All Bedlam Courses Past (part two hundred eleven)

 

 

 

 

 

All Bedlam Courses Past

 

 

Chapter Eight

Things Relative

 

(part two hundred eleven)

 

 

 

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Why did you place your arms around her?

Shute wrote here that the subject fell mute, and expressions appeared on his face, suggestive, in Shute’s opinion, of calculation.

After a time: She looked wobbly on her feet.

Why did you not assist her to sit back down and offer to fetch the doctor?

Being that she broke out crying and begged me to leave her alone.

How do you account for the sleeve of her dress being torn?

Looks were exchanged, Élucide to Weem, both to Monaghan. Shute’s question seemed a vouchsafing of information that ought to have come from the subject.

And Gorman, at his ease, parried: Why should I account for it? Who says it was?

How did you and Miss Buckley part?

Like I say, her looking a little green. Scurried off to puke over the rail, for all I knew.

But you say a proposition…

Laughter, and the effrontery of a wagging finger. Always after the dirty doings, you policemen. I had a job of work, with the shipping line that calls itself M & B. That’s Milsap and Boettcher…see why they don’t want you to know it. Ha! Great Lakes excursions. Nothing improper about a man sailing alone on a pleasure trip. Mind like yours goes to assume the worst in people.

“Provoking.”

“Shute will learn patience, as the miscreant class grows on his experience. There’s far greater provocations to be put up with.”

Gorman’s luck had been a function of the voyage’s cursed character. Or…the cursed character who was Gorman might have been thwarted by the Seven Stars detective, but that the detective had been told not to sail.

“As I believe I’ve mentioned, the economies. Foreign money behind Seven Stars. Bothersome to an old, ramshackle line like M & B.”

“Mr. Gorman,” said Ebrach, “was a company spy.”

“A worry you must have yourself.”

The least sigh. “I correspond extensively with my guests, before their stays are ever arranged.”

“If I write that down,” said Monaghan, writing, “it is only from a curiosity I have, a native interest in the learning of new things.”

Gorman’s proposition, as the unreliable witness had it, would have been for Myra to play along, pretend herself his companion, strike up chitchat with the ladies. He found the ladies’ views material, and could not chat up society himself.

Which I blame bad influences, teaching us all to be strangers these days. Looked to me a lot were suffering from the heat…and that good old smell off the water. I’d have paid money for a name. You get me. I heard there was one or two aboard. Bread and butter.

 

 

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Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part two hundred twelve)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2025, Stephanie Foster)