CHAPTER VIII
DR. CUSTRIN
It was not until dinner that evening that I had the opportunity of meeting Dr. Custrin. The Naomi was steaming along in the gorgeous pageantry of sunset and the warm glow of the dying day was warring with the soft lights of the electric candles on the dinner-table when I came into the saloon.
Garth introduced me to the doctor. He was a sleek, smooth young man with hair like black satin and a beautifully trained small black moustache. His hands and feet were small and well-made, and there would have been a touch of effeminacy about him but for his otherwise manly bearing, his bold, black eyes and a firm, pleasant voice. A certain narrowness of the eyes and a curl of the nostrils told me, who have an eye for such things, that, probably, as his name indicated, he was of Jewish extraction. In conversation I elicited that he had been born in Mauritius, educated at Cape Town, and had taken his degree at King's College Hospital in London. Garth's New York office, it appeared, had picked him up at Colon, where he was studying Colonel Goethals's wonderful arrangements for the extermination of yellow fever and malaria.
Lawless and Mackay, the chief engineer, a sententious Scot, who only opened his mouth to utter a platitude or to put food or drink in it, dined with us. Garth made me sit next to Marjorie, who looked ravishing in a white lace evening frock.
“Put the two war veterans together!” the baronet commanded. “My little girl here,” he explained to me, “drove a car at the front. She has the Military Medal.”
“Daddy!” expostulated Marjorie, and a warm flush coloured her cheeks.
“I would never have given my consent,” Garth added, “but she just didn't ask me for it!”
“My dear old thing,” said the girl. “You make me look ridiculous by bragging about my silly little trips around the bases when I'm sure Dr. Custrin or Major Okewood saw a hundred times more of the war than I ever did!”
“I never got out of the base at the Gape,” said the doctor. “The East African campaign kept us too busy for any one to be spared.”
“And I,” was my retort, “never went back to France after the Somme!”
“Were you wounded?” asked Garth.
“Badly?” questioned Marjorie in reply to my nod.
“Nothing to write home about,” I answered. “When I came out of hospital, I went into the Intelligence.”
“How fearfully thrilling!” exclaimed the girl. “Wasn't it frightfully exciting?”
“It wasn't the front!” I replied.
After dinner on the deck, under a vast span of velvet sky spangled with stars, I found myself alone with Marjorie Garth. A broad band of yellow light shone out from the smoke-room, where the others sat and talked over their coffee. Above us on the bridge the form of the man at the wheel bulked black.
We strolled up and down in silence. For myself I was quite overcome by the majesty of the tropical night at sea.
“The Intelligence,” asked Marjorie suddenly, “that's the Secret Service, isn't it?”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“You were very modest about it at dinner,” she remarked.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“I only stated the plain truth,” I returned. “In the fighting troops, remember, every fifth man became a casualty and three months was the average run of the platoon officer!”
“Yet,” commented the girl, “you seem like a man who has been in tight places. I shouldn't say to look at you that you've had a placid or easy existence. Like mine, for instance. Sometimes I think it's only men of action like you who know how to grapple with life. Can you imagine me in an emergency, for instance?”
“Yes,” I said, “I believe I can. You've got a brave eye, Miss Garth. I think one can judge people's temperaments, as you judge horses', by the eye.”
She shook her head and laughed.
“What does this sort of life teach anybody? This beautiful ship, these well-trained sailors, the splendid service that Daddy's money can buy? My dear man, it's no good flattering me about my brave eye. Money makes a sordid barrier between my life and any really thrilling crisis! I shall be kept in cotton-wool till the end of the chapter.”
“What a strange person you are!” I exclaimed. “Girls of your age with your position and your ... your ... attractions don't find time for philosophizing as a rule. You ought to be enjoying your youth instead of meditating about life. I don't mean to be inquisitive; but ... are you very unhappy?”
We had halted near the rail. We were standing very close together and I felt the touch of her warm young body against my arm.
She turned and looked at me. Again I told myself that this girl was the most beautiful, the most unspoiled creature I had ever met.
“I've only once been thoroughly happy,” she answered rather wistfully, “and that was when I was with the army in France. I loved the romance, the adventure of it all, the good comradeship, not only between the women, but also between the men and the women. Money wasn't everything then. I was an individual with my own personality, my own friends. But what am I now? The daughter of Garth, the millionaire. And they print my picture in the weekly papers because one day I shall have a great deal of money which Daddy has worked all his life to make. I've never had any brothers and sisters, and my mother has been dead for years. I've had to live my whole life with money as my companion. And money's not a bit companionable!”
She smiled whimsically at me, then gazed down abstractedly at the phosphorescent water thumping against the side of the ship.
“This yacht!—” she went on. “I have everything a girl could possibly require here—everything except my freedom!”
“Good Lord!” I observed, “you'll have that, too, when you marry! You've got plenty of time for that!”
Marjorie Garth laughed.
“My dear man,” she protested, “don't you know it's easier to marry off a girl with no money than one who will have as much as I shall? To Daddy every young man I meet is a fortune-hunter. If I run a boy home from the golf-club in my car, I am cross-questioned regarding his 'intentions'; if a man takes me out dancing in the afternoon, there's a scene. And Daddy's taste in men is vile; I'm not alluding to you—I mean at home! But I've no use for the second generation of millionaires and I've told Daddy so. I'd rather marry a beggar than some of the rich men's sons he tries to throw in my way...”
