Voyage into Violence (15 page)

Then, Barron's eyes narrowed, just perceptibly.

“Your wife's great-aunt,” he said, to Captain Cunningham. “So that was a lot of baloney. You know, it sounded like baloney.”

He looked at Weigand, then.

“So,” he said, “what's it got to do with me?”

But his eyes were wary, and it was evident he could guess. He sat down.

“I think,” Bill told him, “you had seen those photographs before, Mr. Barron. Or—the things themselves. You were anxious to get your hands on them. And, when you did, all you needed was a quick glance.”

“All right,” Barron said. “That's what you think. So that's what you think.”

“It isn't true?”

Weigand was damn' right, it wasn't true. The varnish came off Barron's speech. Cops could make mistakes. It wouldn't be the first time—He stopped.

“No,” Bill said. “Not the first time, is it?”

“Oh, I get it,” Barron said. “I get it all right. Because there was this little mix-up about an old dame who couldn't remember where she put her pretties—” He broke off again, with a rather elaborate shrug. “Nobody charged me with anything. They wanted a fall-guy and tried me for size. And, I didn't fit. So they said, ‘Sorry, please'—only they didn't, you can bet on that. All they said was ‘Scram!' So now you come along.”

He stood up. He displayed indignation, presumably righteous. He spoke to Captain Cunningham, and got some of the varnish on again. He said that if that was all it was—

“No,” Bill said. “Sit down, Mr. Barron.”

“You,” Barron said, “are off your beat, aren't you?”

He looked hard at Bill Weigand, then at the captain. He was looked back at, harder.

“You can take it, Mr. Barron,” Cunningham said, “that Captain Weigand has got himself a new beat. As he said, sit down.”

And Jules Barron sat down, which came as rather a surprise to Captain Cunningham, and interested Bill Weigand not a little, since he was off his beat and since Cunningham's authority, while considerable, did not really extend to the forcible detention of passengers. It appeared that Barron had had a change of mind, and a rather sudden one.

“This woman who lost her jewelry,” Bill said. “What was her name, by the way?”

“Morgan,” Barron said. “Believe it or not. And I was clean on it. Couldn't have been cleaner.”

“She got it back?” Bill said.

Barron said, “Yeah. She got it back.”

He paused a moment, and spoke quickly. “That's the way I heard it,” he said. “I didn't know a damn' thing about it. Not about any of it.”

“Through a contact?” Bill asked him.

“I wouldn't know.”

“Possibly,” Bill said, “through a private detective? Working with the thieves and with the agency—both sides of the street?”

“I wouldn't know.”

“You've heard of that being done?”

“Sure,” Barron said. “I've heard of it. Who hasn't?”

“Mr. Barron,” Bill said, “did you know Mr. Marsh? Was he involved in this—mix-up?”

“Never heard of him,” Barron said. “As to whether he was in the Morgan deal—that is, helped get back Mrs. Morgan's stuff—how would I know? I don't know a damn' thing, like I told you.”

And then, suddenly, Barron, who had been looking at nothing in particular while he spoke, looked up at Bill Weigand—and smiled. There was in the smile precisely what Bill least wanted to see—confidence. But there had been a moment—the moment when Barron had been stared down, failed, as he might have, to walk out of the captain's quarters—when Bill had thought Jules Barron was not confident at all.

The answer was as easy to guess as it was discouraging to contemplate—if, in relation to Jules Barron, there was a track to get on, Bill had got off it.

“To get back to the jewelry in the photographs,” Bill said. “Had you ever seen it before?”

“No,” Barron said.

“Not the photographs? Nor the things themselves—a bracelet, two necklaces, a diamond ring?”

“No.”

“You did want to look at them?”

“Everybody else was,” Barron told him. “I'm as curious as the next guy.” He looked at Captain Cunningham. “Quite a story about this great-aunt,” he said. “Quite a story.” He paused. He looked at Bill Weigand and his gaze was shrewd. “All for my benefit?” he asked.

He was not directly answered.

“How did you happen to come on this cruise?” Bill asked him, and was merely casting at random, and hoped it was not too evident.

