Chapter 16

Strip, Tease, and Bug

I took a few turns around the promenade deck. There were not many people about.

The sea was a sullen undulation, cresting into whitecaps that seemed almost to snap their heads off, and occasionally a wave hurled itself so high it struck against the stout glass of the deck’s forward enclosure. I had never felt a major ship so completely subdued by the ocean. It was like being an actor standing in the middle of a set designed for some 1890’s melodrama.

How had that crazy prediction come true? I began to think how.

There was one way. It was a wild guess, but it could explain things.

And I could test it out.

* * * *

In the main-deck foyer I found a framed map of the ship and located the printshop, which was three decks below.

I found my way there by degrees. The door, which was decorated with a large metal box to receive copy or communications, was open wide, and a man in sweaty shirtsleeves was hand-setting type, his fingers deeply ink-stained. A stack of colorful dinner menus, the inner sides all blank at the moment, awaited the imprint that would tell the first-class passengers what triumphs the chefs had prepared for them that night.

“Pardon ,” I said.

“Oui, m’sieu.”

“There was a baseball score in the paper this morning. An American baseball score. You know what I mean?”

“Oui, m’sieu.”

He looked longingly at the work he still had to do.

“Where did it come from?”

“From the radio, m’sieu. The radio office. They take all the news from New York. Or Le Havre. Depending on where is the ship.”

“This was the Mets-and-Dodgers baseball game. It was a strange score.”

“Oui, m’sieu.” He was being polite but he wanted to get rid of me.

“And that was the score that came in by radio? There is no chance of error?”

“M’sieu, I do the paper. Also the menus. Also the announcements. I do it all. I am busy, m’sieu. But I do not make many mistakes.”

“And no one could have changed that score?”

For the first time he began looking at me with a certain respectful suspicion. He said, “M’sieu, I get the what-you-call copy from the radio. It is short. Brief. You know. I write it out longer and the officer goes over it. He—what you say?—edits it. Then I mimeograph it.”

“And that’s what happened last night?”

“Oui, m’sieu.”

“Who’s the officer who does this?”

“Often the first officer, m’sieu. Because of the big party last night, the assistant purser took care of it. But he made no changes at all.”

I said thanks very much.

Going to Merrilee’s stateroom, I began wishing I had never left New York, or met Newton Harlow III.

I still couldn’t believe it. But there it was.

* * * *

I knocked at her door and got no response. I waited a while and knocked louder. No one home. They were all still walking the enclosed deck. Good. I had a key in my pocket and a search to conduct.

I used the key, let myself into her suite, and closed the door softly. Then I threw the bolt, so I could not be easily interrupted by any of the help, and began a leisurely inspection of Merrilee’s digs, even before starting to hunt the one thing that I wanted to make sure was either there or was not.

Besides the living room, with its good-sized closet, there was a bedroom with another closet, and the bathroom. How would you bug a place like that?

Hardly the bedroom. This was not a divorce case.

But where in the living room? Chandeliers were a great place, but there was no chandelier. Behind a picture? There were some, but they were screwed into place on the wall, and an inspection of the screws’ painted heads told me none had been recently taken out and put back.

Somewhere around the baseboards? I started a circuit of the rooms. I’d gotten to the bedroom when I heard a scratching in the living room. It seemed to come from the outside door. But it didn’t come again. A passer-by, perhaps, who happened to run his hand or key against the door.

It rasped again, and I saw the doorknob turn slowly, then turn back slowly. There came the surreptitious sound of a key sliding into the lock.

Nothing happened.

I knew what that could be. The man outside looking down the corridor each way. Then sliding the key in. Then another look each way to see if anyone was watching.

The lock made a loud, quick switching sound, and I leaped back into the bedroom. Someone was coming in.

There was only one place in the bedroom to hide; you couldn’t get under that low-built bunk unless you were a thin suitcase. I strode into the closet, backed in among sheer, scented dresses and more intimate things, and pulled the door almost shut.

The outer door opened and closed with a positive click. Then the bolt was shot. Like myself, whoever had come in didn’t want to be interrupted. I waited.

I listened.

I heard nothing. Then he came into the bedroom, moving quietly, and I heard the soft, uncertain sound of cloth being moved.

I was hunched over, leaning away from all the clothes hung behind me. After a while my back began to hurt and I wanted to move, but I didn’t dare, for fear of knocking something off a hanger. I heard occasional undistinguishable sounds from beyond the door, and soft scufflings. That was all.

I had to look out. My fingers found the surface of the door. I pushed gently, and a crack opened up wide enough to let me see half the room. I looked out.

Merrilee was standing in the middle of the floor. She had been undressing all this time. She had just kicked off her shoes and she was barefoot. In fact, all she had on was some sort of thin tight panties and, as I looked, she rolled these slowly down her thighs and stepped out of them, naked.

She did not look at all like an international sex symbol. She didn’t even look sexy, but rather like a slight, adolescent girl with breasts considerably smaller than millions of people thought.

