer, as Mitchell had predicted in his letter.

Troy’s eyes hardened as he thought of Winter. Had the man waited outside, and clubbed him as he opened his door? Had he intended to attack Troy in his cabin in the first place, and had he, Troy, forestalled his plan by too great a watchfulness?

Suddenly Troy was tired, and he stopped thinking and pressed his fevered head against the cool bunk pole.

The knocking came twice before he heard it — discreet, respectful.

It was the steward, a heavy-figured, amiable Irishman whom Troy knew from previous trips. Troy had stepped out on deck, closing the door behind him and scowling heavily.

“You wanted to see me, Mr. Troy?” the steward asked.

“Did someone say I did?” Troy parried.

“Yes, sir. You left a note on my spindle.”

“What did it say, I forget” He made a hazy gesture to his forehead.

“Well, sir, it simply told me to look in cabin one hundred and two.”

Again Troy was shaken, but he thought quickly and said: “Well, I wanted to ask if all the cabins were opened by a different key?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Every one different. And the master key I keep in my pocket at all times.” The steward patted his coat pocket where it was obvious the key now resided.

“And the locks are hard to pick?”

“Impossible, sir. They’re Newgate locks. I’ve tried ’em myself — just to test ’em, of course! If anyone gets into your cabin, Mr. Troy, it’s because you forgot to lock your door!”

“Thanks steward.” Troy nodded as if his curiosity were satisfied.

“Thank you, sir.” And the steward went on his way.

Troy stepped back inside the cabin, took another swallow of whiskey, and faced the fact. The murderer had intended that the steward should discover Troy lying upon his cabin deck with the dead Clara Berg beside him! The fact that Troy had awakened in time to ward off the disclosure didn’t mean that he was safe. The murderer would probably try again to implicate him. All that Troy had accomplished was the gaining of a little time. He would have to act fast.

The first thing he had to do was to get Clara back to her own stateroom.

The walk along the deck with the dead woman in his arms seemed an endless trek along the rim of disaster, and Troy prayed that no passengers would appear. He had almost reached her stateroom when the thought struck him with paralyzing force that the door might have locked itself behind her. Sweat broke from every pore, as he felt with tingling fingers for the knob. But then the door swung open and he stepped inside, kicking it shut after him. He laid Clara gently upon the bunk with shaking arms and then stood looking around him.

Everything appeared to be the same as he’d left it: His poker solitaire set-up still lay upon the table. Clara’s suitcase stood open, and her clothes, neatly folded, lay within. Troy frowned. Obviously the garments had not been disturbed, and he had expected that her murderer would search for that incriminating letter. Why hadn’t he?

Slow, heavy footsteps sounded along the deck, and Troy snatched the revolver from his pocket. He’d neglected to lock the door. The steps paused, and Troy tensed for an unwelcome encounter.

“Clara?”

It was Auslander’s voice.

Troy swung the door open. “Come on in, Auslander.”

Blinking, the round-faced man stepped inside. “Don’t you ever let Clara be alone for a while?” he asked, aggrieved.

“I’m afraid she’s alone for good now, Auslander,” Troy said, motioning towards the bunk.

“Was ist!” Auslander’s blue eyes stared at the still form beneath the blanket, and his face turned ashen. “Clara?”

“She’s dead. Somebody strangled her.”

Auslander let out a cry and turned, fumbling for the door knob, but Troy pushed his revolver roughly into his side.

“Sit down! Somebody’s trying to palm off the blame for this thing on me. I’ve got to find out who killed Clara before we reach San Francisco. Here — read that.”

He pushed Nate Mitchell’s letter into Auslander’s hands and the latter read it, forming some of the words with trembling lips. When he had finished he looked up with round, wondering eyes.

“Then it is Mitchell who killed her. Give it to the police only, then you are free.”

“I’ve got a responsibility,” Troy said grimly glancing towards Clara. “I’m going to find him myself. I think Mitchell is one of two men who are on this boat with us. Ex-captain Ferris, or the preacher, Winter.”

“How will you find out?”

“I may need your help. Even if you have been hating me, why shouldn’t you give it? After all, Clara is out of it now. There’s no reason for us to quarrel!”

“Clara!” Tears rolled down Auslander’s fat cheeks, and he stepped over to the bunk and leaned over it, his shoulders quaking. After a few seconds he made an effort to control himself. “I will help you, Mr. Troy.”

“Good.” Troy replaced the revolver in his pocket. “First of all, I gave Clara a Derringer pistol to defend herself with. It should be here somewhere, so let’s look for it.”

The German nodded and started searching the table and the floor while Troy examined the bunk, lifting Clara’s head gently to search under the pillow. He had purposefully omitted telling Auslander that Clara had come to his cabin. No need to incriminate himself needlessly.

