Circumstantial Evidence
I
NOT long after Percy Hart turned in for his watch below he heard Ed Wiggin, his only shipmate, limping about the deck of his little yawl.
‘Need any help, Ed?’ asked the sleepy Percy.
‘No, thanks,’ came the reply. ‘I’ve lashed the tiller and she’s steering herself with the wind abeam. Just doing odd jobs around. She’s surely a sweet little packet in these light airs, Percy.’
The recumbent man closed his eyes to the soothing darkness of a summer night at sea and dropped off. He awoke some hours later uneasily aware that he had overslept. A flash light trained on the cabin clock confirmed his intuition, and as he slipped a sweater over his head he called, ‘Hey, Ed, you should n’t have let me lie in so long!’
Receiving no response, the owner of the little yacht felt his way from the cabin to the steering cockpit, saying to himself, ‘Ed, the old cuss, has fallen asleep on watch.’ There passed also through his brain the irrelevant thought that Ed would not be similarly guilty if he were watching the dollars roll in ashore.
Percy reached for the tiller and encountered the lashing which Ed had passed around the stick to make the Winsome self-steer the course. He fumbled around the cockpit and deck for his slumbering shipmate. The first note of alarm came into his voice as he shouted, suddenly, ‘Ed, where are you?’
Alone on the whispering sea, Percy heard not even an echo in answer to his startled question. He went below for his electric torch and, before coming topside again, flashed it into the Winsome’s galley. It was empty. He jumped out on deck and rushed forward, unconscious now of the fact that he called repeatedly, ‘Ed, where are you? Answer me, Ed!’
It does not take long to search a thirty-five-foot yacht for a missing person. After a hopeless glance up the mainmast, the agitated Percy returned aft, saying aloud, ‘He’s gone. Fallen overboard. And not a yell out of him.’
As he cast off the tiller lashing and put the Winsome about on the reverse course, Percy racked his brain to bring from his subconscious a call for help. No, there had been none. His sleep had been dreamless and undisturbed. There was no clue to indicate whether Ed had fallen overboard five minutes or five hours previously.
For five hours, then, Percy sailed the reverse of the course which he assumed the Winsome to have taken while he slept. While the night continued dark he flashed his light on the Winsome’s mainsail and shouted. Even after his voice had rasped itself to a whisper he continued to formulate the shout, ‘Ed, answer me!’ Sometimes, by an unconscious inversion, his lips opened to the words, ‘ Winsome ahoy!’
II
Daylight revealed an empty sea, pearl-gray, ruffled by the gentle wind. No smoky trace of fortuitous steamship hovered above the far horizon. As the yawl sailed on, her tiller lashed, Percy climbed to the mainmast spreaders and searched in vain for the head and shoulders of a swimming man. It was not until nearly eight o’clock that hope gave way to stark realization that Ed had drowned. Even then Percy reached no definite decision to cease the useless search for his lost shipmate. Pangs of thirst and hunger reminded him that it was time for a meal, and he climbed wearily from the spreaders and went about its preparation. Periodically while the stove heated and the water boiled he stepped to the main hatchway for a baffled look around.
No really violent emotions had preyed upon Percy during these hours of search. He had been momentarily appalled at ascertaining the loss of his shipmate, but years of experience in the sport of sailing had fatalistically accustomed him to the idea of a man falling overboard. It was the chance one took, instinctively guarded against, for separation from one’s ship was dangerous by day and almost inevitably fatal at night. Percy had felt pity for the poor soul who found himself clutched by the blackness of the midnight sea and the certainty of death. He had reproached himself for not rousing out when he had heard Ed limping about the deck. His strongest emotion had suffused him when, calling and calling, he had pictured himself in the water, shouting after a dark ship that sailed her course. It was at such disordered moments that he had gasped, ‘ Winsome ahoy!’
