The Brass Chills Read online

  It was.

  “I want you to know that there’s a submarine here in the dry dock, waiting for you to repair battle damage. It’s the USS Seahorse. Some of you helped to build her in Portsmouth. At the first streak of daylight you’ve got to cover every inch of the set-up here. It isn’t like anything you’ve ever seen before. You’ll have to examine your equipment; get it in working order. Some of your tools and machines may not be unloaded till tomorrow night, but there’ll be plenty for you to do. Commander Wasdell, the Seahorse’s skipper, is anxious to get back with the fleet.”

  “What’s the biggest job, sir?” Ed Winthrop asked.

  “Her port torpedo tubes are smashed and must be replaced,” Cleave said. “That’s your main manufacturing job.”

  There was a silence. I saw Bill glance up from the bench where he sat, his eyes bright. Casting the tubes was his department.

  “You men should get bedded down,” Cleave said. “I’ll have you escorted to your quarters unless you’ve some questions.”

  Ed Winthrop stepped forward, polishing his spectacles, within an inch of their life. “There are two things, sir. The men, here, have expressed the wish that I take over Jed’s job.”

  “That’s exactly as I should want it, Mr. Winthrop,” Cleave said.

  “Thank you, sir. And second, what about Regan?”

  Bradley’s teeth clamped down on his pipe stem. He answered when Cleave nodded to him. “What about Regan?”

  “You going to turn him loose, Lieutenant?”

  Bill’s mouth drew down in a sardonic smile. “Haven’t you got a nice, comfortable jail, Bradley?”

  Bradley let that pass. “You want him and Miss James placed under arrest, Mr. Winthrop?”

  “That’s about it, sir,” Ed said unhappily. The others murmured in agreement. “I know it’s not an airtight case against them.” He carefully avoided looking at Bill or Jess. “But we just can’t run risks, sir. We understand the Ship is to put in tomorrow night for a final unloading. Perhaps they can be sent back to the States aboard her.”

  Bill was on his feet. “Sent back!” he said. “I came out here to do a job, Ed, and I’m not going to be railroaded on a lousy frame-up!”

  “Frame-up!” Big Joe’s voice shook with anger. “What were you doing outside Jed’s door, then? What were you doing outside the sick-bay the night Dr. Walker was poisoned?”

  “I was never outside Jed’s door,” Bill said. “You guys fascists, condemning us without proof? Someone’s trying to drive you all haywire and they’re succeeding.”

  “Bill, we can’t take chances,” Ed Winthrop said. “There are men in your crew who can handle your end. Maybe it is unfair. But while there’s doubts …”

  “There are no doubts!” Joe Adams said.

  “But you are taking chances!” Bill said. “If there were men on my crew who know how to mould and cast those torpedo tubes as well as I do, I wouldn’t be boss! It’s not a routine, mechanical proposition, and you damn well know it, Ed. Sure, I’ve got the boys who know how hot the metal has to be, and what the specifications for a section are. But bossing the job is something else. It’s like delivering a child! You got to nurse it, just the way Miss James has to nurse a patient. You got to sense it. You got to feel it in your bones. You want to get the Seahorse back into action quick, don’t you?”

  “It would be better for it to take longer,” said Ed, “and not be wondering all the time.”

  “You self-righteous rats!” Bill blazed. “You’ll send us away from a job we know how to do, just to make yourselves feel good. How will you feel, after we’re gone, and this murderer shows his hand again?”

  “Explain those cigarette butts!” said Joe Adams.

  “How the hell can I? I didn’t drop them there. That’s the only explanation there is.”

  “I’d like to say something about those butts,” said Bradley quietly. “There were six of them. They were all smoked down to the end. Have you any idea, gentlemen, how long that would take?”

  “Quite a while,” said Ed.

  “An hour or more,” Bradley said. “Let’s suppose Regan was lying about being with Miss James. We have to assume that, if he stood outside Quartermayne’s cabin and dropped those butts, Mr. Wells was looking for Miss James. He undoubtedly investigated that passage. Right, Chris?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “And Quartermayne himself didn’t go back to his cabin till about a half an hour before we found him. That means Regan had to do a lot of ducking back and forth in that, hour to avoid being seen. And each time he ducked, he came back in time to drop his cigarette stub in a neat little pile. He’d almost have to have planned it on purpose.”

