“You are sure it was locked?”
“The bolt is still shot.” I showed
her.
“Then—where is the key?”
“The key!”
“Certainly. Find the key, and you will
find the man who locked you in.”
“Unless,” I reminded her, “it flew
out when I broke the lock.”
“In that case, it will be on the floor.”
But an exhaustive search of the cabin floor discovered
no key. Jones, seeing us searching, helped, his
revolver in one hand and a lighted match in the other,
handling both with an abandon of ease that threatened
us alternately with fire and a bullet. But there
was no key.
“It stands to reason, miss,” he said,
when we had given up, “that, since the key isn’t
here, it isn’t on the ship. That there
key is a sort of red-hot give-away. No one is
going to carry a thing like that around. Either
it’s here in this cabin—which it isn’t—or
it’s overboard.”
“Very likely, Jones. But I shall ask Mr.
Turner to search the men.”
She went toward Turner’s door, and Jones leaned
over me, putting a hand on my arm.
“She’s right, boy,” he said quickly.
“Don’t let ’em know what you’re
after, but go through their pockets. And their
shoes!” he called after me. “A key
slips into a shoe mighty easy.”
But, after all, it was not necessary. The key
was to be found, and very soon.
“That’s mutiny "
Exactly what occurred during Elsa Lee’s visit
to her brother-in-law’s cabin I have never learned.
He was sober, I know, and somewhat dazed, with no
recollection whatever of the previous night, except
a hazy idea that he had quarreled with Richardson.
Jones and I waited outside. He suggested that
we have prayers over the bodies when we placed them
in the boat, and I agreed to read the burial service
from the Episcopal Prayer Book. The voices from
Turner’s cabin came steadily, Miss Lee’s
low tones, Turner’s heavy bass only now and
then. Once I heard her give a startled exclamation,
and both Jones and I leaped to the door. But
the next moment she was talking again quietly.
Ten minutes—fifteen—passed.
I grew restless and took to wandering about the cabin.
Mrs. Johns came to the door opposite, and asked to
have tea sent down to the stewardess. I called
the request up the companionway, unwilling to leave
the cabin for a moment. When I came back, Jones
was standing at the door of Vail’s cabin, looking
in. His face was pale.
“Look there!” he said hoarsely.
“Look at the bell. He must have tried
to push the button!”
I stared in. Williams had put the cabin to rights,
as nearly as he could. The soaked mattress was
gone, and a clean linen sheet was spread over the
bunk. Poor Vail’s clothing, as he had taken
it off the night before, hung on a mahogany stand
beside the bed, and above, almost concealed by his
coat, was the bell. Jones’s eyes were
fixed on the darkish smear, over and around the bell,
on the white paint.
