“Well,” Mason said, “I think Belle should tell her mother exactly what she plans to do.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he said, “if Belle’s going to step out of Roy’s life, there’s no reason why I should go to a lot of trouble trying to fix things up with the Products Refining Company.”
“Oh, yes, there is,” Della told him. “It would be the greatest tragedy of Belle’s life if detectives should meet her father at the gangplank tomorrow and snap handcuffs on his wrists. And particularly if he had embezzled money from a company operated by Celinda Dail’s father. Chief, you must stop that, no matter what happens. Can’t you see? She wants Roy to remember her as a woman of mystery, not pity her. And she could never bear to have Celinda Dail gloating in triumph over her.”
“Well,” Mason said, “I’ll meet Mrs. Newberry at nine-thirty. She’ll have a definite answer by that time. I’m going to take a turn on deck. How’d you like to go out and get a lungful of storm?”
“No,” she told him, “I’m going over and join the Newberrys for a minute. I promised Belle I would. It’s eight-thirty-five now. I’ll hunt you up around nine o’clock. That’ll give us time for a liqueur and then you can meet Mrs. Newberry at nine-thirty.”
Mason nodded, crossed over to pull back her chair, gave her arm a squeeze and said, “I’ll be over on the lee side, probably on the promenade deck.”
Mason went to his stateroom, put on a top coat, wound a light silk scarf around his collar, and went on deck.
Doors on the weather side were locked. On the lee deck, rain lashed down in torrents, spurting up into little geysers, where the big drops hit the planking. Electric lights, burning in glass-enclosed cages, shed reddish rays which reflected upward from the wet deck, and were swallowed in the enveloping maw of wind-swept darkness. The roar of troubled waters furnished a steady, ominous undertone of sound.
Mason found the promenade deck a little too exposed, so went to the deck below. He walked slowly, skirting a pile of deck chairs which had been folded back and lashed securely. Water soaked up through the thin soles of his dress shoes. Spray from the beating rain moistened his face and beaded his hair. He squared his shoulders, inhaled the driving freshness of the ocean gale, listened to the roar of the waves, the shrieking of the wind — and was content.