Troy didn’t believe she would have walked along the deck without the pistol, but the fact remained that it had not been in her possession when he’d found her dead beside him and that fact was all-important.

Five minutes later, Troy pondered an apparently insoluble puzzle. The little Derringer was not in Clara’s cabin. Where was it?

“I can’t see the murderer taking the gun with him,” Troy said thoughtfully.

“Unless he wanted the pretty little thing for himself!”

“But if he were found with it, it would incriminate him.”

“But if he wanted it very badly,” Auslander said with, a wise look “and he was sure that somebody else would be held for the crime, and that he would not even be investigated...”

Troy shook his head. “I doubt it. But I’ll keep my eye out for it, just the same. I’m going to search their cabins — Winter’s and Ferris.’ ”

“Where will you get the key?”

“That’s easy.” Troy took out his revolver again. “They’ll do the searching themselves.”

“And how can I help?”

“Stay here, or wait in my cabin. One hundred and two.”

Auslander looked sadly towards the bunk, then with a sigh he removed his alpaca overcoat, stripped off his kid-skin gloves and placed them in his pocket.

“I will stay here with Clara,” he said. “It is the least I can do for her, now!”

Jim troy found Winter in the dining cabin, staring moodily into a gilt-framed back mirror, and sipping an evening cup of coffee.

“I’m ready to listen to your talk now, Mr. Winter,” Troy said. “I’ve got more time. Let’s go to your cabin.”

The preacher turned sullen eyes upon Troy and shook his head. “The spirit does not move me to talk to you now.”

“Not even about Clara Berg?”

Troy weighted the question heavily with implication, and it worked. The preacher gave him a quick look, rose, paid his check, and led the way amidships to his cabin. Inside he turned and demanded: “Now what do you wish to say about Clara Berg?”

“I think you ought to pray for her soul, Winter. She’s dead.”

At his words, Winter’s mouth fell open, and his face looked more like a tragic mask than ever; the intake of his breath rasped plainly. But Troy was in no mood to be gullible. He took out his revolver.

“I haven’t much time, Winter. I’m out to find who murdered her. So I’ll ask you to unpack your suitcase there, and lay every article on the bunk.”

“Clara is really dead — murdered?”

“You can take my word for it.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Just unpack.”

Like a man in a dream, Winter took item after item out and laid them upon the blanket. Once he stopped and asked: “Whom do you think killed her?”

When Troy didn’t answer him, he continued his task until the suitcase was empty.

Troy pointed at a gray checked suit and a few brightly colored neckties. “Isn’t that strange garb for a Septaguint minister?”

For the first time color appeared in Winter’s cheeks, but he said nothing. Troy stepped over to the suitcase and slipped his hand into the wide pocket inside the lid. Then he pulled out a writing pad and held it up triumphantly. The paper was yellow with light green lines.

“This is the kind of paper that Clara’s ex-husband wrote his threatening notes and letters on! It’s too much for coincidence. I think you’re Nate Mitchell!”

The other made a sudden dash for the cabin door, eluding Troy’s grab for him. By the time the gambler reached the deck, the pseudo-preacher was climbing over the taffrail. But before he could release his hold to drop into the dark waters of the river, Troy had seized his arm and was pulling him back. Mitchell struggled frantically, but at that moment the steward appeared, and not unused to violence on board, held on to him matter-of-factly, while Troy terminated the man’s struggles with a smart blow from the butt of his revolver.

They laid the half-conscious Mitchell on the bunk in Troy’s own cabin, and when the steward had gone, Troy fetched in Auslander who had remained in Clara’s cabin. The German’s eyes were red from weeping.

“What have you found?” Auslander asked, gasping with excitement.

“Him,” Troy said pointing at the man in the bunk. “That is Nate Mitchell, Clara’s ex-husband.”

“Schweinehund!” the expletive broke like a whip lash from Auslander’s lips as he looked down at the pale face. “He murdered mine Clara!”

Mitchell’s eyes fluttered and he looked up at Troy. “No, no,” he said faintly. “I did not.”

“Do you deny that you’re Mitchell?” Troy asked.

“No, I’m Nate Mitchell. But I didn’t kill Clara. I swear it.”

“You’d better talk.”

“Yes.” Mitchell moisted his lips, and when he spoke again his voice was stronger. “I was married to Clara. She ran away from me, took our child. It died. I swore to kill her. It took me five years to find her.” He stopped talking as if the effort were too great.

“Tonight you came to my cabin,” Troy prompted. “But not to save my soul.”

