Code — Key Ideas to Explore

There was a queer feeling about the ship. “Hush,” thought the man who stood by the gangway. That was the apt word. A battered ship, a dirty craft, small, obscene, unseaworthy, of foreign register. And silent--hush! Grim faced men going about their business, sparing no word for him, though they might have talked, he guessed, had they cared to.

This man who watched wore soiled dungarees. There was a day’s stubble of beard on his thin face. His expression, when a passing man darted a look at him, was blank. His eyes fell when other eyes probed him. He looked over his shoulder at times, at the rotting dock in the small British port of Beverstock near Liverpool, where this ship, the _Cora_, lay. He had come aboard, nobody knew how. One moment, and the ship end of the gangway, creaking as the current swayed the little tramp, was empty. The next moment he was there. Nor did these others think it strange. They looked as if this sudden yet stealthy approach was usual, an accustomed thing, an item, strange perhaps to some, yet of little moment in their full lives.

The man in dungarees stood there till the first cheerful man he had seen aboard rolled up, the stout chief engineer.

“That’s him,” said the chief, and tapped him on the shoulder.

The man winced, turned, and saw, climbing the steep gangway, a man.

“That’s him,” repeated the stout chief. “Captain Bain.”

The man in dungarees saw a tall, glum seafarer, with graying hair, his frowsy shore going linen peeping from sleeves of shiny serge, his lapels greasy; his boots polished long after polish had become a mockery; and, topping all, a master’s cap.

This was Captain Bain, right enough. He stopped, stared at the man in dungarees and said briefly--

“American Bar,” the man in dungarees replied.

“Come this way,” said the captain. “My name’s Bain. This is my cabin. We can talk here. Out on deck talk’s barred in port. Who sent you?”

He fell silent, not because he waited for the answer, but more as if he had run down, as if this long speech had been an effort, a breaking down of his accustomed reserve. The man in dungarees waited, as if expecting him to say more, then at last replied:

“Who sent me? Dip Laplace.”

He fumbled in the pocket of his dungarees and found a wad of crumpled paper.

The captain of the _Cora_ took the paper, opened it, held it up to the beam of light that stole through the grimy port. The man in dungarees sat down on a locker.

“My name’s Drake,” he remarked.

His eyes were fixed on the captain. He saw a wave of color sweep up over old Bain’s weatherbeaten neck, into his cheeks, then recede again.

What the captain read, spelling out large printed words, was this:

Sparklers--they’re wise--watch.

The captain of the _Cora_ crumpled the paper in his hand.

“You read this, of course?”

“I’m no liar. I did, of course,” the man in dungarees mimicked him. “As I said, my name’s Drake--”

“I’ve forgotten what was on it,” Drake told him.

“Dip gave it to you. Dip grows jocular,” the captain laughed harshly. “Are you another of his jokes?”

“I don’t carry passengers.”

“My kind? Dip sent me, remember.”

“You know then; you have money?”

Drake spread five fifty-pound notes out on his knee.

“As bad as that?” The captain whistled. “You could swank aboard a liner for that.”

“And swank off across the pond?”

The captain stroked his long jaw reflectively. His eyes wandered over Drake’s face, stopped for a moment on the wall clock above his head, dropped to the pile of treasury notes and dwelt there.

“As bad as that?” said the captain of the _Cora_. “Not murder?”

“No, Dip sent me. He knows. Need you?”

“Need I? God forbid. Can you swim?”

“You’ll have to. I see you don’t know the game we play. Better learn before I take your money. You find it--convenient--to travel informally, to land on the other side incognito-- No, your name may be Drake, and I don’t care if it is or not. Names don’t count here. But you wish to land as Drake, unknown to anyone. We arrange that. No immigration folk to pester you. No police. We sail for Montreal. Below that city fifty miles or so are islands. Sometimes we go slowly through them, close to land. An active swimmer, dropping overside--you have more money, have you not?”

“Yes, Captain, a little.”

“There’s a man on one island, there. He has a boat. If you give him more than five pounds, he’s robbing you. After that your movements are not my concern.”

Again, as the captain paused, Drake had that strange feeling that here was a man talking overmuch--a man more fond of silence.

“And that’s all?” Drake asked. “Simple, isn’t it?”

“Why do you say that?”

“I feared I’d have to work my passage, and I’m lazy.”

The captain of the _Cora_ reached for the little pile of notes.

