“I got the Yellowstain Blues,
Old Yellowstain Blues.
When someone fires a shot,
It’s always there that I’m not,
I got the Old Yellowstain Blues—”
Willie Keith, at the battered little piano of the officers’ bar on Mogmog Island, was reviving his rusty gift for improvising. He was quite drunk, and so were Keefer, Harding, and Paynter, who clustered around him, highballs in hand, half giggling and half singing. The gunnery officer exclaimed, “I’ll do the next stanza!
“I got the Yellowstain Blues,
Old Yellowstain Blues.
You should see strong men quail,
When he spies a shirttail—
Oh, Yellowstain, Yellowstain Blues.”
Willie laughed so hard that he fell off the piano stool. When Paynter bent to pick him up, he spilled his highball all over Willie’s shirt in a ragged brown stain, and the guffaws of the Caine officers attracted stares from less hilarious groups in the bar.
Jorgensen came staggering toward them with his arm around the neck of a tall, pudgy ensign, with protruding teeth, freckles, and the brash expression of a schoolboy. “Fellows, do any of you like strawberries with your ice cream?” Jorgensen said, leering. He was answered with drunken affirmative roars. “Well, that’s nice,” he said, “because this here is my old roommate from Abbot Hall, Bobby Pinckney, and what ship do you think he’s assistant first lieutenant on but the dear old U.S.S. Bridge, where all the chow is—”
The Caine officers overwhelmed Ensign Pinckney with handshakes. He grinned toothily and said, “Well, it happens the wardroom mess just brought half a dozen gallons of frozen strawberries up out of the hold, and I know how tight things are for you guys on those old four-pipers. And I’m the wardroom mess treasurer so—any time Jorgy or any one of you wants to stop by in the next day or two—”
Keefer glanced at his watch and said, “Willie, flag the gig. We’re going to get some strawberries.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Willie played the closing bars of Anchors Aweigh fortissimo, banged the piano shut, and ran out.
Back in the wardroom, the officers bolted dinner greedily, impatient for dessert. The steward’s mates served the ice cream at last with smiling pomp. Each dish was heaped over with rosy strawberries. The first round was gobbled up, and there were cries for more. Queeg suddenly came into the wardroom, in his bathrobe. The talk and laughter stopped, and in silence the officers stood one by one. “Don’t get up, don’t get up,” the captain said amiably. “Who am I to thank for the strawberries? Whittaker just brought me a dish.”
Maryk said, “Jorgensen got them from the Bridge, sir.”
“Well done, Jorgensen, very well done. How much have we got?”
“A gallon, sir.”
“A whole gallon? Fine. I’d like to see some more of this enterprise around here. Tell Whittaker I want another dish, with plenty of strawberries.”
The captain sent down again and again for helpings, the last time at eleven o’clock, when all the officers were sitting around in rare good-fellowship, exchanging sex reminiscences as they smoked and drank coffee. Willie went to bed that night happier than he had been for a long time.
Shake, shake, shake… “What now?” he murmured, opening his eyes in the darkness. Jorgensen stood over him. “I’ve got no watch—”
“Meeting of all the officers in the wardroom, right away.” Jorgensen reached up and poked at the other bunk. “Come on, Duce, wake up.”
Willie said, peering at his watch, “Jesus Christ, it’s three o’clock in the morning. What’s the meeting about?”
“Strawberries,” said Jorgensen. “Get Duce up, will you? I’ve got to rouse the others.”
In the wardroom the officers sat around the table in various stages of undress, hair mussed, faces creased with sleepiness. Queeg was at the head of the table, slouched in his purple robe, glowering straight ahead at nothing, his whole body nodding rhythmically as he rolled the steel balls in one hand. He made no sign of recognition when Willie tiptoed in, buttoning his shirt, and dropped into a chair. In the long silent pause that followed Ducely entered, then Jorgensen, followed by Harding, who wore the OOD’s gunbelt.
