Chapter XLIV: Betty’s Fear

Later, he was to find that Mr. Bullott’s enthusiastic description was by no means far-fetched. The United States liner _Escorial_ was by far the most luxurious vessel that ever rode the Atlantic. Never had the easy description of “floating palace” been so truthful in its application. From the gymnasium on the upper deck to the pillared swimming pool on H deck, she was the last word in magnificent accommodation. Ten elevators carried her passengers from deck to deck: her huge social hall, with its priceless tapestries and its elegant furnishings, was without a peer. Bill paced the long promenade deck, his eyes seeking for Betty Stone, and marvelled at the hugeness of this leviathan.

The spacious deck was crowded with loungers, for the dinner bugle had not yet sounded. He searched the rows upon rows of deck chairs that stood in the deep recesses, without, however, catching so much as a glimpse of the girl, and when he joined Bullott in the beautiful smoke-room, he mentioned the failure of his search.

“Miss Stone is unpacking: I just saw her maid. There’s Lowbridge.” He pointed to a padded corner of the room where Clive Lowbridge sat at his ease, a cigarette between his lips, his eyes on the carved ceiling. Their eyes met, and with a lift of his eyebrows and a smile Clive sprang up and came towards him.

“This is an unexpected pleasure, Holbrook. When did you come on board? I didn’t see you at Southampton. You weren’t by any chance the crazy man who arrived by aeroplane at Cherbourg?”

“I was that lunatic,” said Bill.

“I was watching you disembark and wondering whether you would be drowned. Well, what is the news from London? It seems ten years since we left. Have you heard anything of Laffin?”

“I saw him last night,” said Bill grimly, “and in consequence spent the night in a cold, cold prison cell.”

Clive’s face was grave, and when Bill had finished his short narrative:

“I find it difficult to believe that Laffin is such a blackguard,” he said. “In many ways I’m glad to be out of it all--it doesn’t bear thinking about. It seems that the only person left with any faith in the doctor is Benson.”

“Benson? Oh, you mean your butler?”

“He is my valet here,” said Lowbridge with a smile. “Yes, I brought him; he was unexpectedly loth to leave me--in fact, offered to pay his own fare. In many ways I am glad, because I am not the best of sailors.”

“Benson believes in him?”

“Benson is a man filled with admirable sentiments,” he said. “It is his faith that no man is as black as he is painted. My own view is that Benson never defended a man less worthy than the doctor.”

He glanced curiously at Bill’s costume. As usual, the reporter was somewhat oddly arrayed, and, conscious of his scrutiny, Bill laughed.

“You’ve got to get used to this kit, Lord Lowbridge,” he said, “because I’ve brought no clothes, and unless I can dig something up from the barber, I will be a disgrace to your party--if I were a member of your party,” he added hastily.

Clive was amused.

“I’m afraid I cannot help you in the matter of clothes: you and I are not sized alike,” he said, and Bill looked enviously at the fine figure of Lord Lowbridge, and felt that twinge of jealousy he had experienced before.

Bullott, most surprisingly, came to his rescue in the matter of clothes. He had brought a dress suit, which he did not intend wearing, so he said, and Bill found that the suit fitted him perfectly. Moreover, Bullott had a larger supply of linen than one man could use.

“I shall be just eating around,” said Bullott, when Bill protested against robbing him of his clothes. “And anyway, regular meals interfere with my digestion.”

Whilst he was dressing, a steward brought a message from Mr. Stone, asking Holbrook if he would join their party at dinner, and he was all the more grateful that he was presentable when he came down the stairs into the wonderful white hall, that looked like anything but the dining-saloon of a ship, and was greeted by the smiling eyes of the most beautiful girl in the world. Bill had never seen her before in an evening gown, and at sight of her loveliness caught his breath.

“How wonderful that you have come after all, Mr. Holbrook!” she said. “And please, you’re not going to talk of Dr. Laffin or of any of the horrors from which we’ve escaped! I want to talk about this dream ship.”

She chatted throughout dinner about the people who were on board. There was a returning ambassador, three great literary geniuses, a star from Hollywood who scintillated so brightly that she could not come into dinner until nine o’clock at night, when her sparkling splendours might be the better observed.

“And there are twenty-five millionaires,” she said impressively. “Mr. Stone counted them on the passenger list. Think of it, Mr. Holbrook--twenty-five! Doesn’t it make your mouth water?”

“I’ve yet to meet the millionaire that ever impressed me,” said Bill. “They’re homely folk, and I guess they hate being what they are.”

He looked round the great saloon; from every table there came the shimmer and glint of jewels, for the sea was calm and all chairs in the restaurant were occupied. Even the chronic neurasthenics, who feel ill at the sight of a ship, had plucked up courage to appear on the first night at sea.

To the girl it was a scene of enchantment, outside and beyond anything in her experience; and even Bill was so impressed that he began to regret that, in taking away Bullott’s clothes, he had also deprived him of this vision of loveliness. He might have been in a great Parisian restaurant; there was no motion, not so much as a tremor, save that his practised ear heard, above the talk and the soft strains of the orchestra that were playing in a gallery at the far end of the saloon, the distant whirr of the turbines that were driving them through the smooth blue sea.