“A man must live,” he growled, as if apologizing for his delinquencies. “A man must live, and there’s no money in tramp shipping. You’ll find a small cabin on the port side--the empty one. It’s yours. We sail with the tide. If you come on deck before that and are nabbed--” he patted his pocket where he had stowed those notes--“that’s your lookout, Drake.”

Drake rose and crossed the little cabin. At the threshold he paused.

“Those other cabins--”

“You are three. The others, you won’t meet till we are at sea.”

Drake stepped out, dropped down a steep iron stair to the deck, slid into the port alley, where tiny doors formed a row, tried first one, then another, till he found one unlocked, entered, and found himself in a cabin so small that it could scarcely contain a bunk and its occupant at the same time.

Men had watched him--shadowy figures, heads out of the galley, the engine-room, the firehold. They had said nothing, betrayed no surprise at his coming. They were silent men.

The salt wind drifted across the deck of the _Cora_. She was wallowing in the Atlantic.

Drake and the fat chief sat in the lee of the funnel. They had struck up an acquaintance during the first half of the voyage. Drake had traveled; he knew things. The fat chief, a jovial rascal, had the curiosity of a child and a stout man’s zest for effortless, vicarious adventure.

The two other passengers had kept apart. There was Quayle, as yet sticking close to his cabin, save at mealtimes when he joined Drake at the captain’s table. He had given that name, Quayle, casually, as if it had just occurred to him, as if names were matters of only passing importance.

He was a tall, silent man, middle-aged.

The third passenger messed with the crew. He was a small Liverpool dock rat. He claimed that he had not killed his wife, but had only beaten her. The captain, after discreetly calling up a hospital, found that this was true. Because he had but twenty pounds they had taken him for that. He never came up on the boat deck; he viewed the ocean with ignorant terror and kept behind the high steel bulwarks of the well deck, when he came out for air.

The chief, having a romantic mind, decided that the Liverpool man’s wife would probably take a turn for the worse and die. He held that the other passenger, Quayle, was a Bolshevik.

The chief and Drake sat there and yarned through the long sea morning.

“A rum ship,” Drake hazarded.

“We are that,” the chief grinned, “at home to rum company.”

“True, but you know each other; we don’t, we passengers.”

“Five new faces in the ship’s company,” the chief laughed. “Ye see, we can’t keep ’em. We ship so many passengers that it has made _their_ pile easy, or on the way to make it easy. It corrupts the lads. Five new faces--five old ’uns gone to do likewise--on the trail o’ easy money. Man, dear, ’tis restless labor is getting to be--”

“Eight of us, new chums, not knowing each other--for five and three is eight.”

Drake stared out to sea.

“Eight souls,” sighed the chief. “Where they comes from. Gawd only knows. Where they’re bound, Gawd don’t care; speakin’ more exact, nine. For I’d forgot Sparks.”

Drake glanced forward. The tall radio man was in his hencoop, a scant twenty feet away. The door was open.

“Another bird o’ passage. D’ye notice his duds?”

“Know what the pay is? Man, dear, if he bought them out of wages, he’s never had smoke nor drink in years. Ever see a tramp’s wireless wonder before? No. Know what I think? He’s an absconding Scot. He figured we’d soak him hard for an unconventional passage. You know what you paid, so--”

The chief closed his eyes and gave the details of his imaginative romance in a few low words:

“Sparks gets him a uniform. Eighty bob, mebbe; or steals one. He finds out we’re gettin’ a new radio man this voyage. An’ then, back in port some poor dub brass pounder is wakin’ up, mebbe in hospital. And this sport--well, he’s on the papers as Sparks, but we lose our dividend on his passage thereby.”

“So you figure him, as you might say, a jailbird of passage.”

Drake had raised his voice. The chief clutched his arm.

“Don’t ye now; don’t rile that one. Man, dear, every time that devilish contraption spits sparks I shudder. Think o’ the slander yon lad could spread and nobody knowin’.”

“Slander ’bout--you--or me, M’Ginley. Oh, aye, there’s tales he could tell, even if he’s new. Would ye believe it?” The old chief rose. “Ye might not; but some o’ the lads aboard here has loose tongues. A thing I abhor, personal.” And off the old man waddled.

Drake sat there a moment. He was thinking:

“I wonder. Another little swimmer when we come to that island? Will there be four of us in the water? Will the fourth be Sparks? If so--best watch him.”

Rising, he added a codicil to this conclusion.

“There’s nine aboard, counting myself,” he thought, “nine that may be, well, anything. Best start figuring this one out. That’ll leave eight. And one of the eight is me, Drake. Wonder what I’ll be, when we come to the end of the voyage?”

