6

Captain Charles Everton Manley-Norville stared in frank astonishment at the short, portly, white-haired, angelic-looking man seated opposite him in his luxurious quarters adjacent to the bridge. Mr. Carruthers, quite comfortable, beamed back at him. The cohorts who had hustled him to this pleasant spot had been dismissed, albeit temporarily, and the two men were alone, basking—if that is the proper word—in the severe air-conditioning that kept the room a few degrees above freezing. Mr. Carruthers considered asking if his host’s hospitality extended to a brandy, or something equally warming, but decided that this was not the place and certainly not the time.

“Now, Mr. Carruthers,” said the Captain in his deep, rumbling voice—and it was evident from his exaggerated patience that he was repeating himself, and not for the first time—“do you mean to sit there and say that you aren’t even going to deny that woman’s charges?”

“And cast doubt upon a lady’s word?” Mr. Carruthers made it sound like the most shocking proposal he had heard in a life admittedly spent among people who specialized in shocking proposals. He shook his head, his small blue eyes scandalized. “That wouldn’t be very gentlemanly, now, would it?”

“Damn it, Mr. Carruthers! I’m serious!”

“So am I, Captain. So am I.”

Captain Manley-Norville came to his feet and paced back and forth for several moments, coming at last to stand before his prisoner and glare down at him.

“Certainly, Mr. Carruthers, you are not yet so sen—so out of touch—I mean, certainly you must be aware of the seriousness of Mrs. Carpenter’s charge?”

“Oh, I’m quite aware,” Mr. Carruthers assured him. He frowned, thinking about it. His eyes came up at last. “Although I believe it isn’t nearly as bad as when I was a young man. In those days, if I’m not mistaken, it was a hanging affair.”

Captain Manley-Norville restrained with effort from saying that killing the king’s deer was probably a hanging affair in the distant days when Mr. Carruthers was a young man. He stared at the seated man in cold silence awhile and then tried a different approach.

“I was a witness to your card game with the Carpenters, Mr. Carruthers, and frankly, I’m surprised. Gentlemen of your reputation winning a sum of that nature! I must say as well that I’ve heard it was nearly impossible to win from the Carpenters, and I was on the verge of doing something about it when you won that huge sum.” The Captain reseated himself and drummed his thick fingers on the top of his desk while his steely gray eyes held Mr. Carruthers’ innocent blue ones. “Well?”

“Well, what?” Mr. Carruthers asked politely.

“I simply mean that in the circumstances it appears to me that if anyone had a reason to attack anyone else, I would have expected them to attack you or Mr. Simpson, and not the other way around.”

Mr. Carruthers was forced to acknowledge the logic of this statement, and his thoughtful nod did it for him. However, he apparently did not feel called upon to comment verbally. Captain Manley-Norville waited a few more moments and then continued.

“I don’t quite know what your game is, Mr. Carruthers—and please don’t be comical and say ‘bridge’—but believe me, I intend to discover it. I don’t care for mysteries on my ship. I’ve been master of the S.S. Sunderland since she was commissioned, and until you and your two friends came aboard, I’ve taken this ship on two hundred transatlantic crossings and over fifty cruise trips such as this without any untoward incident, and I don’t intend to see that record smirched at this date—”

“I can appreciate your sentiments,” Mr. Carruthers conceded politely.

Captain Manley-Norville disregarded the interruption. “—despite the fact that you seem intent upon doing so. Things are happening which I do not care to see happening on my ship. And you and your friends seem to be at the center of most of them. Well, Mr. Carruthers?”

Mr. Carruthers looked pained, as if truly unhappy that he could not find an answer that would satisfy the friendly and cooperative captain.

“Yes, Captain?”

Captain Manley-Norville drummed his fingers some more.

“Well,” he said at last, “as long as you insist upon maintaining silence in face of Mrs. Carpenter’s accusations against you, there is little I can do other than to keep you in confinement until we get to the bottom of the matter.” He hesitated once again, as if waiting to see if this threat might produce some results, but when silence prevailed he sighed mightily and pressed a button on his desk.

“The fortunes of war,” said Mr. Carruthers philosophically, and then looked concerned for the first time during the interview. “By the way,” he said, “just how is the lady?”

“The surgeon is treating her for shock,” said the Captain, his cold look of disdain clearly indicating his opinion of a man who could ask such a question in the circumstances.

“Better tell the surgeon to also feed her some good throat lozenges,” Mr. Carruthers suggested in a kindly tone. “I’m sure the poor girl must need them badly.”

