Free The Blind Barber by John Dickson Carr Page A

Peggy told him all about your accident at dinner. Now that I come to think of it, what she neglected to tell him was that you were supposedly taken to the infirmary. So he came to call on the wreck … ”
    “After—” shouted Captain Valvick excitedly—“after he hass persuaded de English duke to give him dat hemerald helephant, and he take it wit’ him to put in de safe … ”
    “Exactly. He glanced in your cabin, saw you weren’t there, went out, and— bang ,” Morgan reflected. “Besides, my lad, there’s another good reason why you can’t confess. The one thing we’ll be forced to report to him is that girl—the one in the cabin now—with a crack over the back of the head. You’ll certainly be in for it if you admit slugging the captain. To our friend Whistler’s forthright intelligence, the explanation would be simple. If one of your simple pleasures is to go about assaulting the skippers of ocean liners, then you would consider beaning his lady-passengers with a blackjack as only a kind of warming-up exercise. Especially as—Holy Mike!” Morgan stopped, stared, and then seized the rail again as the ship roared down. “Now that I remember it, our good Peggy informed the captain at dinner that she was afraid you suffered from bats in the belfry … ”
    “Oooo, I never did!” cried the girl, and undoubtedly believed it. “All I said was—”
    “Never mind, Baby,” said Warren, soothingly. “The point is, what’s to be done? We can’t stand here arguing, and we’re soaked to the skin. I’m pretty sure the old what-not didn’t recognise me, or any of us … ”
    “You’re positive of that?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “Well, then,” said Morgan, with a breath of relief, “the only thing to do is to shove the box inside his coat and leave him where he is. Every second we stay here we’re in danger of being spotted, and then—whaa! I—er—don’t suppose there’s any danger of his rolling overboard, is there?” he added, doubtfully.
    “Noooo, not a chance!” Captain Valvick assured him, with cheerful scorn. “He be all right where he iss. Ay fold him up against de bulkhead, Ha-ha-ha! Giff me de box, Miss Glenn. Ah, you shiver! You should not haf come out wi’out de coat. Now you giff me de box and go back where it iss warm. Dere iss not’ing to be afraid of now, because we haf—”
    “ Captain Whistler , sir!” cried a voice, almost directly above their heads.
    Morgan’s heart executed a somersault over a couple of rowdy lungs. He stared at the others, who were stricken silent, and stayed motionless without daring to look up. The voice seemed to have come from the top of the companionway to B deck, near which Warren and Valvick were standing. They were in shadow, but Morgan feared the worst. He glanced at Peggy, who was petrified, and who held the steel box like a bomb. He saw what was passing in her mind. She looked at the rail, as though she had a wild impulse to toss the box overboard, and he gestured a savage negative. Morgan felt something knocking at his ribs …
    “Captain Whistler, sir!” repeated the voice, more loudly. The sea battered back in answer. “I could’ve sworn,” the voice continued, in tones which Morgan recognised as belonging to the second officer, “I heard something down there. What’s happened to the old man, anyway? He said he’d be up … ” The rest of it was lost in the gale, until a second voice—it sounded like the ship’s doctor—said:
    “It sounded like a woman. I say, you don’t suppose the old man’s up to any funny business with the ladies, do you? Shall we go down?”
    Feet scuffled on the iron companion-ladder, but the second officer said: “Never mind. It might’ve been imagination. We’ll—”
    And then, to the horror of the little group by the glass enclosure, the captain’s corpse sat up.
    “!!!!¾½&£!?!?? ° ???” roared Captain Whistler—weakly it is true, and huskily, but with gathering volume as his sticky