Crime of Their Life (12 page)

Liddell stood and watched for a few minutes. “You mean it goes on like this every day?”

Eldridge bobbed his head. “Every day. You’d think they’d buy themselves out. Just you wait until you hit Willemstad in Curaçao. You’ll see the same gang jamming Spritzer and Fuhrmann and all the other shops. Some people are compulsive drinkers, they’re compulsive buyers.”

Liddell shook his head. “Better them than me when it comes time to bring the stuff through customs.”

The white-haired man grinned crookedly. “It’s not that tough,” he said cryptically. “It’s like the ‘Purloined Letter.’ You stick it right under their noses and they never see it.”

Liddell studied the older man’s face, could read nothing in it. Eldridge had returned his attention to the milling mob of women.

“Well, I’d better get to the purser’s office before he closes.” Liddell consulted his watch. “I guess I was more tired than I thought. I slept right through the stop-over at Grenada.”

“You didn’t miss anything,” Eldridge told him. “If you’ve seen one old fort with cannons and dungeons, you’ve seen them all.”

“I guess so,” Liddell agreed. He nodded, turned and headed for the purser’s office.

The little fat, perspiring assistant purser who had greeted him upon arrival on board waddled over to the railing. His smile dimmed somewhat when he recognized Liddell. “Yes, sir? Can I help you?”

“I’d like to have a check cashed,” Liddell told him. He brought a folded square of paper from his pocket, slid it across the counter.

The fat man picked it up, managed to look unhappy. “This is for one hundred dollars, sir,” he told him morosely.

“I know it,” Liddell told him. “That’s what I want. A hundred dollars.”

The assistant purser laid the check on the counter, folded his hands in front of him. “I’m afraid you’ll have to get the check okayed, sir,” he told him. There were dimples where his knuckles should have been. “If you can wait until tomorrow, the purser will be able to—”

“I don’t want to wait until tomorrow,” Liddell snapped. “I want it now.”

The perspiration gleamed on the fat man’s face. His eyes darted from side to side, avoiding Liddell’s angry glance. He shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry, sir. I can’t cash it without an okay. And I can’t disturb the purser. I have my orders, sir,” he apologized.

“Who else can okay it?” Liddell stormed. Several people at the counter, writing out checks, looked up at the angry note in Liddell’s voice.

“Just the purser, sir. The captain, of course, could but—”

“I want to see the captain then,” Liddell stormed. “I don’t see anybody else having this kind of trouble.”

“But you must understand, sir. Most of the passengers embarked in New York, had established credit. But you, sir, you came aboard at Barbados—” He shrugged. “We had no opportunity to establish credit.”

“I want to see the captain,” Liddell growled.

“Certainly, sir.” The man behind the counter lifted the receiver of his telephone, dialed with short flicks of his sausage-shaped index finger. His voice was low, there was a pained expression on his face as he murmured the explanation for the call. The perspiration glinted in tiny globules along his hairline and on his upper lip as he talked. He listened for a moment, bobbed his head. He dropped the receiver on its hook. “The captain will see you, sir.” He snapped a finger at a uniformed page. “This gentleman is to see Captain Rose.”

Without a word, Liddell turned, followed the page toward the elevator. The assistant purser brought a balled handkerchief from his hip pocket, swabbed at his face. Jack Allen, the cruise director, walked over to him, turned, his eyes following Liddell’s back out of sight.

“What’s with him?” the cruise director wanted to know. The fat man shook his head. “He’s got no credit, nothing. Orders are that he can’t cash a check for more than fifty dollars until we get some kind of a rating on him. He insists on seeing the captain.” He swabbed at his face again. “Better him than me.”

“How’d he get aboard anyhow? I never knew of Captain Rose picking up passengers with the cruise half finished.”

The assistant purser shrugged his shoulders, replaced the handkerchief in his hip pocket. “Captain didn’t like it a bit. Orders came from the home office. Seems like he has some friend, a vice president or something. We had an empty cabin.” He shrugged again. “So here he is.” “Funny thing. If the captain didn’t like it—”

The fat man shook his head. “He didn’t. Gave me orders that the minute the new passenger sets foot on board he’s to see him.” He looked around and dropped his voice. “He also gave orders that we weren’t to stow the passenger’s gear until the captain gave an okay. He’ll never know how close he came to staying in Barbados.”

