The Dark Labyrinth Read Free Page B

commented on the quantity of things Fearmax had left behind. “He was going on to Egypt,” said the boy. “All the others were going to stay for a while in Crete and took their things.” Was that true, she wondered? Miss Dale had left an evening-frock behind. “That poor Miss Dale,” she said. “So quiet and gentle.” She oiled her spitcurl in the mirror and twisted it round her finger. The boy gathered up the books into a bundle and dumped them in a suitcase. “He’s not left any money about?” he asked suspiciously. She folded the suits and placed them one on top of the other. “Didn’t have much to leave, I expect,” she said.
    In Baird’s cabin they found a pair of khaki shorts, and, in Graecen’s, a shaving-mirror which was propped at an operational angle by a half-crown. “You could tell he was every inch a Lord,” said the stewardess pocketing the coin. Who else would use money to prop up a shaving-mirror?
    Miss Dale’s cabin was not as empty as they had at first glance imagined it to be. “There—you see? Careless,” said the steward reprovingly. He had been particularly fond of Miss Dale with her sad blonde appearance, and her being too timid to ring for servants because, as she said, “she wasn’t used to them.” She had spent all day in a deck-chair, wrapped in rugs, convalescing from a serious illness. Latterly, Lord Graecen had been seen reading to her. “Ah well,” said the steward with a sigh to himself, “Romance, that’s what it was.” The stewardess noticed his sigh and shrugged her shoulders.
    The miscellaneous periodicals they gathered up found their way at last into the purser’s hands as he stood on C deck, talking amiably to a friend and spitting into the oily waters of Alexandria harbour. “Thanks,” he said. “I could do with some light reading.” He talked as if he had been wrestling with heavy books of reference all day. The bookshelf above his bunk was crammed with yellow-backs. He took the bundle of papers, put them under his arm, and continued his conversation. He was describing to a friend the tragedy that had overtaken the party in the labyrinth. After having extracted the fullest possible pleasure from this he went and sat in a deck-chair aft, lit a fresh pipe and glanced through the papers. He wondered for a moment which papers had belonged to which passengers—one could hardly imagine these Bystanders belonging to Fearmax. Fearmax had rather awed him. He looked like a minor prophet—a gaunt and vehement character. He had refused to give a séance in the first-class saloon, pleading that he was in poor health. And yet he talked like a volcano in short and crisply-articulated sentences. He wore soft black bow ties with drooping ends—such as were fashionable in Belgravia towards the end of the last century. His face had the charred finely-lined character of the later Rudolf Steiner portraits; under his eyes there were deep smudges of black which seemed violet in the harsh lights of the first-class deck. He walked about the decks for hours with his hands in his pockets, like a monomaniac.
    For a short while the purser played drowsily with these fugitive recollections, before dropping off to sleep. He noticed that some of the portraits in the society papers had been decorated with moustaches in pencil and wondered whether Graecen had been guilty of the impropriety. The sun was sinking behind the jumble of masts and hulls and a light wind had sprung up.
    At Toulon they had all been ashore, and the Truman couple had arrived back rather drunk in the pinnace. He had seen Miss Dombey sitting opposite them with that suffused and swollen look—that redness of the wattles—which always came over her when she was outraged. Mr. Truman’s hat was over his ear and his arm was round his wife. They were singing “When Irish Eyes are