5

Sir Isaac Newton one day, apparently having nothing better to do at the moment, delivered himself of the edict that every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. The patent falseness of this ridiculous notion was never more clearly demonstrated than in the few moments following the discharge of the silenced pistol in Mr. Carruthers’ hand; for while the gun merely made a little “pop” and barely bucked at all, the reaction from Mr. Max Carpenter was certainly far from equal.

At first his eyes widened in horror; he then grasped his stomach as if someone were trying to take it away from him. Following this he gasped, went backwards several staggering steps, pivoted to the right once and to the left twice, tripped over a footstool, tried to break his fall by sliding down the side of the bed, did a series of knee jerks, rolled over a few times until his head was resting on the cool tile of the bathroom, and then began to bleed copiously from the corner of his mouth. A few sharp twists and a final spasm and he lay still at long last, the blood running in a slowly coagulating wavering line to a small floor drain placed in the middle of the bathroom by the ship’s constructors, possibly for this very purpose.

There were several seconds of taut, dramatic silence. Then Mrs. Carpenter slowly unwound herself from Mr. Carruthers and went forward hesitantly, peering down at her husband’s remains. The sight was neither reassuring nor particularly appetizing. Her eyes came up, wide open, round with shock.

“You—you killed him!” She took the pistol from his hand and hurriedly hid it beneath the cushion of an easy chair, after which she returned to the bathroom and closed the door, hiding the hideous sight. She grasped Mr. Carruthers by the arm. “You must flee!”

“Flee?”

“Beat it! Scram! Damn it, don’t you speak English?”

Mr. Carruthers frowned at her.

“But, I can’t leave you alone with a dead body! What will you ever do with him?”

“Let me worry about that, huh? I’ll manage, somehow. You just get moving! I’ll be in touch with you later!”

She had grasped his arm in a grip of steel and was propelling him toward the cabin door. Mr. Carruthers set his heels and leaned backwards; in this attitude Billy-boy’s fifteen stone made him a rather immovable object.

“Madam! Or Mazie, rather. Do you consider me such a cad that I would leave an innocent woman in a predicament such as this?” How now, J. Hamilton Grumbach? he thought with satisfaction and brought his attention back to the problems of the moment. “Quite obviously, we must rid ourselves of the body.”

“You get out of here and let me handle this my way,” said Mrs. Carpenter with evident irritation. She wished now she had enticed the tall, thin member of the bridge partnership into the cabin rather than this overweight ball of suet; not only did Mr. Simpson appear to be less dense, but he couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred forty pounds dripping wet, despite his immense height. At the very worst, she could have thrown him out of the stateroom by bodily force.

Mr. Carruthers eyed her with the indulgence one retains for women in shock and walked to the bathroom door, twisting the knob. He thought he heard a bump inside; when he had the door open the body seemed to have moved itself. Rigor mortis, undoubtedly, Mr. Carruthers said to himself, and studied the limp form. He looked up.

“I don’t suppose you happen to have a steamer trunk?”

“A what?”

“A steamer trunk. No, I suppose not. They’ve gone out of style. A pity.” He left the bathroom a moment for the stateroom, opening the closet and peering within. Outside of the fact that it was already filled with clothing, it might have done nicely, but obviously only for a short time. He frowned, considering longer-range possibilities. Mrs. Carpenter, feeling the affair was getting away from her, tried to bring it back to the original script.

“You—you killed him!”

Even under the trying circumstances that prevailed, Mr. Carruthers felt he could not permit this misuse of the English language; certainly not for the second time. Even J. Hamilton Grumbach, he was sure, would have objected.

“No, madam,” he corrected. “I shot him. The bullet killed him.”

He leaned over the body once again, studying the narrow shoulders, and then came erect, nodding.

“Of course! The porthole!”

He crossed the room to this most natural means of ridding staterooms of unwanted detritus, amazed at himself for not having thought of it before. He unscrewed the hinged bolts and pulled them away, tugging at the small window and swinging it wide. The bright sound and smell of the sea instantly filled the room.

“We may, of course, have to break his shoulders to get him through,” he said in a slight aside and went back to the bathroom to gather up the body. A washcloth, properly dampened and applied, removed the excess of blood from the corpse’s lips; thus having protected his ecru suit from being stained, Mr. Carruthers bent down and, with a strength surprising in one his age and build, easily lifted the limp figure of Mr. Carpenter, carrying it to the porthole.