Refreshed by breakfast, the solitary sailor felt his thoughts emerge from chaos. How on earth could Ed have fallen overboard on a smooth night? His absence seemed so unreal that Percy searched the little ship again, half hoping to find his shipmate in some recess too small to accommodate a man. Unrewarded, he returned to the cockpit, once more cast off the tiller lashing, and altered the course of the Winsome to sail her to her home port. Ed was clumsy, but there could have been no sudden lurch of the yawl to overbalance him — as there had been the day before, causing him to stagger back and plant his bare heel on the sharp blade of an opened knife. That had been just like Ed, first to borrow Percy’s knife and leave it open on deck, and second to step on it. Lord, how he had bled, while Percy held the injured foot on his knee and bound it with gauze.
The owner of the Winsome glanced absently at bloodstains on his white duck trousers, while his thought traced out the manner of Ed Wiggin’s loss. This would probably explain it: He had gone forward to note the trim of the jib and had stumbled over something — perhaps one of the anchors lashed on deck — and brought his weight down hard on the injured heel. The sharp jab of pain had forced him to shift his weight suddenly. In so doing he had toppled overboard. Incredible though it was, this was the hypothesis which Percy would have to advance in reporting to the authorities the accidental drowning of his shipmate.
The authorities — suspicious mortals; always on the search for sinister motives and actions. If Percy went ashore in the clothes he wore, they would be sure to say, ‘ What about the stains on your trousers? Are n’t they the blood of the missing man?’
III
Instantly in Percy’s mind the authorities became personified as his townsman, Henry Sylvester — Dr. Sylvester, the medical examiner. Since no love had ever been lost between Sylvester and Percy, the examiner’s approach would be distinctly hostile.
The yachtsman imagined him squinting his hard eyes and narrowing his cold mouth to put the question in another form: ‘Are you sure, Hart, that the blood is not that of Edward Wiggin?’
Percy squirmed uneasily as he heard himself reply, ‘Well, it is his blood, as a matter of fact. He stepped on a knife and cut himself badly. I held his foot on my knee while I bandaged it up.’
The imaginary colloquy continued, the medical examiner saying, ‘I make no charges at this stage of the investigation, but is n’t it a little unfortunate that you should come ashore with the blood of the missing man on your clothes? Whose knife did he — er — step on? His own, I presume?’
‘No, it was my knife. He was splicing a rope and I lent it to him to cut off the strands.’
‘Produce the knife.’
Percy involuntarily stretched out a leg and thrust his hand into a trousers pocket, producing a sailor’s knife, which he opened and examined attentively. It had a three-inch blade, ground to a murderous edge —just the blade to thrust to a man’s heart. There were stains at the hinge. He made as if to toss it overboard, but the imagined voice of the examiner arrested the gesture.
‘So you lost the knife overboard? Was n’t that rather careless?’
Here the conversation ended, as Percy left the tiller momentarily to procure a rag and abrasive soap. He scrubbed the knife until it showed no stain, but as he replaced it in his pocket his eye fell again on the blood on his trousers.
‘What a fool I am!’ he exclaimed aloud. ‘I have other pants and can wash these.’ He changed, found scrubbing materials, and for some minutes occupied himself vigorously, intent gaze bent on the soapy cloth which he rubbed between his knuckles. But even after his best efforts there remained a faint discoloration. Straightening up, the dripping trousers in one hand, he suddenly hurled them into the sea, saying, ‘Worse fool than I thought I was! Even a snooping detective would n’t try to keep track of the trousers of an innocent man.’
IV
He looked astern at the discarded garment and saw that it would not float long. His thought ran, ‘Well, that’s all right. If it seems fantastic that Ed smeared me with his blood a few hours before he lost his life, I won’t even mention the incident. I’m not positive the cut in his foot had anything to do with his falling overboard. He was clumsy enough to do that for no reason.’
Percy brought himself up short, thinking, ‘Here, this won’t do. I’m getting sore at Ed for putting me in this predicament. If I exhibit annoyance to Sylvester, he’ll be sure to suspect the worst.’