This is based on memory. At the moment, I was in something of a panic.

All I could think of was that I was a Peeping Tom—unintentionally, but nonetheless about to be caught in the act of spying on the world’s most desirable woman in a completely private moment. If I had only looked out thirty seconds earlier, or if she had taken off only her dress—but she was in the buff. What did I do now?

She was studying herself in the mirror, confident of her solitude, looking first at her face and then raising her breasts with her hands, critically. It was not the moment to step out of a closet, clear your throat, and say, “Hello, there. How’s every little thing?”

She stepped backward, dropped her hands, then walked forward toward the mirror. As she did that, she became less adolescently sexless, for her flesh was like sun-tanned jelly, and it quivered like jelly as she moved; she was naturally sinuous and soft.

But I also felt myself blushing in an agony of embarrassment. I like girls; they’re my favorite sex. But I don’t like to spy on them unintentionally in their intimate moments, and I could not bear the thought of being caught doing it.

I rapped my knuckles on the door. “I’m in here,” I called out. “Don’t be alarmed. I’m coming out with my eyes shut.”

I closed my eyes and stumbled out into the room and stood there. “I can explain everything,” I grinned stupidly.

There was no gasp or scream or indignant reproach, or anything that I had anticipated. There was a rather delicious gurgle of laughter. Slowly I opened my eyes. She stood before me, still nude, utterly unselfconscious, and smiling.

“Whatever were you doing in my closet?” she laughed. “Hunting for that bug you mentioned?”

She still made no move to put anything on. She enjoyed her nudity and the embarrassment it caused me. But my embarrassment began to abate.

“Yes. I—I had your extra key. I came in. When I heard you at the door, I thought it might be a prowler—honestly, I had no idea it was you or that you were undressing.”

She laughed again and then with one finger gently pushed me aside. She went to the closet, thoughtfully considered several negligees, selected one, and slipped into it unhurriedly. She stepped into mules, fluffed out her hair, and smiled mischievously.

“My, but you can blush,” she said. “Certainly you’ve seen girls without clothes on before.”

I exhaled. “Go to hell. It was—just the—the Peeping Tom aspect of it that—”

“Any time you want to peep, you come right in and peep, Tom.”

We laughed at each other, but for different reasons. She was amused. I was relieved.

But whatever else I had done by my awkwardness, I had broken the spell of shock which had gripped her all day.

“Okay,” I said. “Speaking of keys, I’m going to get your locks changed. But meanwhile I want to keep yours, and I also want to give you a key to our suite. Here. I can get another. Any time you feel alone or frightened or want a friendly word, drop in.”

“I will. I’ll hide in your closet for a change. What time do you undress?”

“Now, come on. Let me up. As a matter of fact, I want to get to work. You sit still and smoke your cigarette.”

I began once more to search the bedroom. I didn’t know how big an object I was looking for, but I knew that these days bugs could be pretty small. Her bed was bolted to the floor, with the headboard flush against the wall; it was possible but not likely that the device was behind that. There was nothing under the bed but a small traveling bag, and that was empty. I felt around the mattress edges and the springs underneath. Nothing.

She smoked and watched.

The bathroom was tiled and barren. I probed the jars of cold cream and other things with a long pin, even though it seemed unlikely that the bug could be buried in one of them. I went through the clothes in the closet carefully and inspected the telephone on the night stand. Still nothing. Finally I felt and probed the chairs and their cushions, upended two little tables and the lamps. Nothing.

I went back to the living room, sat down, and thought a minute. She followed me, distractingly. The negligee was only moderately opaque.

I tried resolutely to put myself in the other fellow’s place. The day bed, obviously. I took the pillows off it and felt each one. I pulled out the lower part to make it twin beds—and that’s where I found it. I found more than I thought.

The gadget itself was a small black metal box, not much bigger than a match box, with a little round grill on each side suggesting a microphone. It was suspended from the springs of the lower part of the day bed, near the wall, where someone lying in bed could easily reach it. It could pick up sounds in the room, and someone in the bed could whisper into it.

The most interesting thing about it, however, was the little switch on the top, marked On and Off. Right now it was at the Off position. That was a good thing.

“Ever see this before?”

She took it from me with slightly shaky fingers.

“Why, no. What in the world is it?”

“It’s what I’ve been looking for. The bug.”

“So someone has been eavesdropping on me?”

“Oh, yes. With a little inside help.” I pointed to the switch. “Someone had to turn that on and off at the right times.”

“But who could do that?”

“It was concealed in your maid’s bed.”

“Not—oh, no! It couldn’t have been Klára!”

“It had to be someone who was in the room a lot, and they could hardly depend on a steward or ship’s maid to always be in at the right times.”

“But Klára was as—as faithful as—”

“I’m afraid she wasn’t. Didn’t you tell me she was leaving you permanently on this trip and going home to Hungary for good? A few thousand bucks extra could have looked awfully good to her. It may also explain why she was killed.”