During this entire scene Mrs. Carpenter had remained speechless, a rare situation for the lady, but at this point her paralyzed brain revived. She moved forward in a hurry, grabbing Mr. Carruthers by the arm just as he was raising Mr. Carpenter to the proper elevation for decanting.

“Hey!” she said.

“Yes?” Mr. Carruthers waited politely.

“He—he—well, he might not be dead, yet.” It was weak and she knew it, but it was the best she could muster at the moment. J. Hamilton Grumbach, apparently, had left the matter of killing in a stateroom out of his works. In lighthouses he had no master, but shipboard cabins had never been his forte.

“It’s really quite impossible to recover from a stomach wound of that nature, you know,” Mr. Carruthers said in a quiet matter-of-fact tone of voice. He shifted the body to a more comfortable position, ignoring the grunt he thought he might have heard, and carried on. “Saw dozens just like him back in ’16. Just suffered, poor chaps, but in the end …”

He managed a shrug despite the weight in his arms and turned back to the porthole, prepared to complete his offering to Neptune.

“But you can’t toss him in if he’s still alive,” cried Mrs. Carpenter, and added—rather inconsistently, Mr. Carruthers thought—“That would be murder!”

“Much better to drown than go through the agony of a belly wound,” Mr. Carruthers assured her and started to feed the small body through the round opening. “Drowning isn’t all that bad, they say. Of course, if there happen to be sharks …”

“Hey!” It was Mr. Max Carpenter, suddenly realizing the discussion was getting out of hand and feeling the cold blast of air on his face. He began to struggle.

“There, there,” said Mr. Carruthers soothingly. “Just relax.” He smiled reassuringly at the pallid face staring at him incredulously from outside the porthole. He raised his voice to make sure his words would not be snatched by the breeze. “You’ve been shot in the stomach, and it’s an excruciatingly painful way to die. You’d do much better to let me get on with putting you in the sea.”

“You have to be crazy,” Mr. Carpenter said in a whisper that carried the first edges of panic. “You have to be mad! Mazie! Don’t stand there! Make this maniac pull me in!”

Mr. Carruthers shrugged and withdrew the body a bit, although he maintained a hold that would permit him to renew his mission at any moment. Max Carpenter squirmed fiercely.

“Damn it! I haven’t been shot in the stomach! Damn it! I haven’t been shot at all!”

“My, my! You mean I missed?”

“Max!” cried Mrs. Carpenter warningly.

“Oh, shut up,” Max said crossly and squirmed more. “You! Fat boy! Set me down!”

“Of course!” Mr. Carruthers instantly placed the dapper little man back on his feet and bent over to examine any potential damage. True enough, the checkered vest covering the small torso remained inviolate, other than a tiny smudge navel high. Mr. Carruthers shook his head in dismay. “I really did miss, didn’t I? And at that range, too! Dear me! I shall have to have my eyes examined as soon as I get back home.” A sudden thought struck him and he paused, frowning at Mr. Carpenter with wonder. “But I’m sure I saw blood—unless I’m beginning to imagine things, as well.…”

“I fainted and bit my lip,” Max Carpenter said with deep sarcasm. “Guns do that to me.” He checked his appearance and brushed away a few spots that had occurred in his deathbed scene. His eyes came up to Mr. Carruthers’ face. “Look, Buster—you’ve had your fun. Why don’t you clear out, huh? Go back to your pals at the bar and get stewed, huh? On our dough, yet!”

Mrs. Carpenter was staring at the two men in profound puzzlement. Things were happening which were not in the script and she could not fathom why. She would have sworn that Bernhardt (had she ever heard of her) could not have turned in a better performance. Her eyes fastened on her husband.

“What do you mean, he’s had his fun?”

“Just what I said. Old twinkle toes here was wise all the time,” Max said in deep disgust. He picked a flake of dried chicken blood from the corner of his mouth, studied it distastefully for a moment and flicked it away. He twisted to see if he had sprained anything during his gymnastics, decided he hadn’t and looked up broodingly. “He was having a big yak at our expense.” He straightened his trouser creases. “We should have known better. This character is probably the guy who invented the dodge in the first place!”