“All present now, sir,” said Jorgensen, in the quiet unctuous tone of an undertaker. Queeg made no response. Roll, roll, went the balls. Minutes of dead silence passed. The door opened, and Whittaker, the chief officer’s steward, came in, carrying a tin can. When he set it on the table Willie saw that it brimmed with sand. The Negro’s eyes were rounded in fright; perspiration rolled down his long, narrow cheeks, and his tongue flickered across his lips.
“You’re sure that’s a gallon can, now,” spoke Queeg.
“Yes, suh. Lard can, suh. Got it offen Ochiltree, suh, in de galley—”
“Very well. Pencil and paper, please,” said the captain to nobody. Jorgensen sprang up and offered Queeg his pen and pocket notebook. “Mr. Maryk, how many helpings of ice cream did you have this evening?”
“Two, sir.”
“Mr. Keefer?”
“Three, Captain.”
Queeg polled all the officers, noting down their answers. “Now, Whittaker, did your men have any strawberries?”
“Yes, suh. One helpin’ each, suh. Mr. Jorgensen, he said okay, suh.”
“I did, sir,” said Jorgensen.
“Just one helping each. You’re sure, now,” said Queeg, squinting at the Negro. “This is an official investigation, Whittaker. The penalty for lying is a dishonorable discharge, and maybe years in the brig.”
“Hope to die, suh. I served ’em myself, Cap’n, and lock away de rest. One helpin’, suh, I swear—”
“Very well. That’s three more. And I had four.” The captain murmured to himself, adding the total. “Whittaker, bring a soup tureen, here, and the spoon with which you ladled out the strawberries.”
“Aye aye, suh.” The Negro went into the pantry and returned in a moment with the implements.
“Now—dole into that tureen an amount of sand equal to the amount of strawberries you put on one dish of ice cream.”
Whittaker stared at the can of sand, and spoon, and tureen, as though they were elements of a bomb which, brought together, might blow him up. “Suh, I dunno exactly—”
“Be as generous as you please.”
Reluctantly the Negro dumped a high-heaped spoonful of sand from the can into the tureen. “Pass the tureen around the table. Inspect it, gentlemen…. Now then. Do you gentlemen agree that that is approximately the amount of strawberries you had on each dish of ice cream? Very well. Whittaker, do that again, twenty-four times.” Sand diminished in the can and piled in the tureen. Willie tried to rub the blinking sleepiness out of his eyes. “Kay. Now, for good measure, do it three more times…. Kay. Mr. Maryk, take that gallon can and tell me how much sand is left.”
Maryk looked into the can and said, “Maybe a quart, or a little less, sir.”
“Kay.” The captain deliberately lit a cigarette. “Gentlemen, ten minutes before I called this meeting, I sent down for some ice cream and strawberries. Whittaker brought me the ice cream and said ‘They ain’t no mo’ strawberries.’ Has any of you gentlemen an explanation of the missing quart of strawberries?” The officers glanced covertly at each other; none spoke. “Kay.” The captain rose. “I have a pretty good idea of what happened to them. However, you gentlemen are supposed to keep order on this ship and prevent such crimes as robbing of wardroom stores. You are all appointed a board of investigation as of now, with Maryk as chairman, to find out what happened to the strawberries.”
“You mean in the morning, sir?” said Maryk.
“I said now, Mr. Maryk. Now, according to my watch, is not the morning, but forty-seven minutes past three. If you get no results by eight o’clock this morning I shall solve the mystery myself—noting duly for future fitness reports the failure of the board to carry out its assignment.”
When the captain was gone Maryk began a weary cross-examination of Whittaker. After a while he sent for the other steward’s mates. The three Negro boys stood side by side, respectfully answering questions shot at them by different officers. The story, painfully extracted from them, was that the container, when locked away for the night at eleven-thirty—they didn’t remember who had placed it in the icebox—had contained some strawberries—they didn’t know how many. Whittaker had been called by the OOD at three in the morning to bring the captain another sundae, and had found the container empty except for a scraping of red juice at the bottom. The officers badgered the Negroes until dawn without upsetting this account. Maryk wearily dismissed the stewards at last.
