West of Guam (34 page)

Jo said:

“For the last two days I have been moving around in second- and third-class quarters. I think you were doing something along the same lines, yes?”

Ferraro nodded. “I had no luck,” he said.

Jo Gar smiled a little. “This morning I had a little,” he said. “I came across this.”

He placed a brown hand in a pocket of his palm beach suit and withdrew it again. In his palm was a pin. It was a bar pin, of cheap manufacture. It had four imitation diamonds in it—one hole was vacant. The glass was large in size, but not matched.

Ferraro stared at the pin. He took it in his fingers and inspected it. Then he looked towards the small table in his cabin. On an end of it was the pin he had found after his cabin had been ransacked. He went over and placed it beside the other.

“The same sort of junk!” he breathed. “It might mean something.”

Jo Gar nodded. “It might, but I’m afraid not,” he said. “There are always a lot of women traveling second and third class on these ships. Many of them like cheap jewelry. A lot of these women are the dregs of the Orient. Captain Haroysan has told me that often first-class cabins are robbed. Or rather, attempts are made to rob.”

Ferraro said: “But in this case—it was your cabin—and mine. And an attempt was made on your life.”

Jo Gar nodded. “Many attempts have been made—to murder me,” he said. “I found this pin in an empty third-class cabin. It lay beneath a berth.”

Ferraro said very steadily: “We were both in police matters. What if the person thought he could learn something, or she could learn something, by getting into our luggage?”

The Island detective nodded. “A possibility,” he said. “I’ve thought of that, Señor Ferraro.”

Ferraro looked down at the two cheap objects in his palm. He poked them over on their backs. Jo Gar said slowly:

“I don’t think that cheap stuff means anything. However, it is good to be careful.”

He smiled at Ferraro and lifted one of the pins in his fingers. He said:

“We each have one—now.”

Ferraro’s mouth muscles twitched. He started to say something quickly, but caught himself. Turning, he made a movement as though to toss the pin towards the table. The ship was rolling heavily: he was forced to brace himself. Jo Gar leaned against the door. Ferraro said, facing him, a smile on his face:

“Wait—this is the piece of junk
you
found, Señor Gar.”

There was a half-careless tone to his voice, yet he spoke hurriedly.

Jo Gar looked at the bar pin in his hand. “Of course,” he agreed. “I am sorry.”

They exchanged pins, both smiling. Jo slipped his into a pocket.

He said:

“I’m going to nap—it’s getting steadily rougher. Sleeping helps.” Ferraro tossed the pin towards the table. It struck it, but rolled from the surface to the floor. The one in white made an instinctive motion towards it, checked himself. He yawned, faced Jo.

“I’ll have a try at it,” he said.

Jo smiled and went outside. It took him five minutes to get to the captain’s quarters. In another ten minutes the cabin boy had been sent to Ferraro’s cabin. The Third Officer and Jo Gar, five minutes later, watched the one with the pale face following the cabin boy towards the captain’s quarters. He did not see them. They went swiftly to his cabin, and the Third Officer used the key. Inside, Jo Gar looked on the floor. The bar pin was not there. It lay on the small table, on its back, the cheap stones face downward.

Jo Gar picked it up and handed it to the Third Officer. They went silently from the cabin, locking the door behind them. The
Cheyo Maru
was rolling heavily.

The Third Officer said: “Getting a little rough, Señor.” The Island detective nodded. “I trust so,” he said softly.

Fallibar, a diamond expert returning to the States, seated across from Jo Gar and Captain Haroysan, spoke quietly:

“The third stone is a fine diamond,” he said. “The others in the pin are just glass. Even this real one has been painted, to give it false glitter. Painted on the back. And crudely mounted. But then, all of them are just stuck in holes of the metal.”

There was silence. Fallibar studied the slip of paper Jo had given him. He nodded his head.

“It answers the description,” he said slowly. “It’s one of the Von Loffler stones. I’ve handled diamonds for thirty years, and I’d swear to that.”

Jo Gar sighed. “And it was lost, while Señor Ferraro’s cabin was being ransacked,” he said slowly.

The Third Officer said in a hard voice:

“Two of us have gone through everything he has in there. The purser is still detaining him, telling him there is a mistake in his passage papers. But we’re through—we have found nothing.”