  “You mean you think it’s a plant?” Adams demanded.

  “Mercy,” said Bradley, “I thought I’d made that clear.”

  III

  The faces of those six leadermen were a study. If Bradley cleared Bill, then the possibility of guilt was thrown right back at them. Ed Winthrop wanted to believe in Bill. I could see that. I think Tubby Garms and McCoy were ready to give him a break. Big Joe was stubbornly unconvinced, scowling. Lew Lewis and the Scotchman were undecided.

  “I wouldn’t dream of handing this kind of a case to a district attorney,” Bradley said. “I’d get fired! But, Regan, Winthrop’s right. The situation here is different. We can’t run risks. If there’s even vague suspicion, we’ve got to watch our step. I just want you all to realize I’m not convinced. You’re all still on my list.”

  “And all on mine,” Bill said.

  Cleave took hold again at that point. “You men are being quartered together as you were on shipboard. I’ll have you taken to your cabins now. You all need rest. We can’t afford to fall down on the job here, no matter where suspicions fall. But we can keep alert and report anything out of the way to Lieutenant Bradley. Oh, and one more thing. There’s an alarm siren here on the Island. Three short blasts, repeated three times, means enemy air raid. Two short blasts, attack by sea. One long blast, accident in one of the shops. Got that?”

  Sergeant O’Rourk began taking the men off in pairs to their quarters. Bradley called me aside.

  “You’re still quartered with Regan, Chris,” he said.

  “So what?” I said.

  “I wouldn’t jump at conclusions about him or about Miss James.”

  “Why should I?”

  He gave me a wry smile. “Don’t try to kid me. I know how you’re feeling about now.”

  “I didn’t come out here for my health,” I said. “There’s a job to do and I’m going to do it.”

  “Good man,” he said. “But if I were you I’d talk it out with the gal before I let it blight my life.”

  “You go to your church and I’ll go to mine,” I said sourly.

  He put his hand on my shoulder. “Stick around,” he said. “We’re going to have to do a little figuring.”

  It was about twenty minutes later that O’Rourk told Cleave everyone was set. There were five of us left in the mess hall, not counting the invisible women in the kitchen — Cleave, Bradley, Alec Walker, O’Rourk and I.

  Cleave looked older than he had that first night on the Ship. He sat at the head of one of the long tables, and for a moment covered his hot, tired eyes with his hands. We all gathered around him — all but O’Rourk, who stood at stiff attention.

  “Sit down, man, sit down,” Cleave said, when he looked up and saw him.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Cleave took a cigarette from a package he’d tossed on the table and lit it. His hands weren’t very steady. “This is the damnedest situation I’ve found myself in during twenty-five years in the service. I’m stumped, gentlemen. We’ve taken every precaution I can think of, and yet we’re not safe!”

  “Far from it,” said Alec Walker. He looked at Bradley. “Don’t misunderstand what I’m going to say, Red. I’ve watched you at work on this case, and I’ve been amazed at your thoroughness. Having been a research dentist, I k
now something about thoroughness. But don’t you think you’re leaning over backward in the matter of evidence?”

  “How so?” Bradley said.

  “You spoke of not having a case against Regan that you’d turn over to a district attorney. That may be true, Red. But can we afford to wait until you have the case all wrapped, up in tissue paper with silver ribbons and Christmas seals?”

  Bradley began the slow, automatic business of stuffing his pipe from the oilskin pouch. “Can you think of any reason,” he asked, “why Regan should want to draw attention to himself?”

  “I don’t get it,” Alec said.

  “Because he didn’t stand outside Quartermayne’s door for a solid hour. We know that. Those cigarette butts were planted. Why would Regan plant them?”

  “Maybe you have it figured wrong,” Alec said. “Figure it some other way,” Bradley said. “Do you think Chris is trying to shield a murderer?”