“It’s a dead end,” said the exec. “Maybe they ate the stuff up. We’ll never know.”
“I wouldn’t blame them if they did. There wasn’t enough for another meal,” said Harding.
“Thou shalt not muzzle thy mess boy,” yawned Willie, “when he treadeth out the strawberries.”
“Steve and I have no worries about fitness reports,” said Keefer, laying his head on his arms. “Just you small fry. Either one of us could be Queeg’s relief. We’re outstanding officers, no matter what. I could call him a dirty name to his face—I practically have. I still drew a 4.0 on the last report.”
Ducely, his head slumped on his chest, emitted a blubbering snore. With a disgusted glance at him Maryk said, “Tom, suppose you bat out a report before you turn in, and I’ll adjourn the meeting now.”
“It will be on your desk,” murmured the novelist, “in about a hundred twenty seconds.” He staggered to his room, and the typewriter began clacking.
The wardroom telephone buzzer rang promptly at eight o’clock; it was Queeg, summoning the executive officer to his room. Maryk unhappily put down a forkful of griddlecake, drank off his coffee, and left the breakfast table. He was cheered on his way by these remarks:
“Operation Strawberries, phase two.”
“Stand by to make smoke.”
“How are your saddle sores, Steve?”
“If things get tough, throw over a dye marker.”
“Who’s your next of kin?”
Queeg was at his desk, dressed in fresh clothes, his puffy face shaved and powdered. This struck Maryk as ominous. He handed the captain the investigation report, headed: Strawberries, disappearance of—Report of board of investigation. Queeg, rolling the balls, read the two typewritten sheets carefully. He shoved them away with the back of his hand. “Unsatisfactory.”
“Sorry, Captain. The boys may be lying, but it’s a dead end. The story hangs together—”
“Did your board investigate the possibility that they might be telling the truth?”
Maryk scratched his head, and shuffled his feet, and said, “Sir, that would mean someone broke into the wardroom icebox. For one thing, Whittaker made no claim that the padlock had been tampered with—”
“Did it occur to you that someone on the ship might have a duplicate key to the icebox?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, why didn’t it?”
Maryk stammered, “Why—well, the thing is, sir, I bought that lock myself. There were only two keys. I have one, Whittaker has the other—”
“How about the possibility that someone once stole Whittaker’s key, when he was asleep, and made himself a duplicate—did you look into that?”
“Sir, I—Whittaker would have to be an exceptionally heavy sleeper for that, and I don’t think—”
“You don’t think, hey? Do you know that he’s not an exceptionally heavy sleeper? Did you ask him?”
“No, sir—”
“Well, why didn’t you?”
The executive officer looked out of the small porthole. He could see in a nearby anchor berth the bow of the light cruiser Kalamazoo, which had been hit by a suicide plane at Leyte. The bow was buckled and twisted to one side so that Maryk was looking at jagged blackened deck plates, from which a torn ventilator dangled crazily. “Sir, I guess there are an infinite number of remote possibilities, but there wasn’t time to go into all of them last night—”
“There wasn’t, hey? Did you sit in continuous session until just now?”
“I believe the report states that I adjourned the meeting at ten minutes past five, sir.”
“Well, you might have found out a hell of a lot in the three hours you spent in your sacks. And since nobody appears to have dreamed of any adequate solution, I shall take over the investigation, as I said I would. If I solve the mystery, and I’m pretty sure I will, the board will have to suffer the penalty for making the commanding officer do its work for them…. Send Whittaker up to me.”
The steward’s mates followed each other into the captain’s cabin all morning, at intervals of about an hour. Willie, who had the deck, kept the mournful procession moving. At ten o’clock he was distracted from the strawberry crisis by the arrival of the two new ensigns, Farrington and Voles, in a landing craft from the beach. The OOD inspected the uneasy recruits as they stood on the quarterdeck, waiting for the sailors to pass up their gear from the boat, and decide he liked Farrington and didn’t like Voles. The latter was round-shouldered, and had a greenish complexion and a high voice. He seemed several years older than Farrington, who looked like an ensign in a cigarette advertisement, ruddy, handsome, and blue-eyed. The muss and fatigue of travel, and a certain mischievous humor with which he looked around at the dirty old ship, relieved his good looks. Willie liked him for his soiled gray shirt and his impish smile. Voles’s shirt was stiffly starched. “Wait here, gentlemen,” he said. He went forward and knocked at the captain’s door.