The door opened, obviously in response to the Captain’s pressed button, and the master-at-arms, accompanied by the same husky sailor, stood in the opening. The two maintained the wary air of someone called upon to pick up Jack-the-Ripper. Mr. Carruthers, properly assuming his interview was being terminated, came to his feet and then made a sudden lunge to keep his trousers from falling.

“I say, Captain—”

“Yes, Mr. Carruthers?”

“Would a needle and thread be permitted in the brig? The buttons for my braces are all gone in front, you see, and it’s a bit embarrassing having my trousers constantly falling about my ankles.” A sudden frightful thought came to the white-haired man. “I say, you wouldn’t be taking away my braces, would you?” He assayed a smile that was pitiful. “I promise not to hang myself with them, or anything like that.”

Captain Manley-Norville considered the rotund figure before him as if a new and not particularly unpleasant thought had come to him. He turned to the master-at-arms, speaking authoritatively.

“Give Mr. Carruthers needle and thread,” he ordered. His eyes came up to consider Mr. Carruthers almost challengingly. “And under no circumstances deprive him of either his braces, his cravat, his shoelaces, or anything else of that general nature …”

“Rape!” Tim Briggs snorted. He was speaking through the bars of the small cell on E Deck where Mr. Carruthers was incarcerated. On one side a second cell of equal size and description existed, at the moment empty. On the other side of the cell the sound of the ship’s laundry equipment working away at stained napkins and dirty towels could be faintly heard through a wall. The ship’s screw seemed to be directly beneath their feet, throbbing rhythmically. Tim Briggs snorted again. “They have to be stark, raving mad! Loony as bus conductors! Rape! A man your age!”

“I’m younger than you are,” Mr. Carruthers reminded him mildly. He was sitting on the small cot furnished by the management, straining backward a bit in order to sew on his brace buttons without removing his trousers. It made for a bit of contortionism.

“But not forty years younger, which is roughly what you’d have to be,” Briggs retorted. It was an exaggeration, of course, but exaggerations had never frightened Briggs. He turned to the tall, thin man beside him. “What do you think, Cliff?”

Clifford Simpson was staring into the cell with his normal air of wonderment for all things in all places.

“I say! They really do have brigs aboard ships to this day!” he said, sounding properly amazed. “They actually do! I thought they went out with windjammers and leg irons!” He peered into the cell closely, as if to make sure—had they leg irons, or a cat-o’-nine-tails, or other torture devices—that Mr. Carruthers was not hiding them just to protect his friends from worry.

“Cliff!” Briggs was not interested in windjammers or leg irons. “We happen to be talking about this ridiculous charge against Billy-boy, here. Pay attention.”

“Oh, I heard you. And I think forty years is putting it on a bit.”

“Forget the forty years! What do you think of the chances of his really being held on such a silly charge?”

“Oh, that!” Simpson dismissed the “that” with a disdainful wave of a bony hand. “Silliest thing I’ve heard of in ages. Once this Captain what’s-his-name gets a good look at Billy-boy, he’ll have him out of here in seconds.” He returned to his inspection of the cell. “I say, do you have rats?”

“No rats,” said Mr. Carruthers. “And the Captain did get a good look at me. That’s why I’m in here.”

Briggs frowned in disbelief.

“And you mean he didn’t believe your denial? The man has to be an absolute clod! Can you imagine allowing an idiot of that magnitude to run a ship this size?”

“Not even mice?” Simpson asked. He seemed to find it hard to believe.

“Not even mice. As for Captain Manley-Norville,” Carruthers went on, “he isn’t a bad chap at all.” He finished with one button, checked to see that he had sufficient thread and immediately tackled another. “The thing is, you see, that I didn’t bother to deny the lady’s charges.”

“You didn’t what?” It was a chorus; even Cliff Simpson forgot his research on ships’ brigs to join in.

“You heard me.” Mr. Carruthers paused in his task to look up calmly. “I said, I didn’t deny the lady’s accusations.”

Briggs stared through the bars in horror. He shook his head.

“You’ve gone crackers, too! Why in heaven’s name didn’t you deny them?”

Mr. Billy-boy Carruthers carefully completed the last button and snapped the thread. The needle was neatly tucked into the spool of cotton and put to one side. In common with most bachelors, especially those who reached his age, he was an excellent seamster, if such a word exists. He buttoned the braces in place, came to his feet and snapped them to make sure his work was of a relatively permanent nature. All remained secure. He smiled his satisfaction and only then did he bother to consider the question and to answer it.

“Tim, my lad. Cliff, old boy. Are you two seriously suggesting that I damage my self-esteem to that extent? Think what you are saying. Why, man, I haven’t been so flattered in years! Accused of attacking a woman with immoral intent!” He shook his head, smiling, but the other two could see that Billy-boy Carruthers was deadly serious. “No, lads; I said not a word, nor do I intend to. I haven’t the slightest intention of denying one word of the lady’s story.”

“He’s gone around the bend,” Cliff said sadly and then noticed something that had escaped him before. “I say, Billy-boy; I thought they took away your braces when they shoved you into quod. Standard operating procedure, don’t you know, together with your shoelaces and things, so you wouldn’t—well, you know.” He made a gesture of a hangman’s noose being brought up taut, followed by a neck snapping.

“You do that very well,” Carruthers said approvingly and grinned. “I think that’s exactly what the Captain had in mind when he allowed me to keep them.” His blue eyes ranged upward. “I’m afraid, though, he never made a detailed study of this cell. I don’t believe I could if I wanted to; the ceiling here is far too low.” He shook his head forlornly. “They just don’t build decks for hanging.”

“Now, that wouldn’t be a bad title,” Simpson said thoughtfully. “They Don’t Build Decks for Hanging.”

“A great title,” Carruthers agreed. “What does it mean?”

“Well,” Simpson said, carried away, “you’d have this midget, you see, and he’d be put in this cell for something—cheating at Bingo, or selling tickets to the free cinema, or something—and this little man, Tim’s size roughly, he’d be found strangled with his own cravat, and everyone would naturally assume the shame had caused him to hang himself, but then this chap from Scotland Yard—on vacation, of course—would turn up and study the scene, and he’d prove—”

“Yes?”

“That’s as far as I see it at the moment,” Simpson admitted, a bit unhappily.

“A midget roughly Tim’s size, eh?” Briggs said in an unkindly tone. “Well, you’d have to lie down to hang yourself, Cliff, even on a scaffold. Now, if you two geniuses don’t mind, I’d like to get back to Billy-the-Goat, here, and his problem. Whether you realize it or not, he’s in the soup, especially with his attitude. Rape is a serious offense.”

“Nonsense!” Simpson said, dismissing the idea as being idiotic. “Worse comes to worse, Billy-boy can insist on a jury trial, and what jury with a man on it over fifty would ever convict Billy-boy of rape?” He turned back to Carruthers, peering at him curiously through the bars. “How’s the food? Crawling with vermin, I expect, what?”

“I haven’t been here long enough to find out,” Carruthers said dryly, “But I seriously doubt they’d go to all that trouble for just one customer. Anyway,” he added, returning his attention to Briggs, “the charge isn’t rape—it’s ‘attempted rape.’”

“Worse!” Briggs moaned. “Much worse!”

The other two stared at him.

“How so?” Simpson demanded.

“Well,” Briggs said unhappily, “as you said yourself, no jury in the world would even consider rape as the faintest of possibilities where a man of Billy-boy’s age is concerned. But anyone of any age could attempt it.…”

There were several moments of dead silence. Even Billy-boy Carruthers looked a bit thoughtful. It was, obviously, a point none of the three had previously considered.

“I’m afraid there’s only one thing for it,” said Clifford Simpson.

He and Tim Briggs were at their usual table in the corner of the Promenade Deck bar, sipping brandy. The third chair at the table was conspicuously empty; others in the room studiously avoided glancing in their direction. The master-at-arms, who also rounded up items for the ship’s newspaper, had not been idle. Yet, despite the disaster of the previous afternoon, it was still a lovely day. Through the broad windows they could see people standing about the edge of the outside swimming pool while the lifeguard put them through a series of calisthenics, vainly attempting to remove in fifteeen minutes what his pupils spent eighteen hours per day putting on. The very sight of the sweating, jumping, miserable bathing-suited specimens outside made the bar both cooler and more cozy.

“And that is?” Briggs asked.

“That, I’m afraid, is something that will meet with your disapproval. Although,” Simpson added, thinking about it, “we’re really quite lucky, when you consider it.”

“What will I disapprove of, and wherein are we lucky?” The brandy had made Tim Briggs a bit more mellow than usual.

“We’re lucky that Sir Percival Pugh is aboard,” Simpson said simply and instantly hid his face in his glass, avoiding the explosion he knew would result. He was not wrong.