CHAPTER 12

Captain Delmar Rose paced nervously back and forth, puffed nervously on his pipe, exhaled thick clouds of blue-gray smoke. He stopped pacing at the rap on his door, locked his hands behind him.

“Come in.”

The door opened, Emil, his personal steward, ushered Johnny Liddell into the room, stepped out and closed the door after him. The captain favored Liddell with a jaundiced look, stalked over to his desk chair, dropped into it.

“Seems like you’ve been a real busy fellow,” he complained. “I suppose you know that two of our passengers, the Keens, quit the cruise bag and baggage in Grenada?” Liddell sauntered over to a chair, sat down. He dredged his pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “How would I know that?”

“It was because of you that they left.”

Liddell stuck a cigarette in the comer of his mouth. “How do you know that?”

“Because it’s my job to know things. You went into the Keens’s cabin last night after dinner. When you left, there was a big row in there. What about?”

Liddell lit the cigarette. “His name wasn’t Keen. His name was Maurie Handel. He’s not a very desirable character.”

The captain leaned forward on his desk, his hands clasped as if in prayer as he visibly controlled his impatience. “I don’t care who he was or what he was. I’m running a cruise ship, not a Sunday School. As long as he doesn’t—”

“Interfere with the operation of your ship,” Liddell filled in. “But suppose he was getting ready to?”

The captain broke off, leaned back. He rattled the juice in his pipe-stem, tried to regain his composure. “How?”

“For one thing he pulled a gun on me. A man could get real narrow-minded at a thing like that and pull a gun of his own.”

“Do you have a gun?”

Liddell nodded his head. “And a license for it.”

“On my ship, I decide who can carry a gun and who can’t. You will turn it in, I’ll return it when we reach New York,” the man behind the desk snapped. He drummed on the edge of his desk with powerful fingers. “That’s understood?”

Liddell shrugged. “This is your home grounds. You write the rules.” He took the cigarette from between his lips, flicked a thin collar of ash from the glowing end. “But somebody’s going to be awfully disappointed.”

“Who?”

Liddell shook his head. “I can’t give you any names yet. But somebody cased my cabin last night, fixed it so the first four slugs in my gun are blanks.”

The captain leaned back in his chair, his eyes wide. “You’re sure of this?” He accepted Liddell’s nod. “But how?”

Liddell reached into his pocket, brought out a banana. He tossed it onto the desk top. “Somebody sent me a basket of fruit. Only thing is, they first loaded it with chloral hydrate. Put me out for over twelve hours and even then my steward practically had to give me artificial respiration to get me on my feet.”

The captain stared at him, reached for the banana. He examined it carefully, peeled it, smelled it. When he looked up at Liddell, his eyes were thoughtful. “How?”

Liddell shrugged. “It’s only a guess, but I’d say they probably filled a hypodermic full of the stuff, squirted it into the fruit until it wouldn’t take any more. It’s loaded with it.”

“It takes some people longer to make themselves hated than others. You’re breaking the track record. Somebody feeds you a mickey, one of the passengers pulls a gun on you.” He studied Liddell thoughtfully. “You think the same man could have done both?”

“Maurie Handel?”

The captain nodded.

“I doubt it. Maurie thought the boys in the mob put me on board to finger him for a hit—”

“Why?”

Liddell shrugged. “He was a mouthpiece for the mob who turned state’s evidence, and sang like a stage-struck canary. The boys get narrow-minded about things like that. That’s why he pulled the gun. But why should he doctor the fruit? He already knew who I was.”

“Maybe he wanted to make sure you didn’t get in the way of his getaway.”

Liddell considered it, shook his head. “I doubt it. I think whoever sent the fruit was suspicious of me and wanted a chance to find out who I was and what I was after. And I think they made it.”

“Then you think the smugglers are on to you?”

“Looks like it. They’ve probably suspected it right along. Now they’re sure.”

The captain looked worried. “There was no leak from this end.”

Liddell nodded. “It was just a bad break that tipped my hand. There were no empty cabins after the ship left Antigua according to your passenger list. Then I pop up in Barbados knowing that one of the cabins had been emptied by Landers’s disappearance. For the kind of people we’re dealing with, that was a little too pat.”