He glanced aft. The stout chief engineer was there, where he had paused on the stair that led below.

“Them that don’t talk here,” said M’Ginley, “them that don’t talk on this ship--they guesses.”

Drake slipped forward till he stood by the open door of the wireless coop. The new Sparks looked up.

“Want anything?” he asked.

“Just loafing round.” Drake rolled a cigarette slowly, clumsily. “Smoke?”

The wireless man reached for pouch and papers, twisted with swift fingers, struck a match and was exhaling smoke, almost before Drake himself had lighted up.

“You’ve been in the States?” Drake asked. “Learned to make a gasper there, didn’t you?”

“And you’re from the old country, calling a cig that?”

“A good country to come from--and the faster the coming the better,” Drake drawled. “Old country’s not--healthy.”

The wireless man bent over his complicated machinery, as it became alive. Drake looked on, wonder in his eyes, almost a childish wonder.

“But that’s marvelous,” said he. “Words coming out of the air.”

“Dot dash dot dash,” said the wireless man. “See that smoke yonder? The _Paladin_. She’s asking the _Caradoc_ if they’ve met ice. Bergs drifting now, you know.”

Drake glanced at the wall clock, then drifted toward the door.

It was eleven o’clock. It was Wednesday--five days since they had left port. This old ruin of a ship was traveling with speed.

The voice of the wireless man followed him.

“I’m Cray; come again,” he called. “This packet doesn’t run to rules.”

Drake turned. He seemed uneasy.

“If what?” Cray waited.

“If you hear something with that gadget about a man named Drake, the fewer know--the better. Get me?”

“Don’t slip me money.” Cray’s hand met his, thrust it back. “You’ll need all you got. A rum lot, on a rum ship.”

“And you as rum as they come,” thought Drake, as he walked away.

“Wonder if he knew what was on the air just now,” he scowled. “If I shove it to the Old Man will he--well, this time I’m a wireless man. Next time we’ll see.”

To him, too, this strange ship was saying, “Hush!” Yet his pencil slid over flimsy paper. He rose with a message, took it to the captain on the bridge.

“Rum lot aboard, sir.” He handed the message over, winked.

The captain started, backed away into a wing of the bridge, scanned that message.

“You are right,” he replied. “This came in code, I presume?”

“Then why not leave it in code. We don’t want the world knowing.”

“Nobody’s seen it, sir, but me.”

“Damn you! That’s an order. Anything else comes, leave it in code.”

Cray went white and was about to speak. Then he checked himself. He walked away; he was thinking.

“Him, too--the Old Man. Wonder what he knows that the world don’t, that he’s afraid of the world learning? I’ll, maybe, find out. I’ll see. Tonight, maybe. He might work in. Who knows?”

The captain, staring at the retreating back was staring at words that floated before his eyes.

For that message had read:

All ships. All ships. All ships. Varnavosk necklace stolen. Suspect at sea. Watch passengers. Stand by for more. --Scotland Yard.

The urgency of the thrice repeated “All ships”--that stabbed him, made him wince. Trouble, trouble in large consignments, coming out of the air. Other messages, and the field of search might narrow, perhaps, till it centered on an old tramp wallowing across the Western Ocean; till some swift offshore craft might draw alongside, and some officious jackanapes would climb up the ladder and ask fool questions about eight new faces aboard the _Cora_.

There was trouble on the ship that said, “Hush.”

The captain walked stiffly across the bridge and down to his cabin. Cray, on the boat deck, watched him go.

“Yes, we’ll use you, my bucko,” said Cray. “Now I wonder--” and he stared down on the well deck, forward, where the little Liverpool passenger sprawled on a hatch cover.

“You’ve got a shiner on your eye, my lad,” thought Cray, “and you mess with the crew. They’ll be eating any moment now. I think we’d better not wait. We’ll begin with you.”

He followed the old captain of the _Cora_ to his cabin.

When the passengers who messed with the skipper came in to lunch, that worthy’s chair was vacant. Cray it was who greeted them, smiling at Drake, bowing stiffly to tall Quayle.

“Old Man’s busy,” said Cray. “Don’t wait for him, gentlemen.”

That was Wednesday. On Thursday the fat engineer M’Ginley sought the warm lee of the funnel once more. Drake was there, waiting.

“I made my peace with Cray. If he was mad about what I said, he didn’t show it.”

“A bad case,” the fat old chief growled. “There’s more in this ship than ballast. There’s a mystery.”

