THE FIRST BRONZE CASH
Aside from Captain Hugh North, who had never lost his composure, it was the master of the Kiangsu who first recovered himself. With a conscious effort that brisk individual drew himself together, and his brass buttons winked like so many brazen eyes when he stepped out into the crowded passage and raised his hands for silence.
“Now, then, ladies and gentlemen,” he called in loud clear tones, “please go back to your cabins. It will help us to conduct a brief investigation—I say, watch out!”
Quite gracefully, Ruby Braunfeld faltered and began to sway.
“Steady! Steady now!” Michael Smith darted forward and swiftly passed an arm about Ruby’s waist. “Where shall I put her? This is her cabin, you know.” Michael Smith shot an interrogative glance at the Kiangsu’s grave-faced purser.
“Number 22’s empty, sir, and it’s right alongside. You could put her in there until—” He cast a meaning glance at that slowly widening blood-pool in which the dead man lay. “Here’s a pass key, sir.”
A moment later the tea dealer had vanished with his beautiful burden into the designated cabin, and Captain Carstairs heaved a little sigh. “A shocking business, sir,” he remarked to North. “Why a man who’s as young, healthy, and wealthy as poor Trenchard seemed should kill himself is a mystery to me.”
When Captain North made no immediate reply, but remained looking fixedly at the rather large automatic pistol lying beside the body, the Kiangsu’s master murmured, “Fancy I’d better send a radiogram to his friend in Shanghai. It will give him more time to make—er—arrangements. Too bad we’re so far past Chinkiang—we could have picked up a consular officer there.”
North’s tanned face caught the light as he looked up swiftly. “Friend? Do you know any of his friends?”
“No, but Trenchard sent a wireless message this evening to a man in Shanghai.”
Carstairs’s shiny red forehead became wrinkled with thought. “Let’s see now, what was the name? Gilmour? No. Was it Kilgour? Yes, that was it—Bruce Kilgour.”
“Are you sure?” Only one who knew Hugh North well could have read the abrupt change in his manner and noted his subdued surprise. Here was a complication—one that hinted at undreamed-of significances—Bruce Kilgour was chief of the British Intelligence in Shanghai!
“I’m almost positive that was the name. Don’t you think I ought to send such a wire?”
North slowly got to his feet again, and when he replied his manner was charged with gravity. “By all means send it, Captain, but I wouldn’t say anything about Trenchard’s having committed suicide.”
“I see. We’ll spare Mr. Kilgour’s feelings as long as we can?”
“No, it’s not that.” Captain North lowered his voice. “You see, I’m at least reasonably sure that Richard Trenchard didn’t kill himself.”
Captain Carstairs’s ruddy, wind-lashed features contracted spasmodically even as they lost color. “What! You mean that Trenchard was killed—murdered?”
“I mean just that, Captain.”
“What makes you think so?”
“I have yet to hear of or to see a genuine suicide who has shot himself through the eye,” was the Intelligence Captain’s quiet explanation, “and, unfortunately, I have seen and heard of a great many. Curiously enough, suicides practically never disfigure themselves—a queer kink of human nature, Captain.”
“But—but still—”
“Aside from that, there are several other things wrong with this ‘suicide’ setting.”
“What things?”
“There aren’t enough powder particles embedded in the skin around the wound. Then there are these.” North stooped and retrieved from the gray carpet several brownish threads. He offered them in the palm of his hand. “Unless I’m greatly mistaken, these explain the missing powder marks.”
“Why, what are they?” demanded the officer hoarsely.
“Threads of burnt cotton. I’ve an idea that the murderer wrapped his weapon in a towel in order to smother the noise of the explosion. We’ll search for a missing towel, but I doubt if we’ll find anything there.”
“But it didn’t,” Captain Carstairs pointed out. “The report was heard all over the ship.”
“Quite right, and that’s significant.” Plucking a towel from the rack, North retrieved the pistol which had lain at Trenchard’s side and carefully wrapped it up.
“Any fingerprints?” Carstairs wanted to know.
“Yes, we’ll see about them later. But first I wish you’d do me a favor. Please go or send up to the radio room for a copy of that telegram Trenchard sent Mr. Kilgour.”
“Of course, Captain. I’ll go myself.” The ship’s captain blinked somewhat dazedly. “I say—this murder business has hit me rather hard, you know. My ship, too. I think I’d like to consult with my first officer on what we’d better do. We’ve never had a white man murdered on board before—though such things are common enough among the Chinese.”
Left alone in Ruby Braunfeld’s cabin, North sank into a chair, his eyes fixed on space. Queer how the delicate scents rising from that clump of bottles on the dresser faded before the musty, sickish odor of Trenchard’s blood.
“Carol’s doll.” Why the devil would a dying man mention a doll?
Abruptly hopeful, North made a hasty search of the room, but Ruby’s effects yielded not even one of those inane long-legged dolls such as certain women love to keep about them.
Who was this Carol? Some passenger’s child, perhaps? Hardly. It was exasperating to reflect that the name was used for both men and women. Useless to conjecture; at present that person’s identity must remain as much a mystery as the motive behind Trenchard’s murder.
“Better line up a few facts, my boy,” he thought, and absently regarded the rhythmic vibration of a dangling green-and-yellow parasol on the opposite wall, as it responded to the throb of the engines. “First, we’ll consider Richard Trenchard. Apparently, he’s one of Kilgour’s men who’s come on the job since I left Shanghai. He got on the boat at Nanking in company with Ruby Braunfeld. Did he go there with her? And if not, where had he been before he met her?”
A hideous business. Poor young Trenchard! Less than half an hour ago he had been up on the moonlit deck at least pretending to enjoy the experienced caresses of the woman in whose cabin death had overtaken him. And now he lay here, a mere lump of flesh, and hideous to the sight. Whose greed, fear, or ambition had taken his life?
One thing at least was definite, North decided: robbery of a sort had been attempted. Soon he would take a look through Trenchard’s effects. They might yield some significant clue on that point.
Later would come inquiry regarding Ruby. He was, for instance, rather curious to learn why, at this time of civil unrest, she had undertaken such a comparatively dangerous journey to Nanking. With whom had she had dealings there? Who had sent her? Questions marched into his brain in regimental proportions.
There must be some powerful forces in conflict behind this tragic affair. Chang, Fournier, Steel, and even Smith, were not to be ignored.
And why had Steel’s attitude towards Trenchard changed so noticeably once he had caught the Englishman’s name?
The footsteps of several men sounded at the end of the passage, and in the doorway appeared a vista of white drill, brass buttons, and anxious red faces.
“Captain North,” Captain Carstairs began, “my officers and I wish you to conduct at least a preliminary investigation. We hesitate to impose on you, but as you are the only trained investigator aboard, we hope you will take charge. Much of value could be hidden or destroyed by the time we reach Shanghai.”
Eagerly the Kiangsi’s other officers added their pleas. It was clear that they had no liking for such responsibilities. Doggedly, Captain Carstairs continued to plead when North raised a vigorous protest.
“I say, Captain North,” the Englishman’s square, wind-whipped features looked very worried, “I—we—I well, we haven’t an earthly idea of what to do. Surely you won’t refuse to help the ends of justice?”
There was, of course, no refusing such an appeal, so North sighed and again bitterly cursed Sam Steel’s tactless revelation of his profession. “Very well, if you insist, Captain. But please understand, since it’s a case of an Englishman murdered on an English ship, I have no legal jurisdiction whatsoever. I am only going to conduct a very perfunctory inquiry. Tomorrow morning I shall turn the case over to the Settlement Police and wash my hands of it.”
As he glanced past the group of ship’s officers he saw Mr. Chang in the act of closing the washroom door from which he had been studying the conference. North had time to read an inscrutable smile on the Manchu’s flat bronze face as he strode off towards his cabin.
What the devil? More than ever North resented this premature termination of his vacation and commenced to feel an indefinable personal uneasiness.
As he sent the various officers back to their bunks or duties, his manner changed from that of a courteous passenger to the crisp bearing of Captain Hugh North, D. C. I.
“Well, Captain, you brought the radiogram?”
The Englishman silently produced a yellow form.
North read:
Bruce Kilgour, c/o Hotel Astor, Shanghai.
Negotiations successful. Have agreement in my possession. Meet boat as am uneasy over competitors. Have heard depressing rumors of greatest importance.
Trenchard.
“You can see,” Captain Carstairs pointed out, “that there’s nothing very interesting in it. It’s only a business message. I hope you are not too disappointed.”
Though North did not agree in a single detail, he nodded and reread the radiogram before returning it to Captain Carstairs’s blunt fingers. Then the Intelligence Captain stooped and, employing great care, examined the wound in Trenchard’s head.
“It’s as I thought,” he commented presently. “Trenchard couldn’t possibly have held that gun himself. Someone shot him from a distance of about six feet. There are even bits of burnt thread lodged in the edges of the wound.”
Since reading the contents of that radiogram North was more than ever interested in details.
“How was he shot?” Carstairs wanted to know.
“Do you see this abrasion on his left cheek?”
“Yes. How did he get it?”