The captain discovered he had allowed his pipe to go out. He scratched a wooden match on the underside of his desk, held it to the pipe, sucked the flame down into the bowl. “And we don’t know anything more about them than the day you came aboard.” He shook out the match, dropped it into the ash tray. “Looks like they’re scoring all the points.”

Liddell scratched at his chin. “Looks like that right now.”

“But?”

“I have a couple of ideas. Nothing I could prove or that would stand up without more proof than I have, but something could develop from them.”

Captain Rose blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling, squinted through it. “You’re thinking that it’s a member of my staff. That it?”

“Either that, or somebody who makes the trip fairly regularly. It’s not just hit-and-run, that’s for sure.” Liddell scowled thoughtfully. “My guess is that the stones are processed and the smugglers are notified when a shipment is ready. It might not be every trip. They only have to make a half dozen or so good killings a year with a racket like this. You can bring in an awful lot of diamonds in a pretty small space.”

The captain nodded. “I’m aware that many of the names on Landers’s list have taken several cruises on the
Queen.
But remember that he listed two tables at which repeaters get first consideration.”

“This Robin Lewis. What do you know about her?”

The captain busied himself with his pipe for a moment. “I think you can safely leave her out of your thinking. I’ll vouch for her.”

Liddell raised his eyebrows. “Like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like that Courvoisier on the bar. Private stock?”

The captain pulled his pipe from between his teeth, stabbed it at Liddell. “That’s insolent, mister. I don’t take insolence on my ship.”

Liddell held his hands up, palms out. “What you do and who you do it with is your business. My business is to find out who’s smuggling diamonds into the United States.” He shrugged. “I’ve got to eliminate a few of these suspects. To do it, I have to ask questions.”

The captain returned the pipe to his mouth. “Robin Lewis has nothing to do with it.”

“She got all upset when she recognized me as a private detective and tied me in with Landers. If she’s so innocent why should she be worried?”

The captain got up out of his chair, started pacing back and forth, puffing at his pipe, locking his hands behind him. Finally, as if reaching a decision, he stopped in front of Liddell.

“Five or six years ago, Robin Lewis took her first cruise on board my ship. You might not believe it, but every unattached female on a ship like this decides to help the captain forget his loneliness. Robin wasn’t like that. She was class, desirable and beautiful.” He rattled the juice in his pipe-stem, took his time selecting the words. “She accepted my invitation to have dinner and cocktails up here several times and we found we had a lot in common. Since then, whenever she travels, she travels on my ship.”

Liddell nodded. “That why she panicked when she recognized me?”

The captain bobbed his head. “She thought you were hired by my wife to get evidence of some kind against us.” He sucked at his pipe, found it had gone out, walked to the desk and knocked out the dottle. “I was furious the night I found out Landers was a private detective and blurted it out to her. She jumped to the conclusion that he was on board to trip us.” He grinned humorlessly. “I couldn’t tell her he was after diamond smugglers, so I just laughed it off. Then last night she put two and two together and got six. She came tearing in to warn me that you were flown from New York to meet the ship at Barbados. Know why?”

Liddell shook his head.

“Because she had it figured that I had Landers killed so he couldn’t report back to my wife. And your job was to nail me for it.” He sighed, shook his head. “Such an imagination, that one. It must be all those bad movies she made.”

Liddell grinned. “I hope you convinced her you didn’t kill Landers?”

Captain Rose smiled glumly. “I think she was disappointed. It would be more romantic that way. I finally convinced her that you were sent here by an insurance company to find out if Landers committed suicide. She seemed satisfied.”

“I had it figured from one look at Herrick that she was too much woman for him.”

The captain shrugged. “He has been very attentive. And I have been very busy.”

Liddell nodded. “How about your other repeaters? Carson Eldridge, for instance?”

The short squat man considered. “Been aboard several times. First time for the girl, though. Not much to know about him. Seems to be well fixed, likes his liquor and his cards.” He brought the tobacco pouch out of his pocket, started loading his pipe. “One of my junior officers has been seeing to it that the kid doesn’t hang around the old man’s neck too much.”