“Not exactly,” said Mr. Carruthers and settled himself in the easy chair, smiling at his hosts. The pistol with the silencer under the pillow disturbed him and he fished it free, tossing it aside. “Still, if you don’t mind I should like to offer a bit of advice. The chicken bladder swindle may be fine on land—or, on the other hand, may not be, depending on many things—but aboard a ship it is fraught with danger. I mention this in purely friendly fashion. One of the major points in the scheme depends upon the so-called corpse not being seen around and about after the event. On board ship it’s rather hard to disappear, you know. And how would he get off the ship without going through Immigration? Or Customs?” He shook his head slowly and favored Max Carpenter with a pleasant smile. “You, my friend, are quite adept at handling a deck of cards. To be truthful, I envy you your skill. May I suggest you stay with cards? And leave these other dubious means of gaining a livelihood to those with the temperament for them?”

“Thanks a heap,” Carpenter said in disgust. “Except you took us for our stake.”

“Well,” Carruthers said, coming to his feet and preparing to terminate a pleasant and enjoyable afternoon, “it’s the rub of the green, you might say.” He considered the phrase a moment and chuckled. “Yes. I must remember that. The rub of the green.…”

It had finally occurred to Mrs. Carpenter during all this conversation that not only had her memorizing and dramatics been in vain but that she had been made a fool of in the process. It was not a happy thought, especially for one of her explosive nature. She came to her feet and moved swiftly to the dresser, her wispy covering billowing in the breeze unnoticed. Pulling open a drawer, she fumbled in its interior a moment and came up with a small but efficient-looking nickel-plated revolver. Her hand held it steadily.

“Okay, wise guy,” she said in a hard voice. “Fun’s fun, and you’ve had yours. This cannon isn’t loaded with blanks like the other one, and baby, you just better believe it!”

Mr. Carruthers did believe it. The look in her eye did as much to convince him as the small copper-headed pinpoints of light reflected from the chambers on either side of the stubby barrel. He sank back into the easy chair in a watchful manner.

“Mazie!” Mr. Max Carpenter had had about his fill of guns, loaded or not, for a long time to come. “Put that thing away! What do you think you’re doing?”

Mrs. Carpenter’s jaw tightened ominously.

“I’ve had about all I’m going to take from old Humpty-Dumpty here,” she said in a deadly tone. “Up to here! Either he lets go of a good chunk of our dough—at least fifty percent of what they rooked us out of—or I’ll make him the saddest character who ever tangled with Mazie Carpenter, and that’ll be a new record, believe me! Well, Fatso—which is it going to be?”

“Madam,” said Mr. Carruthers with dignity—he did not feel that calling her Mazie would be appropriate at the moment—“I am, as you know, but one of three. For me to attempt such a portentous decision without consultation with my colleagues would scarcely be cricket. However, if you wish my hasty analysis of what the vote would be were the matter placed before a quorum of our triumvirate I’m afraid it would be strongly in the negative.”

Mazie Carpenter turned to her husband suspiciously.

“What’d he say?” she demanded.

“He said no.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” Mazie made up her mind. “Okay, Max, get on your bicycle. I’ll handle this myself.”

“Now, look, Mazie—”

Mrs. Carpenter swung about, a dangerous glint in her eye, “Now look what, Shorty? Are you going to give me a hard time, too? I said I’d handle it.”

“No, no, sweets; it’s only that—”

“Don’t worry,” she said demeaningly, in a tone that said she had read her husband’s mind and as a result didn’t credit him with any more brains than usual, “I’m not going to plug the fat little man. I’m only going to make him wish I had!”

Mr. Carpenter had seen his wife in these vengeful moods before; as a matter of fact, he had seldom seen her in any other. Mostly, though, they were directed against him and not utter strangers. He had never been able to figure out exactly what inspired the perpetual bitterness on which she seemed to thrive and had long since come to the conclusion that in infancy she had been weaned on vinegar. However, as a dutiful spouse he felt he should at least read her the standard warning.

“Mazie, you’re making a mistake—” The look she gave him withered the words on the vine: he shrugged dispiritedly. “Okay,” he said wearily. “I’ll be up in the bar.”

“Drink something cheap,” she suggested curtly and waited until the door had closed behind her mate.

Mr. Carruthers continued to watch the lady with mild curiosity. As long as he had the assurance that he was not going to be—as the lady put it—plugged, he saw little to lose in enjoying whatever scheme she seemed to have in mind. Mr. Carruthers had a theory that women, given a decent chance to foul up a detail, will do so in direct proportion to the opportunities presented. Had he been called upon to give his hypothesis a name, he undoubtedly would have called it Carruthers’ Law, with no attempt at false modesty. And he would have used both the ill-fated card game and the even more ill-fated chicken bladder swindle as solid evidence. What Billy-boy Carruthers had overlooked, however, was a postulate yet more ancient, which states that even a blind sow discovers an acorn now and then; and it was that acorn that Mrs. Mazie Carpenter now proceeded to unearth.