“Why?”

“She obviously was working for them. She would go a certain way for them. Maybe she believed in your mother’s ESP powers, or precognitive gift, or whatever you want to call it.”

“She did.”

“But when her persuasion about returning to New York did not work, it could well be that they wanted her to do something more, something more inimical to you, and that she refused. They couldn’t afford to let it stop there. Killing her not only would silence her, but it would frighten you even more. Maybe they had another green-face act in mind and hid her body in the lifeboat only momentarily.”

“Who’s ‘they’? You—you make them sound like an army.”

“We know who the real ‘they’ is. He’s presumably in California. He has representatives on the ship, though, and he expects them to produce results. The chances are he doesn’t even know how they are going about it.”

I thought a minute.

“You know, maybe you’ll sleep in our suite tonight. In my bed.”

“I will?”

She did not sound shocked.

“And I will sleep here—in your bed.”

“What will that do?”

“It will make you safer. No one will know where you are. And someone may come calling here. With one or two little breaks in our favor, we could wrap this whole thing up tonight. Meanwhile—”

I hung the bug back on the bedsprings and pushed the two halves back into a day bed.

“It’s off now. But each time you come in, just reach down like this—” I illustrated “—and feel the switch. If it’s in the upper position, the bug is on, and you are being overheard. Don’t let that scare you. Just behave normally. But don’t say anything confidential to anyone. And don’t turn the bug off, either. We don’t want them to know we know it’s there. That way we can use it against them. And we will.”

“Gee whiz.” Her eyes shone with excitement.

“Oh, there’s one other thing. How much do you know about baseball?”

“Why—not much. Three strikes are out, and there’s a pitcher’s plate and so on.”

“Mound. The plate is home. But do you follow baseball? Did you ever see a game?”

“Not a real game, no. I guess I really don’t know much about it at all—as I suppose you gathered from the score I predicted yesterday. Did you ever hear what the real score was?”

“I’ll check it when I get a chance.”

She wrapped the negligee around herself a little more tightly. It was getting a little difficult to leave. “What was it you wanted to tell me?” I asked.

“Tell you?”

“You asked me to stop by and see you.”

“Oh, yes.” She smiled, and it was as if the sun had broken out over the stormy sea. “I guess I’ve forgotten now. Maybe I just wanted to talk to you.” Lightning flashed from the brilliant sun. “I—sometimes I need, what do you call it? Reassurance.”

“Now you have the key to it,” I said. “But be careful who you let in here.”

“I will.”

“Also...” I hated to bring up something unpleasant. “Going back to Sam Jones. I saw him in the bar, the night before last, until one o’clock. You called me about six-thirty. He was dead then, in your closet, although you didn’t know it, and he had been for some time. Did you hear from him at all after one o’clock?”

“No. As I said, I took a pill—”

“So you were asleep by when? One-thirty? At the latest?”

“About that.”

“And Klára?”

“I think I heard her mattress creak before I went to sleep.”

“And you called Jones about six-thirty.”

“Earlier. It probably was nearer five-thirty the first time. I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know why. But I couldn’t. I got no answer.”

“And you stayed awake after five-thirty?”

“Yes. I called him again, a little after six. Still no answer. So I began to worry, and then I called you. But why is all this important?”

“I’m trying to figure out when he was killed. I’ll say it was between one-thirty and two, yesterday morning. Because when I dragged him out of here, he was still wearing the same clothes that he had worn earlier in the bar. He somewhat needed a shave.”

“He did?”

“And his bed had not been slept in. But most of all—” I wasn’t sure of how much to go into.

“What?”

“His body had begun to stiffen at the time I dragged him out, even though it had been in a warm closet.”

“Stop saying such awful things.”

“Sorry. But you see what I mean. You had to go to sleep—and be fast asleep—before they could bring him in here, tie the rope, and all that. Which means they could not dare come in here to leave him earlier than two. At which time he was dead. So he was killed sometime after 1:00 a.m., but probably no later than two.”

“Sometimes you say things that scare me.”

“I don’t mean to scare anyone. What are you going to do now?”

“I was going to bathe. I am uncomfortable if I don’t bathe twice a day. Then your cute girlfriends and I are going to the afternoon movie. Then I get my hair done.”

“Okay. See you later.”

I started for the door. At least I thought I started for the door. She came forward.

“Just lock your door when I leave, and keep it locked. Be sure of who’s there before you open it.” Her eyes glistened wetly. “And remember. You’ll be safe tonight in our suite.” Somehow...anyhow...I anyway...put my awkward arms around her and held her for a time, and then I kissed her. Not one of those quick brother-and-sister kisses, or a chaste peck on the cheek. This lasted.

What came back was not sisterly, either.

THE MISSING TRACES

“...Those are all the notices which appeared before the disappearance of the bride.”

“Before the what?” asked Holmes with a start.

“The vanishing of the lady.”

Conan Doyle

“The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor”