Стюарт Стерлинг - Down Among the Dead Men

The Vigilant hit something. The shock jarred both men off their feet; — the patrol-boat shuddered and plunged on into the circling haze. They looked aft but could see nothing.

Mulcahey wiped his forehead. “One more like that and I will be ready to draw my pension.”

“Didn’t you ever hear about Farragut, Irish? Damn the driftwood...”

“I am giving her as near full speed as I can without having heart failure. It strikes me a funeral pace would be more appropriate, anyhow.” The Sergeant groaned as a trawler materialized out of the fog, rushed past with a swirling wake. “I do not see why it could not have been this Gjersten who did the dirty job on young Ovett.”

“The colored housekeeper at Dommy’s saw two men in Room Five, Joe. One was Gjersten. Other was our friend with a bandage around his chops. It couldn’t have been young Ovett. He was dead then. Bandage Face was seen the next morning in the South Street dock.”

“True for you, Steve. He was.”

“Then Dommy’s housekeeper heard Bandage Face singing while he was sawing up Merrill’s body. The clerk at the drugstore saw him buy the suitcase. On the other hand, Ansel wasn’t at the Bar-Nothing the night of the murder, because Claire Purdo was looking for him and couldn’t find him, according to Schlauff. She might have gone up to Five looking for Ansel, heard Bandage Face singing, knocked on the door.”

“But if this Man-in-the-White-Mask had popped his head out to see who it was, he probably wouldn’t have had the bandage on at the time, skipper.”

“Maybe not, Irish. If he didn’t, that may have been a reason why he sent Ansel to rub her out. Or it could have been Ansel killed her on his own account.”

A horn blew with terrifying closeness; the sound seemed to come from every point of the compass at once. Mulcahey threw out the clutch. The Vigilant rocked violently on the afterwash of some unseen vessel. “I would sooner be piloting a plane blindfolded, so help me.” He got the boat under way again. “How did they identify young Ovett, now?”

“Collar bone broken in two places. He had it broken by a boom that jibed over on a sloop, few summers ago. Then the Wyatt girl had the measurements that wouldn’t be affected by loss of weight, — length of leg, size of foot, — the works.”

“A sin and a shame they had to see him like that. But this yacht captain, now. He was supposed to have seen young Ovett jump off the yacht.”

“He saw Gjersten, in Merrill’s suit.”

“They were not the same size, were they, skipper? The suit would have fitted this Gjersten a trifle late?”

“Yair. But it fitted Merrill the same way, he’d lost so much weight.”

“No one can blame you for misjudgment, there,” Mulcahey sighed, dismally. “They’re takin’ it chin up, aren’t they?”

“You sort of get hardened to the possibility of a guy’s demising when he’s in the merchant marine. It always was a possibility, but now—”

Mulcahey swerved the patrol-boat toward a bell moaning in its sleep; a red can-buoy bobbed its cylindrical body up and down in a tide-race; told him he was on the course.

“I cannot figure it, at all. The man could not have sent that Sinbad telegram, bein’ dead an’ lyin’ in the morgue.”

“Wasn’t any difficulty for the murderer, Sarge. Young Ovett probably had a letter from her,” he nodded his head toward the cockpit, “in his pocket. Addressed to ‘dearest Sinbad.’ It likely said something about looking forward to seeing him when he got to town. All the killer had to know was that the Ellen who signed it was Ellen Wyatt and where she lived.”

“It threw us well off the track, for a while.”

“Sure. It sounded on the level because it was worded so whacky. Just the sort of wire young Ovett might send. But hell. I should have reasoned the killer would know the sort of expressions Ovett used, anyway. And that the boy’d been expecting to go through with a convoy.”

“Why would the dirty murderer have mentioned the lad’s intending to call on her the next day?”

“To give Gjersten time to escape on the Pobrico . He’d probably have dived overboard somewhere off Ambrose, swum to one of the bell buoys. He could have signaled the sub with one of those Coston flares we found in his sea-bag, been picked up by the pig-boat.”

“That’s the way he’d have tipped them off to the convoy’s position. And another good ship gone wrong!”

“Maybe more than one.”

“There is no doubt whatever about this identification of Gjersten?”

“Not any, Joe. We pulled the tape off his arm. There’s tattooing under it. That four-bladed propeller Cardiff described. There probably was a swastika covered up by that propeller. The four blades would just about blot out one of those hooked crosses. And the numbers that Nazi naval ratings so often have tattooed on them for identification.”

Mulcahey looked hard at him. “If ever I am inclined to homicide, I would pick another man to be after me. That’s the truth. Submarines hunting in packs? Was that what Schlauff meant by wolves?”

“Part of it. Not all of it. The rest of it’s aboard the Seavett. That might be her; — that little loom, couple points to the north. Let her out to the last gap, Irish. We want to finish fast.”

“Yair.” Koski leaned against the jamb of the door to the saloon to ease his rib. “The man who got hacked up was Merrill.”

“You must be mistaken!” Barbara’s mouth was pulled down desolately at the corners; her eyes were feverishly brilliant.

“We were mistaken. Long enough.” Koski looked them over: — Berger belligerent before the fireplace, Hurlihan slumping dejectedly in one of the red leather chairs. Fross sitting bolt upright in the other, adjusting his pince-nez. At one end of the transom seat, Barbara with her legs curled under her; at the other, Ellen and Joslin sitting stiffly side by side. “Plenty of reasons for making that kind of mistake...

“Captain Cardiff reported Gjersten as missing. You told me nobody would see Gjersten again, Mrs. Ovett. That Filipino we’ve got down in the Tombs referred to Ansel as dead. Place where the body was dismembered was the sort of dive Gjersten would be likely to visit. He did go there. He was seen. He didn’t take his clothes with him off the yacht. He didn’t draw the pay due him. He was heard arguing with young Ovett. Nobody heard him at all after that. Nobody reported seeing him after this yacht took you over to the Wall Street landing, Hurlihan. All circumstantial, sure. But it sidetracked us. It was calculated to throw us off the track, part of it.”

Hurlihan scrunched lower in his chair; his black curls were matted with sweat. “You told me yourself the body... what you had found of it... corresponded to Gjersten’s description.”

“It did. And it didn’t check with Merrill’s losing so much weight in that lifeboat. He’d lost about forty pounds. Threw our Identification Bureau off on their comparative height tables, too. We had pretty accurate measurements of Merrill.” He didn’t glance at Ellen. “Sections of the body that came out of the water didn’t slow any close comparison to those measurements. They were pretty close to what we knew about Gjersten.”

“The dead man might not be Ansel.” Barbara hung her head in what was intended to be a woe-begone manner. “But you’re just making another mistake if you claim it’s Merrill. Because Merrill wasn’t in Brooklyn. -He jumped off the yacht at Wall Street. Captain Cardiff saw him.”

Koski shook his head with a minimum of movement. “Cardiff made that error. Unassisted. He thought he saw Merrill. But he didn’t get a real look at him. Didn’t notice him until the Seavett was five or six feet out from the float. All he saw then was a man in a blue serge suit, sprawling on the float after jumping. It was night. It was foggy. And the suit was Merrill’s. But the man inside it must have been Ansel Gjersten.”