With an enigmatic smile from which Medusa might have picked up a tip or two, she walked to the telephone. Raising it, she listened until she heard the operator’s voice on the line and then suddenly put back her head and screamed. Unlike her previous efforts which were purposely meant to keep the sound within the confines of the cabin, this scream seemed to be intent upon being heard as far away as the engine room. Mr. Carruthers, not having expected it, cringed from the onslaught upon his eardrums. The screech was repeated, even while Mrs. Carpenter ripped the hairpins from her hair, destroying the work of hours, and rubbed one hand vigorously about her face, smearing her ample makeup.

“Rape! Rape!”

She suddenly seemed to remember the pistol she was holding. With the situation well in hand she recognized it was no longer required and could even prove a handicap, since few women armed with pistols are—statistically—raped. She dropped the receiver with a bang on the tabletop, walked to the dresser, deposited the weapon in a drawer and closed it, not lowering her voice as she did so. She seemed to be two people. One systematically disheveled herself in almost organized fashion while the other furnished vocal accompaniment in the form of banshee shrieks that raised the hair on Mr. Carruthers’ head.

“My God, somebody save me! Take your hands off, you beast! Please! Don’t! Don’t!”

Never had the words of J. Hamilton Grumbach—or some imitator, were they not true Grumbach—seemed to Mr. Carruthers less comical. He had not bargained for an exhibition of this nature. To begin with, he considered it in the worst possible taste; and secondly the lady was giving him a severe headache with her racket. He came to his feet with as much dignity as the situation—and a low, overly soft easy chair—permitted, and moved to the door.

“Madam—”

Mrs. Carpenter was there before him. She reached behind him depressing the latch, effectively locking the door. Her faint smile indicated to him that she was actually enjoying herself.

“Cheat me, will you, baggy pants?” she said under her voice and instantly raised the volume. “Take your hands off me, you animal! My God! What are you trying to do? Have you no shame?”

“Madam—” Carruthers had to raise his voice to be heard; he knew his effort was wasted, but he still felt called upon to attempt it. “I’m afraid I must insist upon leaving. As for cheating you, that really isn’t fair. You and your husband were fully prepared to cheat us—as you have cheated everyone else you’ve played with aboard. If you’ll just calm down a bit—”

“Stop it—oh, stop it! Let me go! Don’t—don’t—”

Even as Mrs. Carpenter flooded the air with noise, she reached out and efficiently and effectively ripped Mr. Carruthers’ braces free from his trousers. Since these had never been worn tightly—for Billy-boy Carruthers was a man who believed in freedom in all things—they instantly draped themselves about his ankles, revealing long gray underwear covering his shanks. Mr. Carruthers, shocked by this familiarity, reached down to pull them up; his posture allowed the lady to muss his hair and tug his necktie about, although these occupations did not at all seem to slow down the calliope sounds which continued to issue from her.

“Rape! Help! Beast! Let go!”

There was a loud pounding on the door and the sound of an authoritative voice.

“Open up in there!”

“Thank God!” murmured Mr. Carruthers and reached for the latch, one hand holding up his pants, but a whirlwind of pulchritude locked itself about him, carrying him backward. He back pedaled wildly, trying to keep his tangled trousers under control, eventually losing the battle and stumbling onto the bed. The continuing racket in his ear, he was certain, would surely result in permanent damage to the tympanum.

The sounds at the door increased as willing and manly shoulders thumped against it. There was sudden crunching of steel and the door flew open, swinging wildly, just as the floor steward came hurrying up with the proper key. In the doorway stood the ship’s master-at-arms, accompanied by a husky sailor. Curious passengers peered into the room about the two official figures.

Mrs. Carpenter had slid to the floor at the side of the bed, whimpering into her hands, her hair scattered about her like seaweed, her sheer dressing gown torn and revealing. Trying to struggle erect on the bed, Mr. Carruthers was still attempting to untangle yards of ecru trouser legs that inhibited his ankles.

“Look at the old goat!” the master-at-arms said beneath his breath to the sailor at his side. “Didn’t even take the time to take off ’is jacket!”

“Can’t say as ’ow I blames ’im,” said the sailor, sotto voce, and the two moved forward to take Mr. Carruthers into custody.