“Trenchard was shot by someone standing directly in front of him and fell heavily, though he was not instantly killed as we know by the fact that he was still able to speak those two words. In falling he hit his head against the bed, which proves that, after entering the cabin, he turned all the way around to face the door—and his enemy’s pistol.”
“Where was the murderer, then?”
“Standing behind this door, which indicates that the murderer must have been expecting Trenchard.”
“How in the world can you tell that?” The bright blue dots of Carstairs’s eyes widened in the ruddy expanse of his face.
“If Trenchard had surprised the killer in Mrs. Braunfeld’s cabin, he—or she—would scarcely have thought to pick up a towel from that rack—which, as you see, is all the way across the room—and then hurry back to hide behind the door. More likely the killer would have got into the curtain closet alongside there, stayed quiet, and would have shot only if forced to.”
“I fancy so—I—I am all at sea,” Captain Carstairs admitted, then his shiny red brow contracted with a fresh thought. “But suppose, Captain, that Mrs. Braunfeld’s shawl was hanging in the curtain closet you mention and that the murderer used something besides a 40 towel to muffle his shot? The murder might still have been unpremeditated.”
“That is quite possible,” North admitted. “Perhaps Mrs. Braunfeld will clear us up on that point.”
“It’s just my damned luck to have something like this happen. What with the war, the tuchuns, and all, it’s a hard life here on the Yangtze! What are you doing?”
“I think I’ll look through Trenchard’s pockets while you’re here to witness the search. If he’s been robbed, we want to know it. It’s part of the regular routine,” he added when Carstairs looked a little doubtful.
“Of course; but, somehow, I can’t get it through my head that he’s dead,” Carstairs said. “Only this evening he dropped in at my cabin. We chatted quite a bit.”
“What about?”
Captain Carstairs coughed and looked aside. “He was asking about you and Mr. Smith—seemed very interested, if I may say so. Asked what you both did. Of course, I didn’t know.”
“Was that all he said? Nothing confidential?”
The stocky little man passed a hand over the short yellow stubble on his chin and eyed North with a fresh interest.
“You certainly know how to make a man remember things. Yes, he asked if he might put something in my safe tonight—but he never brought it up to me. Isn’t it odd?”
North’s eyes returned to the sprawled figure at his feet. “No, Captain, I wouldn’t say it was odd. Perhaps this happened before he could give it to you.”
He bent again and opened Trenchard’s coat. With a little hiss he drew in his breath as he silently indicated the inner breast pocket. It contained only a single bronze cash.
“By God, you’re right!” Captain Carstairs burst out. “Look! The edge of his pocket’s all tom. He’s been robbed!”
With jaw set, the Captain turned, his buttons gleaming bright. “Now we’ve got something real to work on.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to order the stewards to line up. Most of them are new—just signed up on this trip. Very likely one of them did it.”
“Hold on, Captain. Time for that later.” The Intelligence Captain, while speaking, delved into the dead man’s trousers pockets and presently produced some keys, a jackknife, a handful of assorted silver coins, and a wallet well stuffed with five-pound notes. “Rather lets the steward theory out, Captain,” North remarked as he carefully stowed these effects in a side pocket of his coat.
Captain Carstairs’s expression grew very puzzled. “Who would have thought he’d carry around so much money.”
“Mrs. Braunfeld, perhaps,” North could not resist remarking. “But that isn’t the point. We’re pretty sure now that Trenchard was not killed for the sake of his money. No, I don’t think your stewards need lose any sleep.”
“But what about that ripped pocket?”
“There are more valuable things in the world than money, Captain Carstairs—immensely more valuable.” Having completed his search of the Englishman’s inert body, North said, “Where is Mr. Trenchard’s cabin?”
Captain Carstairs produced a printed form on which numerous names were penciled.
“Mr. Trenchard is in 20,” he announced. “It’s next door on the right.”
“We’ll take a look at that cabin,” North stated quietly, “if you’ll leave a man on guard here.”
“You’ll want a pass key, then.”
“I wonder?” Moodily Captain North pulled out a cigarette and, with his eyes still fixed on the hideous wound in the murdered man’s head, proceeded to strike a match. “I’ve an idea we may not need it.”
“Won’t need it?” Captain Carstairs cried. “But surely Trenchard wouldn’t leave his cabin unlocked?”
“Maybe he did lock it,” was North’s cryptic reply. “And now, Captain, if you’ll lead the way.”
Without a word the white-clad master of the Kiangsu went out.
Assailed by a dozen conflicting theories and suspicions, North cast a final glance at Trenchard as he lay slumped across that gay yellow-and-green shawl, staring emptily up at the cabin lamp which lent a false warmth to his cheeks.