Lucky beggar, thought I.
“I don't know why I've told you all this,” the girl concluded. “You seem to draw me out. Or perhaps it's the night. Oh, look! Wish!”
A star fell gleaming across the sky.
“I have,” said I (it was one of those idle wishes which a poor man must not even admit to himself).
“Was it about your trip to Cock Island?”
“I'll lose my wish if I tell!” I replied. “As a matter of fact, it was not!”
Suddenly she put a warm soft hand on mine. Her touch made my heart beat faster.
“Is it a Secret Service mission?” she asked.
Caution is second nature to a man who has served his apprenticeship in the silent Corps. In that balmy air, beneath a brilliant moon hanging like some great lamp in the sky, it was hard to refuse a woman's pleading, especially a girl like this, bending forward with sparkling eyes and parted lips so close to me that I could detect the fragrance of her hair. I put my other hand over hers as it rested on mine on the rail.
“You can trust me,” she pleaded. “I am sure there is something mysterious about your trip to this tiny island. I know you are not going on Government survey” (this was the pretext which Garth had given out for my visit to Cock Island), “for the Navy always do that sort of work. Tell me your secret!”
I had to catch hold of myself, for she was almost irresistible. I looked away from her, steeling myself to a refusal.
What I might have done I cannot say, for what man can account for actions performed under the magic of the tropical moon? But at that moment my nostrils detected the scent of a cigarette quite close.
I glanced quickly round. To all appearances we were alone. Behind us the white smokestack of the Naomi reared itself into the night: on either hand the deck was quite deserted: the only human being visible was the black form of the man at the wheel silhouetted against the faint glow of the binnacle light. But the acrid fragrance of Turkish tobacco stole up my nostrils and the possibility of a listener within earshot brought me swiftly back to earth.
“I'm afraid there's no mystery about my little jaunt,” said I, turning to the girl, “you know all there is to know!”
I spoke as nonchalantly as possible. But I would not meet the reproachful gaze she turned upon me. Then she snatched her hand away.
“I'm afraid you must think me horribly inquisitive!” she observed coldly.
There was a footstep on the deck. Dr. Custrin stood behind us. Between his fingers a cigarette sent up a little spiral of blue smoke; across his arm he carried a shining silver wrap.
“Sir Alexander asked me to tell you to put this round your shoulders,” he said to Marjorie, and unfolded the silver scarf. “The wind is freshening.”
The girl drew the wrap about her shoulders. The doctor looked at the two of us.
“What a wonderful night!” he remarked. “In these latitudes the moon seems to exercise a strange influence upon us. For example, your father has been telling me the whole story of his early life, Miss Garth, and I believe I have been unbosoming my aspirations and ambitions to him. But confidences under the moon one is apt to regret in the morning, eh, Major?”
He spoke perfectly suavely and with no trace of impertinence in his manner. But there was a hint of a double meaning in his words (which clearly indicated that he had overheard, at any rate, the end of our conversation) that jarred on me.
“You need have no fears about Major Okewood,” replied Marjorie with just the faintest touch of scorn in her voice. “I'm sure he is the pattern of discretion. I think,” she added, “I am feeling the tiniest bit chilly. You promised to play for us, Doctor. Won't you come into the saloon? There is a piano there!”
Her gaze travelled proudly past me as she turned to Custrin. She made it as clear as was compatible with the laws of hospitality that her invitation did not include me. It was her woman's way of getting her own back. I loved her for it, but I took a violent dislike to Custrin.
I mumbled some excuse about having to go to the chartroom, and they left me. Presently from the saloon came the rhythmic strains of the “Rosen-Kavalier,” most sensual, most entrancing of all Strauss's music, played with a master-hand. The “Liebestod,” Grieg, Massenet's “Air des Larmes,” Schumann—Custrin ran from one to another while the Naomi stolidly thumped her way through the hissing sea. And always, curse his impudence! the fellow played love music...
One by one members of the crew drifted to the head of the companionway until there was quite a company of them outlined against the yellow light that shone up from the cosy saloon. I remained leaning against the rail, my chin on my chest, my pipe in my mouth, and let my thoughts drift ... Adams coughing over his pannikin, John Bard, his honest face troubled, looking round that house of death, the yellow-faced Vice-Consul pulling on his black cigar.
But always I found my mind harking back to the ungainly silhouette framed in the doorway of the hut and to the sinister echo of his footsteps in the yard as the stranger turned his back on the scene of slaughter which, I doubted not, had been of his contriving. What had the Vice-Consul said? “His power is tremendous, his vengeance swift and terrible!” Who was this lame man whom nobody saw, yet whom everybody feared? There was something of the insistence of a nightmare in the way in which the glimpse I had had of him hung in my thoughts, confounding itself with the ineffaceable image of that club-footed man whom I had seen fall lifeless—how many years ago it seemed now!—before my brother's smoking automatic.
Well, whoever El Cojo was, Mexican or South American, I was out of his clutches now. The rail of the Naomi, quivering beneath my hand to the leap of the seas, gave me confidence. I knocked the ashes out of my pipe and went below.