  “Good God, no!” Alec said. “But I don’t see … ”

  “Chris was in that corridor knocking On Miss James’s door. Regan was inside the cabin then. Or, if you don’t believe that, he was hidden somewhere. He was not in the corridor because Chris would have seen him. Chris was looking for him. No, Alec. Regan didn’t stand outside the door long enough to smoke six cigarettes. And I’m perfectly certain he didn’t try to frame himself.”

  “Then who?”

  “Mercy, Alec, that’s the whole problem, isn’t it?”

  “‘You don’t think perhaps he and the girl were in it together?”

  Bradley smiled wearily. “Alec, Miss James saved your life on that ship. If she’d delayed five minutes you’d have been dead. If the murderer’s object was to panic this outfit I can’t think of a better way to polish you off. With no doctor and a poisoner running around loose …” He spread his big hands. “It would scare hell out of me!”

  “If we ship them home,” Cleave said.

  “If you ship them home, sir, any last chance of proving their guilt will be gone. And if they aren’t guilty, the murderer will be chuckling up his sleeve and waiting to strike again, probably at another key man.”

  Cleave banged his fist on the table, “God damn it, Bradley, what are we going to do?”

  “Did you ever sit in a duck blind, sir? Freezing to death, miserable? All you do is wait … and float your decoys out into plain view.”

  “Decoys?”

  “Professional secret, sir,” Bradley said, his eyes twinkling. “I don’t want to depend on your acting ability.”

  “There’s one thing I can suggest, sir,” Alec said. “We found aspirin tablets, bicarbonate, all sorts of simple medicines in the men’s belongings. They’re probably quite harmless. I suggest you order them all turned in, however. I’ll issue new medicines from my own stores to the men. That way we’ll eliminate one more possibility. Simpler than making an analysis of everything. That’d take all winter.”

  Cleave glanced at Bradley.

  “I approve,” Bradley said, “but I won’t sleep any better. If the poisoner got his stuff ashore, it’s not going to be found so simply. I wish I thought so.”

  “You can’t suggest any scientific method of search?” Cleave asked,

  “We’ve done all there is to do, sir,” Bradley said. “We can’t search under every individual palm leaf on the Island!”

  “Do you think there’s any chance our man may not have been able to get his poison ashore?”

  “There’s a chance, if you like to play hundred-to-one shots, sir.”

  Cleave shook his head, then turned to me. “In your opinion, Mr. Wells, are the men definitely convinced that Regan and Miss James are guilty?”

  “No, sir. Adams is convinced, the others are on the fence.”

  “Then you don’t think force of opinion will drive us to act at once?”

  “Not tonight,” I said. “Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not for weeks. But if it ever does crystallize, sir — well, these men are bound together tighter than any union could ever tie them.”

  Cleave crushed out his cigarette. “Then there’s nothing to do but go on as we are and pray that you get something solid, Bradley.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Bradley said.

  “Is there any way I can help, sir?” O’Rourk asked.

  “You’ve got less than a full company of men here, O’Rourk. It’s not half enough to guard against attack from the outside. That’s your responsibility. We’ll have to handle this other ourselves.” Cleave stood up. “We all need what little rest we can get, gentlemen. If you’ll show us to our quarters, O’Rourk.”

  We all went out with O’Rourk. Cleave was dropped off first after we’d gone a short way over a rocky patch of ground. Alec was next.

  “Good luck, you two,” he said, and disappeared into another dark frame building. I was next. O’Rourk explained there were permanent blackout coverings over the windows of the shacks. We could show a light, a kerosene lamp, on the inside. We were never to touch the coverings. They would be removed in the morning to air out the place and put back at dusk by the marines under his command. Keeping the Island blacked out was his job.

  “You and Regan are quartered here, sir,” he said to me. I noticed a marine standing watch outside the shack. They might not be going to arrest Bill, but they weren’t taking any chances.

  Bradley patted my shoulder. “Things may make more sense after you’ve had some sleep.”

  “For God sake, stop pampering me,” I said.

  “Sorry, Chris.” He turned away.