Barron's eyebrows, which had been at rest, went up.

“Why does anybody?” he said. “Read about it. Thought it might be fun. Had a little loose cash.”

“Didn't know anybody who was going to take the trip?”

“I tell you,” Barron said, “the way I see it, you always meet people. New faces. See what I mean?”

“Elderly women with money?” Bill asked him.

Barron did not look angry. He merely looked amused.

“Is there a law against it?” he asked, as man of the world to man of the world.

He was told he could go. He went smiling, and the smile was confident.

“A rather unpleasant young man,” Captain Cunningham said. “But—”

“Right,” Bill said. “He'd seen the jewelry before—the pictures or the real thing. But as you say—but.” He lighted a cigarette and looked at it. “Didn't ask the right questions,” he said. “I'm afraid it comes to that.”

“But there are right questions?”

Bill shrugged. He said he hoped so, that he thought so.

“Usually,” Captain Cunningham said. “Usually, on trips like this, there'll be several middle-aged women traveling by themselves. Widows, y'know—children grown up. That sort of thing. Pretty much at loose ends, the old gals are. Not rolling in it, or they take world cruises. But not hard up by a long shot—and lonely. My grandmother's day, they'd have settled down to it—tea with the vicar. That sort of thing. Some of these haven't, if you take me.”

Bill nodded his head. He took the captain without difficulty.

“Brings men of Barron's type, y'know,” the captain said. “Bound to, I'm afraid. Could be that's all there is to it, eh? Might account for Barron's getting the wind up, you think?”

The trouble was, Bill pointed out, that Barron hadn't got the wind up—or, if he had momentarily, had quickly got it down again. But the captain's theory might account for Barron.

“One trouble is,” Bill said, “we may be looking at the wrong group entirely. Under normal circumstances, we pretty much know our group—that much, anyway. Here—” He spread his hands. “There are no sure relationships,” he said. “We're merely all in the same boat.”

“Makes it difficult,” Captain Cunningham agreed. From the adjoining room, which apparently served as pantry, there was the sound of dishes being moved. “Like to have you stay,” Cunningham said, taking care of that. “All new faces, this round.”

Bill looked at his watch, found it was a few minutes after six. He did not stay.

They sat at a table for four on the verge of the dance floor in the Coral Café, and it was a little after ten on Sunday evening—twelve hours or so out of Havana. Pam wore a short dinner dress of the palest yellow; Dorian was in a longer one of white, high in front and by no means high behind. An entertainer—female, under an amber spot near the piano—entertained with imitations. She finished, or at any rate paused, and the master of ceremonies urged a great big hand. The hand was of medium size. They didn't know, the master of ceremonies told them, as the hand subsided, how much talent they had among them—right among the passengers. He wanted to ask a man they all knew to take a bow. Just wait until they heard his name—Al Brighton. Al
Brighton! Whoops!

Jerry North looked at Bill Weigand. Dorian looked at Pam.

“Whoops indeed,” Pam said, and the sound of her voice was covered by another moderate hand. “Wait a minute—he writes a column or something. For a tabloid or something. Wait—it's all full of
poetry
. About being ourselves and how little little children are and the scent of new mown hay. And mothers, of course.”

“Not that one!” Dorian said, but it was—with tousled hair, homespun in spite of a midnight-blue dinner jacket and a checkered cummerbund. Mr. Brighton not only took a bow. Pressed, lightly, he recited. The one he recited was not about mother; it was about dear old sis, who brought us up by hand.

“Dickens,” Jerry said, absently. “
Great Expectations
, as I remember it. He must have seen the movie.”

But nothing can disturb, too deeply, on a cruise from fall to summer, with a bright moon moving gently up and down beyond windows as a ship moves; with the cool warmth of sea air finding its way in through french doors which open on a deck which has become a moon deck. As all things pass, Mr. Brighton passed. (After an encore, about the desirability of playing the game, come what might.) The orchestra started up again, and couples drifted to the dance floor and Pam said, indicating with her head, “There. Is that Mr. Barron?”

It was.

“Then,” Pam said, “she does. As I told you.”