Instantly the cold, suspicious voice of the medical examiner impinged on the lonely skipper’s consciousness. ‘Surely there was a gale at sea the night my poor friend Edward Wiggin fell overboard to his death?’
‘No, it was a calm —’ But wait, thought Percy. Why not have it a gale of wind, if that made this unlikely accident seem more plausible? Sure; a hard northeaster, and Ed sucked overboard as he went forward to shift from the ordinary jib to the storm jib.
But that would n’t wash any more than the trousers would. Percy imagined the conflicting testimony in the courtroom — himself describing the terrific force and freaks of the wind (which he could do readily enough, even though lying was not his habit) and a weather-bureau expert peering at a chart through thick lenses and testifying colorlessly for the prosecution that the night in question was smooth with southwesterly winds from Hatteras to Halifax. Local disturbance? Perhaps; but the State would be certain to produce a steamship captain who had passed within ten miles of the Winsome on the fatal night and who would swear that sea and air were calm.
Percy half determined to falsify his own ship’s position, but then reflected that there would be another steamer within ten miles of the new fix, wherever he might put it. No. One discovered lie would knock the props from his platform of unsubstantiated innocence.
He would better stick to the truth, even telling about the knife and the bloodstained trousers. His catechist had by this time been transformed into a prosecuting attorney, his face a little indistinct, but his voice more ironic and penetrating than the medical examiner’s.
Question: ' Was there, by any chance, a bloodstain on your trousers by the time you had finished binding the foot of the deceased?’
Answer: ‘Yes, quite a bad stain.’
Question: ‘The trousers. They are not, of course, the ones you are now wearing ? ’
Answer: ‘No — sir.’
Question: ‘Where are they?’
Answer: ‘I was washing them and —’
Question: ‘And they were washed overboard?’
Answer: ‘No, I threw them overboard.’
Question: ‘Were they so badly stained as to be valueless?’
In the midst of Percy’s vivid imaginings he groaned aloud. What a double-dyed ass he had been to cast suspicion on himself by throwing away the trousers! He brought up his helm to jibe around and look for them. But a sober thought stayed his panic a second later.
‘Wait,’ he spoke, arguing with himself. ‘You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. They can’t hang a man unless there is a witness to the murder or unless there is iron-bound circumstantial evidence. They would certainly have to prove you had a motive for doing away with Ed.’
V
The overwrought yachtsman came back on his course, noting automatically that the wind had begun to increase in force, hauling astern little by little. He set up his weather backstay, left the helm momentarily for a glance at the barometer, and lighted a cigarette. But the cigarette dropped from his fingers as another thought arrested him.
He owed Ed Wiggin $5000, for which he had not even given him an I O U. So far as Percy was aware, no living person except Ed’s wife — his widow — knew of the debt. But she knew. Her word, then, against his, if he cared to deny the obligation. Not that he would lie for $5000, though nowadays people were murdered for far less. But, apart from the debt, it could be adduced in court that Ed and he had had business difficulties which more than once resulted in hot words in public.
Noting for the first time that the fallen cigarette was charring his canvas deck, Percy picked it up and flipped it overside. He did n’t want to smoke. What he wanted was a drink. He left the tiller to pour himself a stiff one, and returned to find the Winsome luffing, her sails thundering.
Blowing up,’ said he. ‘Perhaps I can lose Ed overboard in a gale after all.’ And he went on, his sardonic thoughts sometimes breaking into words: —
‘Sure, that’s what I brought the poor beggar off on a cruise for — to lose him. Convince anybody that this was a reconciliation voyage — that I’ve always enjoyed Ed at sea however I’ve acted toward him ashore? Fat chance.’ He laughed without mirth.
‘What was it I said to Sylvester when he came down to see us off? The officious devil, living on the point of land and always watching the comings and goings of boats! I said, “Yep,
I missed Ed when I shot at him the other night, so now I’m taking him out to drown him.” God, how the evidence piles up!’