“What is it?” called Queeg irritably. The captain sat in his swivel chair, the balls rolling swiftly in one hand hung over the back. The Negro Rasselas stood against the bulkhead, his hands behind him, showing all his gums in a smile, sweat dripping off his nose.
“Pardon me, Captain,” said Willie. “Voles and Farrington are here.”
“Who?”
“The new officers, sir—”
“Well. About time, too. Kay. I have no time to see them now. Send ’em to Maryk. Tell him to quarter them and so forth.”
“Aye aye, sir.” As Willie turned to go his eyes met Rasselas’. The Negro gave him the beseeching dumb look of a calf being led down the road on a rope. Willie shrugged and went out.
At noon the captain sent for Maryk. “Kay, Steve,” he said—he was reclining on his bunk—“everything’s going exactly as I figured, so far. The steward’s mates are telling the truth. I know how to handle those black apes, I’ve done plenty of it in my mess-treasurer days. You can rule them out as suspects.”
“That’s fine, sir.”
“Scared the living hell out of them, I’m afraid, but that’s good for their souls every now and then.” The captain chuckled. Scaring the steward’s mates had put him in a pleasant humor. “So far as anyone taking Whittaker’s key goes we can rule that out, too. He slept in his clothes, and it was chained to his belt. And he’s a light sleeper. I found that out.” Queeg glanced at the exec with sly triumph. “Now then. That narrows the case to where we can begin working on it, hey?”
Maryk kept his eyes respectfully on the captain’s face, and stood at attention—resolved not to utter a word unless forced to.
“Tell you a little story, Steve. Dates back quite a ways to peacetime. Had a little mystery like this aboard a destroyer, the Barzun, back in ’37, when I was a lowly ensign, in charge of general mess. Matter of a discrepancy of five pounds of cheese in the cook’s accounts. Cheese wasn’t in the refrigerator, and it hadn’t been cooked, or served in sandwiches, or anything. I proved that. Just vanished in thin air, like these strawberries. Well, the exec pooh-poohed it, and said, ‘Forget it, Queeg,’ but as you know, I’m kind of a stubborn cuss. Through devious inquiry and bribes and one thing and another I found out that a big sloppy chowhound named Wagner, a snipe, had made himself a wax impression of the cook’s key one night while he slept, and got himself a duplicate key, and was chowing up in the wee hours of the morning every chance he got. Made him confess, and he pulled a BCD at a summary court—I got myself a nice little letter of commendation in my promotion jacket, too, but that’s neither here nor there, though for an ensign in those years that meant plenty in the way of promotion credit—Well. Get my point?”
Maryk smiled vaguely.
“All we have to do now,” said Queeg, “is find out which bright boy on the Caine has made himself a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox. That shouldn’t be hard.”
Maryk said, after a long pause, “You assume, sir, that that’s what happened?”
“I am not assuming a goddamned thing,” snapped the captain in sudden irritation. “You can’t assume anything in the Navy! I know someone’s made a duplicate key. All other possibilities have been eliminated, haven’t they? What do you say—that the strawberries just melted into thin air?”
“Well, I’m not sure what to think, sir—”
“Damn it all, Steve, a naval officer is supposed to be capable of following simple logic. I have just taken great pains to prove to you that there is no other possible solution.” Thereupon the captain repeated the entire chain of reasoning which he had developed in the interview. “Now then, did you follow me that time?”
“I followed you, sir.”
“Well, thank heaven for small favors. Kay…. Now, here’s the next step. Call the crew to quarters. Tell them every man is to write out a statement describing all his movements and whereabouts between the hours of 11 P.M. last night and 3 A.M. this morning, name two men who can substantiate his statement, and swear to the truth of it when he hands it in to you. All statements to be in by 1700 today, and on my desk.”
