"I thought I recognized him. I lay at anchor in a ship next to his in Table Bay that time ago.""Oh, the wickedness of the world, the wickedness of the world," Mr.
Pike muttered as he turned and strode away.
I said good-night to the second mate and had started to go below, when he called to me in a low voice, "Mr. Pathurst!"I stopped, and then he said, hurriedly and confusedly:
"Never mind, sir . . . I beg your pardon . . . I--I changed my mind."Below, lying in my bunk, I found myself unable to read. My mind was bent on returning to what had just occurred on deck, and, against my will, the most gruesome speculations kept suggesting themselves.
And then came Mr. Mellaire. He had slipped down the booby hatch into the big after-room and thence through the hallway to my room. He entered noiselessly, on clumsy tiptoes, and pressed his finger warningly to his lips. Not until he was beside my bunk did he speak, and then it was in a whisper.
"I beg your pardon, sir, Mr. Pathurst . . . I--I beg your pardon;but, you see, sir, I was just passing, and seeing you awake I . . . Ithought it would not inconvenience you to . . . you see, I thought Imight just as well prefer a small favour . . . seeing that I would not inconvenience you, sir . . . I . . . I . . . "I waited for him to proceed, and in the pause that ensued, while he licked his dry lips with his tongue, the thing ambushed in his skull peered at me through his eyes and seemed almost on the verge of leaping out and pouncing upon me.
"Well, sir," he began again, this time more coherently, "it's just a little thing--foolish on my part, of course--a whim, so to say--but you will remember, near the beginning of the voyage, I showed you a scar on my head . . . a really small affair, sir, which I contracted in a misadventure. It amounts to a deformity, which it is my fancy to conceal. Not for worlds, sir, would I care to have Miss West, for instance, know that I carried such a deformity. A man is a man, sir--you understand--and you have not spoken of it to her?""No," I replied. "It just happens that I have not.""Nor to anybody else?--to, say, Captain West?--or, say, Mr. Pike?""No, I haven't mentioned it to anybody," I averred.
He could not conceal the relief he experienced. The perturbation went out of his face and manner, and the ambushed thing drew back deeper into the recess of his skull.
"The favour, sir, Mr. Pathurst, that I would prefer is that you will not mention that little matter to anybody. I suppose" (he smiled, and his voice was superlatively suave) "it is vanity on my part--you understand, I am sure."I nodded, and made a restless movement with my book as evidence that I desired to resume my reading.
"I can depend upon you for that, Mr. Pathurst?" His whole voice and manner had changed. It was practically a command, and I could almost see fangs, bared and menacing, sprouting in the jaws of that thing Ifancied dwelt behind his eyes.
"Certainly," I answered coldly.
"Thank you, sir--I thank you," he said, and, without more ado, tiptoed from the room.
Of course I did not read. How could I? Nor did I sleep. My mind ran on, and on, and not until the steward brought my coffee, shortly before five, did I sink into my first doze.
One thing is very evident. Mr. Pike does not dream that the murderer of Captain Somers is on board the Elsinore. He has never glimpsed that prodigious fissure that clefts Mr. Mellaire's, or, rather, Sidney Waltham's, skull. And I, for one, shall never tell Mr. Pike.
And I know, now, why from the very first I disliked the second mate.
And I understand that live thing, that other thing, that lurks within and peers out through the eyes. I have recognized the same thing in the three gangsters for'ard. Like the second mate, they are prison birds. The restraint, the secrecy, and iron control of prison life has developed in all of them terrible other selves.
Yes, and another thing is very evident. On board this ship, driving now through the South Atlantic for the winter passage of Cape Horn, are all the elements of sea tragedy and horror. We are freighted with human dynamite that is liable at any moment to blow our tiny floating world to fragments.
