The Man in the Brown Suit, Agatha Christie [free e novels TXT] 📗

of it. I saved your life and I’m waiting for you to say ‘Thank you.’ ”

If looks could have killed, I think he would have liked to kill me then. He pushed roughly past me. At the door he turned back, and spoke over his shoulder.

“I shall not thank you⁠—now or at any other time. But I acknowledge the debt. Some day I will pay it.”

He was gone, leaving me with clenched hands, and my heart beating like a mill race.

XI

There were no further excitements that night. I had breakfast in bed and got up late the next morning. Mrs. Blair hailed me as I came on deck.

“Good morning, gipsy girl, sit down here by me. You look as though you hadn’t slept well.”

“Why do you call me that?” I asked, as I sat down obediently.

“Do you mind? It suits you somehow. I’ve called you that in my own mind from the beginning. It’s the gipsy element in you that makes you so different from anyone else. I decided in my own mind that you and Colonel Race were the only two people on board who wouldn’t bore me to death to talk to.”

“That’s funny,” I said, “I thought the same about you⁠—only it’s more understandable in your case. You’re⁠—you’re such an exquisitely finished product.”

“Not badly put,” said Mrs. Blair, nodding her head. “Tell me all about yourself, gipsy girl. Why are you going to South Africa?”

I told her something about Papa’s life work.

“So you’re Charles Beddingfeld’s daughter? I thought you weren’t a mere provincial miss! Are you going to Broken Hill to grub up more skulls?”

“I may,” I said cautiously. “I’ve got other plans as well.”

“What a mysterious minx you are. But you do look tired this morning. Didn’t you sleep well? I can’t keep awake on board a boat. Ten hours’ sleep for a fool, they say! I could do with twenty!”

She yawned, looking like a sleepy kitten. “An idiot of a steward woke me up in the middle of the night to return me that roll of films I dropped yesterday. He did it in the most melodramatic manner, stuck his arm through the ventilator and dropped them nearly in the middle of my tummy. I thought it was a bomb for a moment!”

“Here’s your colonel,” I said, as the tall soldierly figure of Colonel Race appeared on the deck.

“He’s not my colonel particularly. In fact he admires you very much, gipsy girl. So don’t run away.”

“I want to tie something round my head. It will be more comfortable than a hat.”

I slipped quickly away. For some reason or other I was uncomfortable with Colonel Race. He was one of the few people who were capable of making me feel shy.

I went down to my cabin and began looking for a broad band of ribbon, or a motor-veil, with which I could restrain my rebellious locks. Now I am a tidy person, I like my things always arranged in a certain way and I keep them so. I had no sooner opened my drawer than I realized that somebody had been disarranging my things. Everything had been turned over and scattered. I looked in the other drawers and the small hanging cupboard. They told me the same tale. It was as though someone had been making a hurried and ineffectual search for something.

I sat down on the edge of the bunk with a grave face. Who had been searching my cabin and what had they been looking for? Was it the half-sheet of paper with scribbled figures and words? I shook my head, dissatisfied. Surely that was past history now. But what else could there be?

I wanted to think. The events of last night, though exciting, had not really done anything to elucidate matters. Who was the young man who had burst into my cabin so abruptly? I had not seen him on board previously, either on deck or in the saloon. Was he one of the ship’s company or was he a passenger? Who had stabbed him? Why had they stabbed him? And why, in the name of goodness, should cabin no. 17 figure so prominently? It was all a mystery, but there was no doubt that some very peculiar occurrences were taking place on the Kilmorden Castle.

I counted off on my fingers the people on whom it behoved me to keep a watch.

Setting aside my visitor of the night before, but promising myself that I would discover him on board before another day had passed, I selected the following persons as worthy of my notice.

(1) Sir Eustace Pedler. He was the owner of the Mill House and his presence on the Kilmorden Castle seemed something of a coincidence.

(2) Mr. Pagett, the sinister-looking secretary, whose eagerness to obtain cabin 17 had been so very marked. N.B. Find out whether he had accompanied Sir Eustace to Cannes.

(3) The Rev. Edward Chichester. All I had against him was his obstinacy over cabin 17, and that might be entirely due to his own peculiar temperament. Obstinacy can be an amazing thing.

But a little conversation with Mr. Chichester would not come amiss, I decided. Hastily tying a handkerchief round my rebellious locks, I went up on deck again, full of purpose. I was in luck. My quarry was leaning against the rail, drinking beef tea. I went up to him.

“I hope you’ve forgiven me over cabin 17,” I said, with my best smile.

“I consider it unchristian to bear a grudge,” said Mr. Chichester coldly. “But the purser had distinctly promised me that cabin.”

“Pursers are such busy men, aren’t they?” I said vaguely. “I suppose they’re bound to forget sometimes.”

Mr. Chichester did not reply.

“Is this your first visit to Africa?” I inquired conversationally.

“To South Africa, yes. But I have worked for the last two years amongst the cannibal tribes in the interior of East Africa.”

“How thrilling! Have you had many narrow escapes?”

“Escapes?”

“Of being eaten, I mean?”

“You should not treat sacred subjects with levity, Miss Beddingfeld.”

“I didn’t know that cannibalism was a