Urban knocked and came in, carrying a penciled despatch. “Visual from the beach, sir,” he said, nervously feeling at his tucked-in shirt. The captain read the despatch and passed it to Maryk. It was orders for the Caine to leave Ulithi that afternoon to escort the Montauk, the Kalamazoo, and two damaged destroyers to Guam.
“Kay,” said Queeg. “All departments prepare to get under way. We ought to have some fun on this trip for a change, what with our little detective work to do.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Maryk said.
“At this point, Tom, we can use a little of your silver tongue,” said the captain. He was at his desk, the crew’s statements spread out in disorderly heaps before him. Keefer was leaning with his back to the door. It was nine o’clock of the following morning, and the Caine was steaming smoothly through an oily doldrums calm in the screen of the damaged ships. “Sit down, Tom, sit down. Park yourself on my bunk. Yes, it’s breaking wide open, just as I figured,” the captain went on. “I’m practically certain I’ve got my bird. It all adds up. Just the man who’d pull such a stunt, too. Motive, opportunity, method—everything clicks.”
“Who is it, sir?” Keefer perched himself gingerly on the edge of the bunk.
“Ah hah. That’s my little secret, for a while. I want you to make a little announcement. Get on the p.a. system, will you, Tom, and say—putting this in your own words, you know, which is a hell of a lot better than I can do—tell ’em the captain knows who’s got a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox. The guilty party gave himself away by his own statement, which is the only one in the whole ship that doesn’t check and—well, then say he’s got till 1200 to turn himself in to the captain. If he does it’ll be a lot easier for him than if I have to make the arrest…. Think you can get all that across?”
Keefer said dubiously, “I think so, sir. Here’s about what I’ll say.” He repeated the substance of the captain’s threatening offer. “Is that it, sir?”
“That’s fine. Use exactly those words, if you can. Hurry up.” The captain was in a glow of smiling excitement.
Willie Keith, with the OOD’s binoculars around his neck, was prowling the starboard wing, squinting up at the sky. The smell of stack gas was strong on the bridge. The novelist approached him and said, “Request permission to make an announcement, by order of the captain—”
“Sure,” said Willie. “Come here a minute, though.” He led Keefer to the aneroid barometer affixed to the rear of the pilothouse. The needle on the gray dial inclined far to the left at 29.55. “How about that,” said Willie, “on a nice quiet sunny blue day?”
Keefer pushed out his lips judiciously. “Any typhoon warnings?”
“Steve’s got ’em all plotted in the charthouse. Come take a look.”
The two officers unfolded and scanned a large blue-and-yellow chart of the Central Pacific. There were three storm tracks dotted in red on the chart, none of them within hundreds of miles of their position. “Well, I don’t know,” said Keefer, “maybe a new one cooking up around here. They’re in season. Did you tell the captain?” Willie nodded. “What did he say?”
“He didn’t say. He went ‘ugh’ at me, the way he does nowadays.”
Keefer went into the pilothouse, pressed the talk lever of the p.a. box, and paused a moment. He said, “Now hear this. The following announcement is made by order of the captain.” Slowly and distinctly he repeated Queeg’s message. The sailors in the pilothouse exchanged narrowed glances, and resumed their vacant stares.
Queeg waited in his cabin all morning. Nobody came. At a quarter past twelve the captain began sending for various members of the crew, sometimes singly, sometimes by twos and threes. A new summons boomed over the loudspeakers every fifteen or twenty minutes. The procession of cross-examinations went on until four o’clock; then Queeg called for Maryk and Keefer. When the officers came into the cabin they found Jellybelly undergoing questioning. The yeoman’s fat white face was expressionless. “I’d tell you if I knew, sir,” he was saying. “I just don’t know. I slept all though it—”
“My observation,” said Queeg, hunched in the back-tilted swivel chair, rolling balls in both hands, “is that the ship’s yeoman generally can find out everything there is to know on a ship. Now I’m not saying you know anything. I’m not telling you to squeal on anybody. I’m just saying that I’d like very much to approve your application for chief yeoman’s school at San Francisco. Once this mystery is cleared up, the culprit punished, and the summary court typed up and all that, why, I think I’ll be able to spare you, Porteous. That’s all.”