Explanation was not required. It had been given over pre-dinner cocktails in the smoke room. The name of Jules Barron meant enough to Hilda Macklin for her to interrupt what she was saying, and make a quick, almost startled, movement of her head. And the same Jules Barron was the handsome, the really dashing, dark young man who had attempted—or might have attempted—to strike up an acquaintance with Mrs. Macklin's slender daughter, who had so much more than she gave herself credit for.

It was something which Bill could have borne to have known earlier. He had said so at cocktails; now that Barron's identity was confirmed, he said so again.

“If you will leave us out of things,” Pam said, and she had said that before.

“You're fairly sure he did try to—strike up an acquaintance?” Bill asked. “Or—were they already acquainted, but not advertising it?”

“Either way,” Pam said. “But I'm only fairly sure. Of course, he's not her type at all. Or the other way around, when you come to that. Although if that mother of hers would only let her get some decent clothes—”

“It would have given you something, if you'd known sooner?” Jerry asked, when Pam did not bother to finish the obvious.

It would have given him another question to ask, Bill said. Another answer to listen to. He was not sure that anything else would have come of it, or would come of it now.

Hilda Macklin and her mother came into the café from the deck outside. Mrs. Macklin, in metallic blue, seemed quite sober. Hilda wore a straight white dress, high at the neck. She just won't do
anything
, Pam thought, and wished she knew Hilda Macklin well enough to shake her. At least, she might wear lipstick. Hilda sat beside her mother on a banquette, at one of the less desirable tables. Clearly—far too clearly—they had come to watch the dancing. Mrs. Macklin was, quickly, served with what appeared to be a double brandy in a snifter. Hilda had a small glass of what, probably, was sherry.

Jerry stood up and held a hand down to Pam who said, “Why, Jerry. Without urging?” and stood up and they went onto the dance floor. There was little movement in the ship now, or she had got used to it. At any rate, the dance floor did not seem quite so hilly as it had before.

Bill Weigand, example set, half stood at the table, and then sat down again. Respected Captain Folsom, in uniform but with a black bow tie for formality, came to the table and asked Bill if he had a minute. Invited, he sat.

“Mrs. North tell you what I told her?” Folsom asked and, as he looked at Bill and waited, his gray eyes seemed shrewd—at variance, somehow, with the portly ruddiness which was the outward semblance of J. R. Folsom. “About the woman he was looking for? Marsh, I mean?”

“Yes,” Bill said.

“I was talking to this Mrs. Macklin earlier,” Folsom said. “The one with prowlers in her cabin? Red-haired lady?”

“Yes,” Bill said.

“Knows Boston,” Folsom said. “I made a point of finding out. Says she never lived there but I gave, you know, one or two false steers. About streets and things like that. Straightened me out. She knows Boston. Well?”

“Apparently,” Bill said, “the woman he was trying to locate has been located. In California.”

“Apparently?” Folsom repeated, and his eyes narrowed.

“Her family says so,” Bill told him. “Her daughter and her son. And—she only has one daughter.”

“All the same,” Folsom said, “Mrs. Macklin knows Boston and lets on she doesn't. Funny color hair she's got.”

“Yes,” Bill said. “I gather you're trying to give me a hand, Mr. Folsom? Figure I need one?”

“The way I figure it,” Folsom said, “somebody used our sword. And—I showed up at the wrong time.”

“So you play detective,” Bill said.

He was told he could call it that. He was asked who was to stop it.

“Search for clues? In other people's staterooms?”

Bill was looked at with noticeable blankness. He was told Folsom had no idea what he was talking about.

“Right,” Bill said. “Not a good idea, Mr. Folsom. And—while you're here, I'd like to show you something.”

He reached into a pocket of his jacket and took out the letter, on Clover Club stationery, which some indecipherable person had addressed to J. Orville Marsh. He folded the letter so that only the intricate signature showed, and held it for Folsom to see, but not to take. Folsom looked at it, and Bill Weigand looked at him.

For a second, Bill thought, Folsom's shrewd gray eyes went blank. But it was only for a second—not even for a second. Then Folsom looked at Bill, and there was nothing to be read in his eyes.