“Pugh? That twister? That Jeremy Diddler?” Tim Briggs suddenly seemed to realize that his shriek of anguish had caused heads to turn. He dropped the volume but the tone of scathing denunciation remained. He hastily swallowed the balance of his drink and thrust his glass from him, as if thrusting Sir Percival away in the same motion. “Under no circumstances,” he said in a cold voice, “do we get tangled up again with that—that—that legal larcenist!”

“Now, see here, Tim,” Simpson said. Knowing Briggs, he was well aware that the first outbreak carried away the majority of the tantrum. “Try to be reasonable. Billy-boy is just stubborn enough to maintain his quixotic attitude, and this Carpenter woman is obviously vindictive enough to continue to press her charge. As things stand, therefore, the very best that Billy-boy can come out of this with is the worst of it. Now, you and I both know Pugh—”

“Do we ever!”

“As I was saying, we both know Pugh, and we know that he could probably take the evidence in this case as it stands and end up having the Captain found guilty, even though he had eighteen witnesses that he was on the bridge at the time.”

“Yes; and charge us an arm and a leg in the process!”

“We can afford his services. After all,” Simpson said, “we did take almost three thousand pounds from the Carpenters, and even Pugh wouldn’t ask more than that.”

“Wouldn’t he! He asked ten thousand quid to keep you from hanging!”

“Which I considered reasonable.”

“Well, yes,” Briggs conceded. “But that was a murder charge. This is only attempted rape.”

“Look, Timothy.” When Simpson used the full name, Briggs knew he was serious. “We can afford his services and we need them.”

“Well, it isn’t just the money, either,” Briggs retorted. “It’s—” He seemed to hear himself for the first time and was shocked to the core. “Well, of course it’s the money! What am I saying? But I will admit I wouldn’t mind it nearly so much if it were going to somebody else. Pugh! That twister!”

“Of course he’s a twister; it’s precisely why we need him. And there isn’t anyone else. Certainly none to hold a candle to Pugh. He’s the best there is. He’s never lost a case.”

“I know.…” Briggs gnawed on his lip for several moments in painful silence and then suddenly looked up, his expression of torment disappearing, to be replaced by a sunny smile. “I’ve got it!”

“You’ve got what?”

“The solution to our problem! The answer to Billy-boy’s dilemma! We don’t need Sir Land-pirate Pugh; he can go to the devil! We can handle this ourselves!”

“Oh, ah?”

Simpson studied the wizened excited little face across from his with cautious curiosity. Tim Briggs, Simpson knew, was far from stupid; in those distant halcyon days when they were all writing mystery novels Briggs’ plots were usually far and away the most exotic. Imagination the little man had, and it was just possible that he might have stumbled onto a line of action that would, indeed, both free Billy-boy from the brig and also obviate the necessity of paying over huge sums to Sir Percival Pugh. On the other hand, of course, he could also be talking through his hat.

“What’s the brainstorm?”

Briggs took several moments to savor his triumph. He poured himself a brandy and a glass of champagne, sipped at one and then the other, his tiny eyes glittering over the rim at Simpson. When he knew he had worked that ploy as far as it could go, he put aside his glass and leaned forward, hitching his chair closer to the table.

“Now, look, Cliff,” he said quietly, watching his companion closely, “this idiotic charge against Billy-boy can only hope to stand up for a minute if this Mrs. Carpenter can be presented to the authorities as a mountain of virtue. Once this façade of rectitude is removed, the charge falls of its own weight. No popsy could hope for a second to get away with it. Right?”

Simpson merely stared at him with no expression, waiting for further amplification. Briggs obliged.

“Let me put it to you this way: if it can be shown that this Carpenter woman is in the habit of allowing other boyfriends to enjoy her favors—such as they are—her story gets pretty weak, and Billy-boy walks out of choky free as a bird. Right?”

“I suppose so,” Simpson said slowly. “But do you have the slightest proof or even indication that Mrs. Carpenter is anything but what she appears to be—an excellent card cheat, a nasty-tempered young woman, as well as a devoted wife?”

“No,” Briggs admitted freely. “Not at the moment. But it’s early on, you know. Proof shouldn’t be hard to come by.”

Simpson frowned. “You think she’s been playing around?”

“I haven’t the faintest,” Briggs said with a grin. “But she’s going to begin to. Or, at least, it’s going to look as if she had begun to play around!” He tried to look virtuous but only succeeded in looking more wicked than ever. “One has to fight fire with fire, you know.”

“And just who is the fire she’s going to play around with?”

“Me,” Briggs said proudly. He seemed to recognize that honesty demanded cognizance of the possibility of failure. “If it doesn’t work, of course, then I guess it’ll have to be you.…”