Captain Haroysan regarded Jo with narrowed, dark eyes.

“Señor Gar has traced this one diamond,” he said. “I think it should be his affair.”

Jo smiled. “That is good of you,” he said. “I can think of only one way.”

The captain of the
Cheyo Maru
said quietly: “You will need assistance?”

The Island detective smiled with his thin lips pressed together. He ran brown fingers across the skin of his forehead, then shook his head.

“I do not think so,” he said very softly. “It is difficult to tell.”

Fallibar said grimly: “There has been a murder, and your life has been attempted—”

Jo Gar smiled at the diamond expert who was returning to the States. The
Cheyo Maru
rolled sluggishly in the seas kicked up by the tail end of the typhoon.

“I shall not need assistance,” he said firmly. “If the captain will instruct the purser not to detain Señor Ferraro longer, I shall wait a little while, and then go to his cabin.”

The Third Officer said: “But he will notice, perhaps, that the bar pin has vanished.”

Jo Gar smiled with his almond-shaped eyes on the swaying walls of the Captain’s office.

“I am very sure that he will,” he agreed tonelessly.

When Jo Gar rapped lightly on the door of Ferraro’s cabin it was almost six o’clock. The one in white called again:

“Who is it?”

Jo Gar said: “Señor Gar.”

The door was opened and Jo went inside. He was smiling a little.

Señor Ferraro was dressed in white trousers and a white shirt. He wore slippers. He said in a rather sharp voice:

“I have been in the cabin only a few minutes. A mix-up in my passage papers, and the purser is very stupid. But when I returned here—that bar pin had disappeared.”

Jo Gar stood with his back to the door and extended the palm of his right hand towards Ferraro. He said quietly:

“I have the honor—to return it.”

Ferraro’s face got hard. He took the pin, stared at it. He said, in a surprised tone:

“But now—there are
two
stones missing!”

His lips were twitching; he was breathing hard. Jo Gar nodded almost pleasantly. He put his right hand in a pocket of his palm beach coat.

“We removed one of them—one was already missing,” he said. Ferraro stared at the Island detective. He said nastily:

“ ‘We’ removed one?”

Jo nodded again. “Mr. Fallibar aided me,” he said. “He is a diamond expert—an acquaintance of the captain.”

He watched the little jerk of Ferraro’s body. The man in white was fighting for control. But he said in a hard, rising voice.

“But
why
—did you remove one?”

Jo Gar shrugged. “It was one of the Von Loffler stones,” he replied. “I noticed a difference in the color, when you showed me the bar pin. I had Mr. Fallibar inspect it. The stone we removed is one of the ten missing ones—and quite valuable.”

Ferraro said hoarsely: “It’s a mistake! How would that pin have been lost—in here—”

Jo Gar stopped smiling. He said patiently: “It
wasn’t
lost in here, Señor Ferraro.”

He waited, watching the fear in Ferraro’s eyes, watching the man’s attempt at control. Then he said in an easy tone:

“A Malay that I shot in Manila was dying. He told me to find ‘the one who walks badly—always in white.’ I wanted to know who the leader was—of the ones that robbed Delgado’s store. I came aboard this ship—when I learned
you
were coming aboard, Ferraro!” Ferraro said hoarsely: “You’re—mad, Gar! You think I—”

His voice broke. Jo Gar nodded and moved his right pocket material a little.

“I think the Malay made a mistake, Señor Ferraro,” he said. “You were
not
the leader of the diamond thieves. But you had been with the Constabulary, and you could aid them. You were valuable, and for your services you received one diamond. A very valuable stone.”

There was a sneer across Ferraro’s face. Jo Gar said:

“You were not worried about me being aboard. Perhaps you were offered a bigger reward—for my death. You wanted to create a mystery, and to show me that you possessed nothing of value. You did not work alone. You thought that a safe way to carry your diamond was in the cheap pin. And you used it to attempt throwing me off the trail. But you wished to kill, also. You bribed the deck steward—and he told you I was asleep. You fired three shots at what you thought was Señor Gar, and you got away. You wore dark clothes—and threw them overboard. Then you were in white—a man in white.”

Ferraro said hoarsely. “That is a lie! I did not—”

Jo Gar said: “It is not a lie. The dark coat did not get clear of the vessel. It caught over an open port, just above the waterline—”

Ferraro’s voice was almost a scream. He cried:

“You lie—you lie!”