A flicker of interest enlivened the yeoman’s dull eyes. “Aye aye, sir,” he said, and left.
“Kay, boys,” the captain said zestfully to the officers. “Now we close in.”
“Going to make the arrest, sir?” said Keefer.
“I certainly am,” said Queeg, “as soon as we check for one more bit of evidence. That’s where you two come in. It’s going to take a bit of organizing.”
“The crew expected an arrest at noon,” said the exec.
“Always good to keep ’em guessing. The next thing we’ve got to do—the last thing, actually—is find that duplicate key. And how do you gentlemen suggest we do that?” Queeg grinned from one officer to another. “Pretty tough, you think, hey? Well, here’s what we’re going to do. It’s three simple steps. Step one. We’re going to collect every single key aboard ship, tagged with the name of the owner. Step two. We’re going to make an intensive search of the ship and a personal search of everybody to be sure we’ve got all the keys. Step three. We test all the keys on the wardroom padlock. The one that opens it, well, the tag on it gives you the name of the guilty party.”
Keefer and Maryk were dumfounded. The captain glanced at their faces and said, “Well, any questions? Or do you agree that that’s the way to go about it?”
“Captain,” said Keefer cautiously, “I thought you told me this morning you knew who stole the strawberries.”
“Of course I do. I spoke to the man this afternoon. He lied in his teeth, of course, but I’ve got him nailed.”
“Then why not arrest him?”
“There’s a little matter of evidence if you want a conviction,” Queeg said sarcastically.
“You said his statement gave him away—”
“Of course it does. Logically. Now all we need is the key itself.”
“Sir, do you realize there may be a couple of thousand keys on the ship?” said Maryk.
“What if there are five thousand? Sort ’em out, it’ll take maybe an hour, and you’ll only have a few hundred that could possibly fit the padlock. You can check one a second, sixty a minute, that’s one thousand eight hundred keys in half an hour. Anything else bothering you?”
The exec rubbed his hand over his head, took a deep breath, and said, “Sir, I’m sorry, but I don’t think the plan has any chance of working. I think you’ll upset and antagonize the crew for nothing—”
“And why won’t it work?” Queeg looked down at the rolling balls.
“Tom, do you think it’ll work?” Maryk turned to the gunnery officer.
Keefer glanced sidewise at Queeg, then threw a wink at the exec and shook his head. “I don’t know how it can hurt to try it, Steve.”
“I’d like to know your objections, Mr. Maryk,” said Queeg through his nose.
“Captain, I don’t know where to begin. I don’t think you’ve thought it through. Why—first of all, we don’t know there is such a key—”
“Let me interrupt you right there. I say there is, therefore for your purposes there is—”
“All right, sir. Assume there is. Assume this search starts. There are a hundred million holes and ducts and cracks and boxes and crannies on this ship where a key could be hidden. It could be tossed over the side. The chances of our finding it are nil. And as for a man handing it in to you with his name tagged on it, do you think anyone would be that crazy?”
“The world is full of crazy people,” said Queeg. “Frankly, since you’re talking to me as though I were a goddamned idiot, I don’t think he’ll hand it in. But I think he’ll hide it and we’ll find it, which’ll prove my case. As for dropping it over the side, don’t worry, he’s not going to do that after all the trouble he had getting it—”
“Sir, you could hide a key in the forward fireroom and I could search for a month and not find it, just in that one space—”
“All you’re saying is you’re not competent to organize a thorough search, and I guess maybe you’re right. Therefore I shall organize the search—”
“Captain, you said a personal search of all hands, too. That means stripping the men—”
“We’re in a warm climate, nobody’ll catch cold,” said Queeg, with a giggle.
“Sir, let me ask you, with due respect, is it worth doing all this to the crew for a quart of strawberries?”
