Mason lit a cigarette and glanced across to where Della Street was holding a pencil poised over her notebook ready to take skeleton notes on the conversation.
“The boat was torpedoed by a submarine without warning,” Mrs. Tump said. “It was a horrible experience. I can see it yet whenever I close my eyes. It was night, and a heavy sea was running. The boat had a bad list almost as soon as she was struck. A lot of the lifeboats capsized. There were people in the water, only you couldn’t see them — just arms and clawing hands coming up out of the dark waves to clutch at the slippery steel sides of the boat. Then the waves swept them away. You could hear screams — so many of them, it sounded just like one big scream.”
Mason’s eyes were sympathetic.
“This couple I was telling you about,” Mrs. Tump went on, “—I’m just going to hit the high spots, Mr. Mason — they told me their history. The woman was psychic if you want to call it that, or just plain frightened and worried if you want to figure it that way. She felt certain the boat would be torpedoed. The man kept trying to kid her out of it… laughing at her, making a joke of it. The night before the ship sank the woman came to my cabin. She’d had a horrible dream. A vision, she called it. She wanted me to promise that if anything happened to her and I lived through it, that I’d go to Russia, find the daughter, and work out some way of getting her out of the country.”
Mason’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.
“She gave me some jewels. She didn’t have much money, but lots of jewelry. She said that if the boat reached port safely, I could give the jewelry back to her. Her husband wasn’t to know anything about it.”
“And she was drowned?” Mason asked.
“Yes. They were both in the first boat which went over. I saw it capsize with my own eyes. Then a big wave came up and smashed the second lifeboat against the side of the ship. However, Mr. Mason, all this is just preliminary. I’ll only sketch what happened. I was saved. I went to Russia, located the child, and brought her out. It doesn’t matter how. She was a wonderful girl with the blood of royalty in her veins. I wanted my own daughter to adopt her. My daughter was just getting married at the time. Her husband wouldn’t listen to it. So I… I’m afraid I did something which was unpardonable, Mr. Mason.”
“What?” he asked.
“I wasn’t where I could keep her myself — that is, I thought I wasn’t. I put her in a home.”