Jo Gar said grimly: “I think that the first shot knocked the mask to the deck—you knew you had failed. You were afraid—and you went forward and knifed the deck steward so that he could not talk—” Ferraro made a swift movement of his right hand. Jo Gar squeezed the trigger of his automatic. The
Cheyo Maru
was rolling—the bullet struck the mirror above the wash basin. Ferraro’s gun cracked—wood spurted from the door behind Gar.

The Island detective fired again. Ferraro’s body jerked; his gun arm dropped. He slumped slowly to his knees, swayed for a minute, rolled to the left as the vessel tilted in the rough seas.

Jo Gar said slowly: “You were too sure—you were not suspected, Ferraro. Too certain.”

The man in white turned his head a little. Jo Gar moved forward and got the gun away from him. He said in a steady voice:

“You tried to be careless—with that bar pin. But you showed it had value.”

Ferraro groaned. “That—damned coat—” he breathed in a tearing voice.

Jo said: “I was bluffing, Ferraro—it didn’t catch on the port. Who were the others? Who was the one who planned the diamond steal—”

Ferraro’s face was splotched with red. Blood was on his lips. He said thickly:

“It was that—”

He was coughing, his face twisted. Jo bent over him. Ferraro’s eyes were staring. He muttered thickly:

“The blind—Chinese—Honolulu—you can find—”

His muttering died. There was a convulsive shiver of his body. In the corridor there was the sound of foot-falls, voices. Jo Gar bent down, straightened again. He braced himself against the ship roll, opened the door. The Third Officer stared past him, at the body of Señor Ferraro.

He said: “He
was
—the one—you were searching for!”

Jo Gar shook his head. But he didn’t speak. The words of the dying Malay had helped. He was wondering if the last words of Ferraro would help, too. And he was making certain that he would remember them.

It was just a little time after dusk. There was a crescent moon half-hidden by the jagged peak of the Pali; a cool breeze blew through the garden not far from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. Jo Gar relaxed in the wicker chair in which his diminutive body rested. But his gray-blue eyes were alert; they watched the mild ones of Benfeld, the Honolulu representative of the Dutch Insurance Company. Benfeld sipped his cool drink and said with a slight English accent:

“Herr Von Loffler had cabled me. It was in code and therefore quite safe. We are interested, of course. My home company insured the diamonds. A terrible crime.”

Jo nodded his head. “The murders were incidental,” he said in his toneless voice. “The one who planned the robbery perhaps thought it could be accomplished without a killing. He was mistaken. Delgado’s son was murdered in the jewelry store. There was the bank guard, who was killed outside. And then Juan Arragon, my friend, who was in pursuit. An attempt was made to murder the American chief of police. In Manila he is not too well liked. I was forced to shoot a Malay, and he spoke of a ‘man in white—who walks badly.’ I traced such a man aboard the
Cheyo Maru.
”

Benfeld said grimly: “And you were forced to shoot him to death.

But you learned something.”

Jo Gar widened his eyes slightly. He had only told the insurance representative certain things, not too much.

“Very little,” he corrected.

Benfeld shrugged. He was a tall man, with a long face and blond hair.

“You recovered one of the diamonds,” he said.

Jo Gar sighed a little. He smiled and straightened in his wicker. Palm trees swayed beyond the garden, and yet Honolulu was not like Manila. It was cooler, less tropical in a sense.

“Señor Ferraro was a fool,” he said placidly. “The Malay who spoke of him might have thought he was the important one of the bandits. But he was not. Perhaps he talked with the Malay, who I think was one of the robbers. But Ferraro was given only one of the ten Von Loffler stones.”

Benfeld relighted a thin cigar and nodded his long head very slowly. “And you have said he tried to murder you, on the
Cheyo Maru,
” he said.

The Island detective nodded. “In Manila—many people have tried to murder me,” he said simply. “The stolen diamonds are worth more than two hundred thousand dollars. There was a diamond expert on the boat, by chance. He has valued the diamond I recovered from this Ferraro at in excess of twenty thousand dollars. It is one of the Von Loffler stones, of course. I think, had Ferraro succeeded in murdering me, he would have received another.”