Tom Slade on a Transport

by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

There were half a dozen or more staterooms along this passage. At the end of it was the steep, greasy flight of iron steps leading down into the engine-rooms. Here, also, was a huge box with a hinged lid, filled with cotton waste. It was customary for one going down here to take a handful of this waste to protect his hands from the oily rail, and also on coming up to wipe his hands with a fresh lot. The very atmosphere of a ship’s engine-room is oily. Here, also, were several fire-buckets in a rack.

Along the side of the passage opposite the staterooms were electric bulbs at intervals, but only two of them were burning—just enough to light one through the narrow passage. Above each closed door was a solid wooden transom, hinged at its lower side and opened at an angle into the room.

Tom moved quickly and very quietly, for he feared to be caught loitering here. He saw at once that only one of these staterooms could possibly be used for any such criminal purpose as he suspected, and that was the one with a light directly opposite it in the passage, for the other light was beyond the staterooms.

For a few seconds he stood listening to the slow, monotonous sound of the machinery just below him. The vibration was very pronounced here; the floor thumped with the pulsations of the mighty engines. And Tom’s heart was thumping too.

Within the staterooms all was dark and quiet. He knew the under engineers turned in early. Not the faintest flicker was to be seen through any of those transoms. He had been mistaken, he thought; had jumped at a crazy notion. And he half turned to go up again.

But instead he listened at the companionway, then tiptoed stealthily along the passage and looked over the oily iron rail, down, down into the depths of the great, dim, oil-smelling space with its iron galleries and the mammoth steel arms, moving back and forth, back and forth, far down there upon the grated floor. A tiny figure in a jumper went down from one of the lower galleries, paused to look at a big dial, then crossed the floor and disappeared, making never a sound. No other living thing was in sight—unless those mighty steel arms, ever meeting and parting might be said to be living. To come up from down there would mean the ascent of three iron stairways.

Tom withdrew into the passage and quietly lifting one of the fire-buckets from the rack, tiptoed with it to the door which was directly opposite the passageway.

Then he paused again. He could open that door, he knew, for no keys or bolts were allowed on any stateroom door. He could surprise the occupant, whom he would find in darkness. If his suspicion was correct (and he was beginning now to fear that it was not) there would be no actual proof of anything inside of that dark little room, save only just what the authorities had already found—an apparently innocent mess plate. The criminal act would consist of simply holding a shiny plate in a certain position. The moment a sound was heard outside the plate could be laid down. And who would be the wiser?

Tom’s heart was thumping in his breast, his eyes anxiously scanning one end of the passage, then the other.

Not a sound—no sign of anyone.