“No. I came to strike you down, so I could get at Clara. But when you told me she was so frightened, and you were so — damned sympathetic, concerned. I don’t know. I knew I couldn’t go through with it. I was ready to leave without ever seeing Clara again!”

“You’ll have a hard time convincing the police of that when I show them your letter.”

“I know.” Mitchell nodded and closed his eyes, as if he’d given up.

“Well, that frees you,” Auslander said, patting Troy upon the shoulder.

“I don’t know.” Troy looked down frowning at the pale, quivering Mitchell. “When he came to my cabin he was ready to go up like a balloon, and then all of a sudden he wilted. He might be telling the truth.”

“Maybe afterwards he got up his courage again.”

“Maybe.”

Troy never knew afterwards exactly why he did it. The feeling came, a slight tingling in his heart, the way he felt when he knew what card his opponent held, and spoke it correctly without thought. But this hunch had nothing to do with cards. He ran to the cabin door.

“Watch Mitchell. Don’t let him get away,” Troy ordered Auslander curtly, and stepped out on deck. There were no passengers visible. He ran softly to Clara’s cabin, paused to listen outside the door, then thrust it open.

Ex-captain Ferris stood stiffly by Clara’s bunk, as if stricken by some rare paralysis. His face, when he turned it jerkily towards Troy, was frozen with fear, and in his right hand, held like a useless toy, was Troy’s Derringer.

Twenty minutes later Ferris entered Troy’s cabin, followed by the gambler. Ferris paused momentarily to stare at Mitchell, who still lay with his eyes closed, breathing as if asleep, then sat down nervously near the bunk. Auslander’s eyes opened wide when he saw the Derringer in Troy’s hand.

“You found it! Where?”

“Ferris. He says he paid a visit to Clara earlier this evening, after I’d warned him away. The door was open and she wasn’t there. He went in and looked around. He saw the Derringer lying on the bunk, couldn’t help picking it up and putting it in his pocket. I found him there just now, returning it. He says his conscience got the better of him. He was stunned when he saw Clara dead upon the bunk.”

“You believe him?” Auslander asked.

“Yes, I do. Because he didn’t murder Clara.”

“Then Mitchell did.”

“No.”

“Who, then?”

“You did, Mr. Auslander.”

The German turned red and began spluttering. “That is ridiculous!”

“Is it?” Troy held up a pair of light brown kid skin gloves. “I found these in the pocket of your coat which you left in Clara’s cabin. The fingers of this glove are splattered with blood. My blood. Blood from the end of the cane you hit me with!”

“Give me that!” Auslander cried truculently, starting forward.

Troy was ready for him. He jabbed a quick right fist to the German’s jaw, and Auslander went down in a heap, his head hitting the pipe beneath the wash-stand. He lay there, looking groggily up at Troy.

“That evens us a little bit,” Troy said mildly. “Now why did you kill Clara?”

Auslander eyed the glove Troy held as if he were starving for it. Then he closed his eyes briefly and shuddered, and began speaking very low.

“She laughed at me when you hit me on the head on the train. I had taken so much from Clara, but that was the last straw. I couldn’t stand being laughed at in front of you, who had won her from me. I made up my mind to kill her then!”

Troy nodded to Mitchell and Ferris. “For telling the truth, you may have the gloves.” And he threw the pair towards Auslander, and the latter snatched them and examined them.

“Mein Gott, there is no blood!” Auslander rose shakily to his feet and shook the gloves accusingly at Troy.

“No, I made that up. Once I suspected you, I had to find a way to make you commit yourself.”

“How could you know?” Auslander asked incredulously.

“I told you I believe Ferris’ story about the Derringer. If Ferris found the pistol on the bunk, that meant that Clara was taken from the cabin after she was unconscious or dead. I think you killed her there. She never would have come to me along that deck without carrying the gun!

“But if she was attacked in her own cabin, who could have succeeded in getting in? She would never have admitted either Ferris or Winters. She suspected one of them of being her husband. And before she would have opened that door to anyone, she would have looked through the louvers to make sure her visitor was who he said he was, the way she did even with me earlier this evening, when I got myself locked out.

“There was no tampering with the lock — the steward told me that was impossible. Therefore, Clara had admitted somebody. Who else would she admit besides me? Only a man for whom she had contempt, who, as she told me this afternoon ‘didn’t count’. In other words, you, Auslander. She considered you a joke, so she admitted you and you strangled her!”

“She shouldn’t have laughed the way she did that last time,” Auslander wailed.

Troy looked wearily at the strained faces of the three men around him, caught sight of his own battered face in the mirror.

“You know what I think?” he asked. “Clara is still laughing — at all four of us! And in a way, I can hardly blame her.”