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While Murder Waits
by Samuel Shellabarger
writing as John Esteven
Chapter 1
The Summons
From beginning to end, as Dr Miles Le Breton of the Department of Justice observed afterwards, the separate incidents of that case, which would be known to the newspaper public as “The Clearport Tragedies,” had a startling, violent and sinister character. They seemed to reflect in a dim fashion the savage forces of the natural setting in which they occurred — those sudden, incalculable moments which anyone acquainted with the sea has learned to know and fear.
His very induction into the case shared the same quality as the rest of it. It began alarmingly at night in the cabin of his small yacht, the Golden Rose; and from then on the action, sweeping him with it, ran a swift course to the final catastrophe.
He had spent a two weeks’ vacation along the Maine coast; and now, heading south again, had put into Clearport on the late afternoon of September fifth. The two men of his crew had been given shore leave to visit relatives in that section of the state; and Le Breton himself, after a quiet evening, had turned into his bunk at an early hour.
As those acquainted with Maine will agree, no more peaceful anchorage exists anywhere. The colonial village, haunted by memories of former vessels and captains in the great sailing days, broods over its deserted wharves; the harbor, once thronged with masts, incloses a few pleasure boats. It is all slumberous, reminiscent, a little dreamlike. He lay for a while luxuriously listening to the lapping of ripples against the sides of the ship, then drifted into a sound sleep.
It was out of this peace that he awakened suddenly to find himself staring into a face poised a few inches above him.
The face, chiseled by the lights and shadows of a lantern held to one side, looked like an animal’s — a flat, broken nose, scrubby beard, and intent beetle eyes peering from beneath the visor of a cap. These eyes, with a hunted spark in them, were peculiarly unpleasant. Two fleshy lips, half parted, showed the teeth.
Le Breton had sound nerves, but they tingled a little. What did the apparition mean? How had it gotten there? During the long second that he stared up into the beetle eyes, he felt completely helpless.
Then the lips began to move, and a voice growled something.
With a convulsive movement, he sat upright. The face jerked back.
“What do you want? What are you doing here?”
He could now make out a short, heavy figure that reeked of tobacco and sweat, standing with one knee on his bunk. Then, as consciousness took control again, he added, “What do you mean by breaking into my cabin?” “Because I was sent to fetch you. That’s why,” rumbled the voice. “And there ain’t no time to lose neither.”
There was something truculent in the remark that acted as a tonic.
“Is that so?” returned Le Breton, now completely master of himself, and eyeing the other. “We’re going to see about that in just one moment.” The stare, the tone of authority, and perhaps most of all the breadth of shoulder confronting the fellow had a marked effect.
“Begging your pardon,” he mumbled, “it was Capt’n’s orders. I had to find out whether you was a doctor.”
“Yes, I’m a doctor. What of it? What’s the trouble?”
The hunted look on the man’s face showed clearer than ever.
“It’s at the lighthouse,” he answered. “Capt’n Gleasing’s been took bad. Says it’s his heart. Told me to fetch you extra quick. Pretty well pulled my arms out on that dory gettin’ here.”
Things began to take on reality again. Just an emergency call. Then, remembering something, Le Breton looked at the man sharply.
“Lighthouse? What do you mean? The lighthouse is dismantled. Marked that way on the chart.”
“Sure,” agreed the other. “Capt’n bought it off the government when he retired couple of years back. Been living there since — me and him.” “How did he know I was a doctor?”
“I told him. Looked your pennant up in the book when you put in this afternoon: ‘Golden Rose. Owner: Doctor Miles Le Breton, Noo York.’ ”
These answers were plausible enough. The government had been disposing of unwanted lighthouses on the coast. Registry and ownership of the Rose stood in the yachting book. But for all that the doctor demurred. It was one thing to answer a call for help; it was another to walk into a fool’s trap. As an officer of the Department of Justice his career would not have been quite as successful if he had made no enemies in certain quarters. To be noted was the fact that this call had arrived on just the night when his two men were away, their single night off during the cruise. Moreover, it had to be borne in mind that an apparently well-to-do owner of a yacht, known to be alone on board, might be worth a snatch. Besides, there was another queer angle to the business.
“Why didn’t you call on one of the Clearport doctors?” he asked. “There must be several here.”
The man hesitated. “You was the nearest,” he mumbled. “Warn’t no time to lose. The capt’n . . . well, he don’t want no Clearport doctors buttin’ in out there nohow. He is a little strange in the head sometimes, is the capt’n, a little strange.” The fellow tapped his forehead. “Onreasonable, you might call it,” he added.
Le Breton got up, a well-built, athletic figure, his six-foot-one of height towering above the other’s squatness.
“So that’s how it is?” he observed. “What’s your name?”
“Hodge — Gideon Hodge, sir.”
“Well, Hodge, I’m not keen about this trip.”
“If it’s the pay,” interrupted the man eagerly, “don’t take no thought to that. The capt’n’s got dough enough. He’ll fix it right. He’s a sick man, Doctor. For Gawd’s sake, don’t go turnin’ him down!”
“What are the symptoms?”
“Says it’s like a knife in his heart — in and out, he says. Brings the sweat to his face. Honest, sir, it ain’t no joke with him.”
Le Breton weakened. “Angina,” he thought. And aloud, “All right, let’s go.”
Dressing hurriedly, he unhooked his medicine case from the wardrobe and made sure of its contents. Then he drew on a reefer, for the early September night was cool; and last of all, with a significance meant for Hodge, he slipped an automatic into his pocket.
The man grinned. “That’s O.K.,” he approved. “You won’t need it, but don’t take no chances. Used to tote one myself regular in the old days.”
He was a curious type, thought Miles. It occurred to him suddenly that if Hodge’s nondescript clothes were transformed into the seaman’s dress of two hundred years ago, he would have looked at home in them. The names Barbados and Cartagena crossed his mind. In spite of the unmistakable Maine twang, something foreign clung to the fellow. But if there was a touch of the bear about him, there was at least nothing of the rat.
“What old days?” queried the doctor, testing his pocket lamp.
“Oh, down Tampico way.”
But as he added nothing to this, Le Breton motioned him out. “After you, Hodge, if you please.” Then he locked both his cabin and the aftercompanionway to the deck. There would be no more visitors in his absence.
He found that the fog had rolled in since evening — not a blind fog, but thickish. A few wet lights from the village splashed the mist; there was a diffusion of moonlight overhead, and the mass of a couple of near-lying yachts stood out; but the waterfront of the old-fashioned shipping town had disappeared. He could have done without that fog. It seemed to fit in with the other elements of the piece: solitary lighthouse, indefinite sick man, and the piratical veteran of Tampico. Beneath them, a dory nuzzled against the hull of the Rose.
“Get in,” he said, “I’ll cast off the painter.”
They had become ghosts to each other, dimly visible in the rays of the lantern. He lowered himself into the stern of the dory with a curious sense of stepping down into the current of the future. From somewhere in the fog, a village clock struck eleven.