When dinner was over he fell in naturally at Betty’s side, and went up with her in the little elevator to the top deck. As they walked out into the cool night air, a point of white light splashed for a moment on the horizon and was gone.

“That is St. Catherine’s,” said Bill, “about the only light you’ll pick up from now until Fire Island.”

She was looking at him with a woman’s critical eye.

“You are better dressed than I’ve ever seen you.”

“And for an excellent reason,” replied Bill cheerfully. “I am wearing another man’s suit! I came on board with nothing but what I stood upright in. But have no fear,” he warned her solemnly, raising his hand, “the barber has been true to type and has found me some shirts and other garments which I will not particularise. I shall not disgrace you--that is, if Bullott is content to go what he calls ‘eating around.’”

“I haven’t seen him since I came on board,” said the girl, with sudden seriousness. “Why is he going to America?”

“Why shouldn’t he?” parried Bill. “The man that hasn’t seen America isn’t alive.”

“But why is he coming on this particular ship? I thought he was so busy with”--she hesitated--“with this horrible murder. Was that story you told at dinner true?” she asked suddenly. “I mean the story about your fighting with a man in the Park and being arrested?”

“Perfectly true.”

“Who was the man?”

“An acquaintance of mine.” Bill tried to pass the matter over.

“But it must have been somebody very hateful to you,” she insisted. “I can’t imagine you fighting for the sake of fighting. Was it the doctor?”

He nodded.

“Thank God!”

“Why do you say that?” he asked in surprise.

“Because, if he is in London, he isn’t here!”

“Ever since I’ve been on this ship,” she said at last, “I’ve had a fearful sense of being--what is the word?--shadowed! I don’t know why, but all the time I am looking round, expecting to find him at my elbow.”

“Here, on this ship?”

She nodded.

“You don’t know Laffin as I know him,” she said. “You’ll never plumb the deeps of his malignity, of his daring. I still believe he is on this ship.”

“Well, I can reassure you on that point,” he said. “Bullott watched every passenger come on board, and the doctor was not one.”

She shook her head doubtingly.

“You do not know the doctor,” she said, and at that moment Clive Lowbridge joined them and the conversation became general.

As soon as he could bring himself to leave her, Bill went down in search of Bullott, and found him in his cabin, studying the passenger list.

“Well?” he asked, as Bill came in.

“Miss Carew thinks that the doctor is on board?”

Bullott put down the list, took off his glasses and replaced them carefully in his waistcoat pocket.

“Maybe she’s right,” he said calmly.

“Here, on this ship? He wouldn’t be such a fool!”

“I don’t know.” Bullott’s attitude exactly reflected that of the girl. “It looks foolish, doesn’t it? On the other hand, you may be safer on this ship than in London. I am really advancing what will seem to you to be a wild theory. For a man who has been dealing in theories for weeks, and who has exchanged the safe haven of the Record Department for the kind of existence that I’m dragging out now, theories are almost as tangible as facts.”

He ran his fingers through his scanty hair and sighed.

“It was a bad day for me when I took up real police work, Holbrook,” he said sadly, “I’m a failure--at least I’m a failure if----”

“If what?” asked Bill, when he paused.

“If I don’t find old man Laffin on board this ship.”

Bill sat down on the settee and stared at his companion.

“Do you seriously mean that Laffin is here?”

“He may not be here now--but he will get here. How? I’m not even guessing. I’ve got less idea how he’ll get off.”

“I hope he comes,” said Bill grimly. “I paid seven and sixpence for punching a policeman’s jaw: I guess I can stand a few extra thousand dollars for strangling Mr. Blooming Laffin.”

Mr. Stone’s party were in the café when he found them, and in that sparkling atmosphere all thought of the doctor and his devilry was dissipated. Looking up at the clock when the girl rose, Bill saw, to his surprise, that it was eleven.

Before he went to bed he took a stroll up and down the deck with Bullott, and in the main the conversation was confined to America and its institutions. As eight bells was striking, he went down the broad companionway to his cabin, turned on the light and began to undress, trying hard to believe that twenty-four hours ago he had shared a small cell with a drunken cabman.

Getting into bed, he took up a book and read for a quarter of an hour, without recognising a single word on the printed page, for his thoughts were in a queer confusion, made up of Laffin and Betty Carew, of police cells and dark priories and cowled monks.

He turned out the light and lay for a long time in the darkness, and must have gone to sleep on his back, for he woke gasping, and sat up suddenly in his berth. There was a squeak which was distinguishable from the creak of the ship--the squeak of a door handle turning.

Before he had retired for the night he had placed a small electric torch within reach of his hand. He stretched out and gripped it, and, as the squeak was repeated, flashed a light on the door.

It was open, and the light focussed upon a yellow, malignant face--the face of Dr. Joshua Laffin!