Percy licked his dry lips while his thought ranged the unexplained attack on Ed’s life (if it had been that). The now deceased man had been walking in his garden late of a moonlit evening when a shot had rung out and he had thought he felt the stir of a bullet past his cheek. Dropping to the ground, he had crawled behind shrubs to his back door to enter and telephone for the police. Their investigation had disclosed nothing. Percy, as it happened, had spent that evening sailing in the Winsome, but it was one departure and return that the ubiquitous Sylvester had not witnessed. Nobody had observed Percy. In short, if he were accused of an attack on Ed’s life that particular night, he had no alibi. . . . It had been one thing to joke about the matter with Ed, but quite another to let Sylvester hear him hoist the guilt to his own shoulders.
Percy no longer spoke aloud. His silence became moody, his imaginings more and more distorted, and his eyes darted this way and that as if he looked in vain for an escape from the web into which circumstance had thrust him. Long before the wind rose to gale force and the single-handed sailor hove to the Winsome to furl her mainsail, he had tried, convicted, and all but executed himself for the murder of his friend Ed Wiggin.
The enforced labor of handling the struggling yawl unaided did much to keep his thought from introverting. As wind and sea rose, there was the mainsail to be got in. There was the chart to be consulted, and there were long minutes to be devoted to anxious preoccupation with the weather. The high wind had brought rain. The visibility was poor indeed. The Winsome’s home port was easy enough to enter even with a following gale, but if one missed the entrance there were bad reefs on either side, and, once the error was discovered, no chance under a shortened rig to work free of them. No chance, either, when alone to set a close-reefed mainsail and claw off. No motor in the yawl to help her.
For some hours after the gale reached its greatest intensity Percy could not leave the tiller even momentarily. The white-crested seas overtook and threatened to broach her to. No longer the gentle Winsome, the yawl fought the helm with sensate animosity. At length Percy heard upwind and on his port quarter the dismal moan of a whistling buoy, and his tension somewhat relaxed. His course had been nearly true. He had passed out of sight of the entrance buoy, but by shifting course slightly to port he could make the unseen harbor. The navigating side of his brain relieved of anxiety, he found himself dwelling once again on the violence of the storm that would break about him when he reported the death of his shipmate.
For several moments he revolved again in his mind the idea of representing Ed’s loss as having occurred in the midst of the blow. Thought ceased when black rocks, lashed by hungry combers, leaped out of his lee, dead ahead. He had missed the entrance by nearly a quarter of a mile.
Percy Hart had a seaman’s dread of breakers, but he greeted these with a snort of ironic laughter. ‘A sailor’s death is by drowning,’ he murmured. ‘Not in the electric chair.’
Nevertheless, by all the automatic reflexes of a sailor, he went down fighting. He slammed the Winsome on the wind and saw that she pointed yearningly toward safety. He flattened in the mizzen and reached, arms in white water to the elbows, for the lee jib sheet. In that instant the yawl crashed. A breaking sea lifted Percy clear and thrust him down upon the lathered rocks. His head struck and he lost consciousness.
VI
It was Dr. Henry Sylvester who plucked him from the sea to leeward of the reef, worked over him, and restored his wits.
‘Stay there,’ bade the doctor, ‘while I look for Ed. Did you see him after the boat crashed?’
Percy sat up on the spray-drenched sand and glanced confusedly about him. He burst into a shout of laughter which taxed his strength and almost put to shame the thunder of the secondary surf on Sylvester’s beach.
‘Ed!’ he shouted. ‘Why, Ed got drowned last night when the sea was smooth as glass. He cut himself with my knife and spattered me with blood. Then he fell overboard when I was asleep and I could n’t find him when I woke up. I wiped the stains off my knife, and threw my trousers overboard, so you’ve got nothing on me — except that I told you I would drown him, and that, of course, was a joke. A preposterous joke.’
Dr. Sylvester, the medical examiner, helped Percy to his feet and stared fixedly at him. He half closed his accusing eyes and narrowed his hard mouth to a slit.
‘You are off your guard,’ said he; ‘ which is bad for you, but good for justice. Come.’