“Eight little mysteries,” Drake jeered, “of which one is my humble self. Maybe nine, counting Cray. Or ten--”

“What you alludin’ to now?”

“You, honest old M’Ginley.”

“Me? Man could see clean through me.” The chief winked at him. “But look at this code; and all that pencilin’ under it is writ by the most talented engineer on the Western Ocean.”

Drake glanced down at the flimsy bit of paper. He saw first a jumble of phrases and part words. But below that a penciled legend made sense.

All ships. Varnavosk dying. Look for strong man capable killing bare-handed.

No signature this time.

“Where’d you get this?”

Drake stiffened. He glanced forward uneasily; but Cray’s blind was drawn on the little window of his cabin. Cray’s door was shut.

“Where’d you think? Notice the Old Man yesterday and today?” the old chief asked. “Well, he’s fair wild. He come down this mornin’ an’ asks me to trot along, confidential. We goes to that wife beatin’ runt’s cabin. The runt is out on deck. Old Man and me, we rip up the floorboards, we pry apart the bunk.”

“He wouldn’t tell at first. Then, when we found nothin’, he begun to rave about jewelry. Him, that’s carried such downan’-outs before, lookin’ for jewelry in that cabin. Told me to shut up. Left me standin’ on air, like. So I mooched. Half an hour ago Cray comes down with this. Old Man looks her over, puzzles her out. He was standin’ by his cabin. Next he dives in, grabs somethin’, pockets it--an’ comes out again. Know what he grabbed?”

“His gun. Me, I grabs somethin’ else. This. Now you know as much as I do, unless you know more.”

Drake stared at him, then dropped his eyes.

“Cray and the Old Man know a heap. My guess is there’s been robbery; and now it looks like murder. Like as not the search’ll narrer down. Scotland Yard ain’t manned by fools. Like as not there’ll be other messages. Liverpool runt’s been cleared. He don’t pack no valuables. There’s seven new faces aboard beside him, leavin’ Cray out. If things gets hot and they start to search the lot--well--him that has them jewels is like to swing.”

“Unless--” Drake seemed to be master of himself now--“unless!”

“Unless the lad slipped ’em to a good natur’d old fool of an engineer. There’s places below.” Old M’Ginley winked. “Well, if you meet the man aboard here, you tell him.”

“Thanks, I will. Cray’s blind’s gone up.” Drake rose. “I’m going to have a chin with him.”

“If there’s one thing more’n another has hanged fool men, it’s words,” M’Ginley warned, and left him.

Cray grinned as Drake opened the door.

“You--you heard anything?” Drake asked, nervously.

“Thought, maybe, some message might have drifted in; seen you writing a while back.”

“There was,” Cray laughed. “Fool operator on the _Jessamine_ was askin’ me if I’d bought my girl that diamond yet.”

Drake stood by the table, his lean fingers clasped about its beveled edge. Cray, watching covertly, smiled. That table was shaking, though it was fastened to the floor.

“You’re a strong man, ain’t you?” Cray asked.

“There’s stronger aboard this packet,” Drake answered tonelessly. “Where’d the Old Man dig up those new sailormen? Two of them I saw this morning, ramming at that bent stanchion that supports this deck. Take four of me to make one of them.”

“That’s an idea,” Cray smiled, as if relishing his chance to play with this man.

“What is?” Drake frowned. “Makin’ one of them from four of me?”

“Then there’s Quayle; he’s husky, too. Well, beef don’t count with me.” Cray shoved a chair forward. “Want to listen in?”

He reached for an extra headset, plugged in, adjusted it for Drake, then watched him, keenly, as some faint message came.

“So that’s what it sounds like?” Drake looked up. “I’ve often wondered.”

But Cray was busy, writing. His pencil fairly shook as it sped over the paper.

Drake looked over his shoulder. Too late, Cray shoved a hand over what he had written, for Drake had seen, seen plainly, the uncompleted sentences:

All ships. Varnavosk died this morning. Communicate with us if....

“You seen, hey?” Cray fidgeted, seemed annoyed; yet he might be pretending. He was, at any rate, ill at ease.

“You seen? Well, what’s a Russky more or less to you or me? Don’t tell the Old Man I showed you. The others came in code. This one’s plain English. Best beat it; I’ve got to take this to the Old Man.”

Drake got up and walked silently out. On the threshold Cray stopped him with:

“Ever know any Russians, Drake? Some of them is big men--hard fighters. Take a powerful man to handle them.”