“Mr. Maryk, we have a pilferer aboard ship. Do you propose that I let him go on pilfering, or maybe give him a letter of commendation?”
“Captain, who is it?” Keefer struck in.
Queeg assumed an air of sly secrecy, and hesitated. Then he said, “This stays among the three of us, of course—Well, it’s Urban.”
Both officers exclaimed involuntarily, in the same amazed tones, “Urban?”
“Yes. Innocent little Urban. Surprised me, too, a little, until I went into the psychology of Urban. He’s a thief type, all right.”
“That’s amazing, Captain,” said Keefer. “Why, he’s the last one I would have suspected.” His tone was kind and soothing.
Maryk looked at Keefer sharply.
The captain said, with great self-satisfaction, “Well, it took quite a bit of figuring, I’ll tell you that, Tom, but he’s the one—Well. Let’s get to work. Steve, start the key collecting at once. Announce the search for ten o’clock tomorrow morning, and tell ’em anyone who has a key of any kind on him or in his belongings at that time gets a summary. I shall personally direct the search tomorrow.”
The two officers went out, and in silence descended the ladder to the wardroom. Keefer followed Maryk into his room, and pulled the curtain. “Well, Steve—is he, or is he not, a raving lunatic?” he said in a low voice.
Maryk dropped into his chair and rubbed his face hard with both palms. “Lay off, Tom—”
“I have laid off, haven’t I, Steve? I haven’t talked about it since the Stilwell thing. This is something new. This is over the red line.”
Maryk lit a cigar and puffed blue clouds. “All right. Why?”
“It’s a genuine systematized fantasy. I can tell you exactly what’s happened. Ducely’s orders did it. They were a terrible shock to the captain. You saw what a spin he went into. This is the next step. He’s trying to restore his shattered ego. He’s re-enacting the biggest triumph of his naval career—the cheese investigation on the Barzun. The strawberries don’t mean anything. But the circumstances were a perfect take-off for a detective drama by which he could prove to himself he’s still the red-hot Queeg of 1937. He’s invented this duplicate key to our icebox because there’s got to be one, for his sake—not because it’s logical. It isn’t logical. It’s crazy—”
“Well, what do you say happened to the strawberries, then?”
“Oh, Christ, the mess boys ate them, of course. You know that. What else?”
“He cross-examined them all yesterday morning. Scared them white. And he’s satisfied they didn’t—”
“I’d like to have heard those interviews. He forced them to keep up their lies. He wanted them to be innocent. Otherwise he couldn’t act out the great drama of the key, don’t you understand—”
“You’ve got nothing, Tom. Just another one of your fancy theories.”
“I’ve got a captain with paranoia, or there’s no such thing as paranoia,” retorted Keefer. Maryk impatiently picked up a log sheet on his desk and began reading it. The novelist said quietly, “Steve. Are you familiar with Articles 184, 185, and 186 of the Navy Regulations?”
The exec jumped up. “For Christ’s sake, Tom,” he muttered. He put his head through the curtain for a moment to peer up the wardroom passageway. Then he said, “Watch your voice.”
“Are you, though?”
“I know what you’re talking about.” The exec took a deep breath, and puffed out his cheeks. “You’re the one that’s crazy. Not the captain.”
“Okay,” said Keefer. He looked the exec squarely in the eye, turned, and went out.
That night the executive officer wrote a long entry in his medical log. When he was through he put away the folder, locked his safe, and took down the fat blue-bound Navy Regulations volume. He opened the book, looked over his shoulder at the curtained doorway, then rose and slid shut the metal door, which was almost never used in the tropics. He turned to Article 184 and read aloud slowly, in a monotonous mutter: “It is conceivable that most unusual and extraordinary circumstances may arise in which the relief from duty of a commanding officer by a subordinate becomes necessary, either by placing him under arrest or on the sick list; but such action shall never be taken without the approval of the Navy Department or other appropriate higher authority, except when reference to such higher authority is undoubtedly impracticable because of the delay involved or for other clearly obvious reason….”