  I wanted to stop him, but I didn’t. The truth was I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I’ve been that way ever since I was a kid. If I got banged up, somehow I wanted to be by myself. I went into the shack. It was a dingy two-room affair with a toilet and shower. Somehow, no matter how wild the country, Americans always manage to install the comforts of life at the first opportunity.

  A kerosene lamp hung from the center of the room on a chain pulley. Bill had been sitting on the edge of the bed in the first room. He stood up as I came in. His hair looked bleached, almost white, in the lamplight. His hands hung limply at his sides.

  “Well, get it over with,” he said.

  “What?” I said.

  “You’ve been wanting to put the slug on me for the last three hours. Go ahead.”

  “Don’t be a sap,” I said.

  He reached in his shirt pocket for a cigarette. “I wouldn’t have used that alibi, Chris. It was Jess’s doing.”

  “If it’s true,” I said angrily, “why shouldn’t you use it? You were about to be charged with murder.”

  “Jess is a swell girl,” he said.

  “You ought to know,” I said.

  His eyes narrowed, and I saw a muscle twitch along the side of his jaw. “I’m disappointed in you, Chris. I got the idea that when the blue chips were down you could be counted on.”

  “My real name is Dick Rover,” I said. “Ever gallant, ever polite.”

  He dropped down on the cot and rolled over, facing the wall. I puttered around, separating my duffel from his, then took the lamp and went into the other room. I blew out the lamp and lay down without bothering to undress.

  The partition was paper thin. I could hear Bill tossing and turning. I heard a match strike and presently got a whiff of cigarette smoke. It was hot, stifling, and the mattress felt like the best brand of Missouri corn-cobs. I kept telling myself that this was war. To hell with copper-red hair! To hell with smiling, golden-boy communists.

  It was easy to say, but it did nothing to help the tight, constricted feeling in my throat. I tossed and turned and finally went off into something that passed for sleep.

  IV

  I woke up with somebody shaking hell out of me. It was one of O’Rourk’s boys. It seems they didn’t have any bugler sounding reveille. The sound might carry for miles out over the ocean and reach the ears of some Jap submarine commander who was at the surface charging his batteries.

  I doused my head in cold wa
ter, shaved, brushed my teeth and went into the next room. Bill got up from where he was sitting on the edge of his cot.

  “I waited for you,” he said. “I assume you’re supposed to be keeping an eye on me.”

  “It seems I overlooked that at the crucial moment,” I said.

  We set out for the mess hall. It was just after four in the morning. A gray light revealed the Island for the first time. I looked around, a little bewildered. There didn’t seem to be anything in sight but rocks, and sand, and trees. I knew the mess hall wasn’t far from our cabin, but I couldn’t spot it at first. And by the time I did see it, sheltered under an overhang of rock and jungle growth, I could no longer see the cabin. The canvas curtains around the porch of the mess hall had been drawn back, the windows opened. We went in. The place was crowded. Breakfast was being served at the far end, cafeteria fashion, by Mrs. O’Rourk and a half-dozen other Filipino women.

  Bill and I separated. I got myself some hot cereal and a cup of coffee and sat down at one of the long tables. I’d just gotten started when Bradley came over. He hadn’t done much sleeping either, from the tired look of his eyes.

  “Don’t tell me you two guys didn’t have a heart-to-heart talk,” he said.

  “Will you please, for God’s sake, forget about my love life!”

  His steady gray eyes met mine, and I realized he hadn’t intended to rib me. “Your love life, as you call it, is very important to me, Chris. I don’t know whether you realize it or not, but Regan and Miss James are not in a nice spot. You pointed out yourself last night that this gang of men, if they ever decided to act together, could force our hand. If we refused to act as they want us to, and nerves grow any tighter … well, it might be just too bad.”

  “What are you driving at?”

  “Men with a common cause have a way of taking the law into their own hands if they don’t think it’s functioning properly for them.”

  He let it ride there, but I had an unpleasantly vivid picture of Bill dangling at the end of a rope, and Jess … I blacked it out of my mind, hard!