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  Text originally published in 1946 under the same title.

  © Pickle Partners Publishing 2016, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

  Publisher’s Note

  Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

  We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

  FIVE PASSENGERS FROM LISBON

  A MYSTERY BY

  MIGNON G. EBERHART

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Contents

  TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

  FOREWORD 4

  1 5

  2 13

  3 22

  4 32

  5 41

  6 46

  7 55

  8 61

  9 70

  10 76

  11 82

  12 90

  13 98

  14 105

  15 112

  16 120

  17 126

  18 131

  19 138

  20 145

  REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 153

  FOREWORD

  Once in a while a writer wishes to add a few words of facts to a story of fiction; such is the case in this story of fictional romance and fictional murder placed in a factual setting.

  Not that the U.S.A.H.S. Magnolia is, or ever was, a real ship, for she is not. She is an imaginary composite of a number of ships which, however, are very real and very magnificent—staffed by men and women whose courage and devotion are equally real and magnificent. If this novel had a serious dedication it would be, humbly, To them! The nurses and doctors, the ship’s officers and men, the Army Transportation Corps, whose combined and tireless effort brought thousands of our sick and wounded soldiers safely home. But no words can properly express the debt of gratitude we owe them.

  Neither can I adequately thank the many people who gave me so helpfully and so very kindly of their precious time and energy, and also gave me without knowing it more stories of heroism and humor, of mercy and fortitude than there is space for in this book or many books.

  They and the Mercy Fleet are real.

  This story is fiction, and there are differences! For one thing, while men and women are men and women (Army nurses are very pretty, too!) I can’t help thinking that there could have been, in fact, very little time for romance and practically none for murder. Besides, the Colonel and the Captain wouldn’t have permitted it for one minute!

  But, fictionally, there might have been a storm, there might have been a lifeboat. There might have been five passengers, unexpected and unwanted, bringing their own past and present aboard.

  M. G. E.

  1

  The three women sat miserably in the cramped stateroom and waited for orders to abandon ship. The stateroom creaked and the ship creaked and strained and came down in the trough of a wave with a shaking, trembling series of shudders so strong that Marcia held her breath, listening, thinking: Now—now the ship will be torn apart; this time it will go. Its rotten timbers cannot hold together; its long-worn and rusted bolts must pull apart.

  Miraculously they didn’t; at least so far as the three women in the stateroom could tell. Marcia knew that the others had shared her thought. Daisy Belle’s thin, fine-drawn, over-civilized face wore a taut and listening look too; and Gili’s enormous green eyes slanted to one side, warily, like a cat which senses a danger creeping up on it.

  They were three days and two nights out from Lisbon. They had passed the Azores with all the windmills whirling. They were on the broad, dark Atlantic and there was no help anywhere.

  The ship gave a plunge and lurch ahead; Gili’s long yellow hair hung over her face as she looked down again at the coat she was wearing; she was hunched together in the upper berth, her handsome legs drawn up to her chin. Marcia and Daisy Belle shared the lower berth, which was a trifle wider. The stateroom was very small and in frantic disorder; the few bags and boxes they had managed to bring as far as Lisbon and on board the little ship were open with clothing strewn about; they’d had to select quickly such small articles as they could take on the lifeboat with them, when and if they had to take to the boats. Nobody had taken much, naturally—passports, such money as they had...Daisy Belle had pinned a chamois bag full of jewels under her sweater and brassiere and now sat in slacks and a mink coat, her thin hair tied up in a woolen scarf, smoking a small cigar coolly and—always—listening. She had put brandy in the pocket of her mink coat, and some morphine and more cigars. Gili had given her own battered box one contemptuous look and taken nothing from it; she too wore slacks and a fur coat which Daisy Belle had given her—another mink coat. Only Daisy Belle Cates, thought Marcia a little wryly, could emerge from five years of warring Europe with two mink coats. And only Daisy Belle would have presented one, casually like that, to Gili.

  “You may as well take it,” she’d said ten minutes ago. “It’ll go down with the ship.”

  Even in that moment Gili was delighted. She gave Daisy Belle one of her avid, darting looks, as if questioning the offer, and then snatched the coat and put it on, looking down at herself and stroking the fur, greedily. “Suppose the ship doesn’t go down. Suppose somebody picks us up. Will you want it back?”

  A queer expression flickered over Daisy Belle’s face. “Then you can keep it,” she said, her long thin fingers with their broken nails working at the enormous safety pin with which she was pinning the bag of jewels inside her brassiere.

  “Oh,” said Gili, stroking the fur and twisting around to get a glimpse of herself in the small fuzzy mirror over the washbasin. “Good, then. Of course, if we ever get out of this, you’ll have all the fur coats you want.”

  Daisy Belle’s mouth tightened. “I doubt it.”

  Gili, exactly like a cat at an unexpectedly yielding garbage can seemed almost to lick her full lips. But then you couldn’t really blame her, thought Marcia wearily. In all probability Gili had actually scavenged for food, literally in garbage cans. Gili had not talked of her past during that short, now interrupted voyage; she never made an allusion or said a word that could indicate even that she had a past. She might have sprung into being just as she appeared at the dock there at Lisbon—brightly blonde, luxuriantly curved, with a heavily handsome face and full round chin and long, bright-green eyes. Her blonde hair had been dyed and was getting rapidly darker at the part; her eyebrows and lashes were darkened. She had a certain strength that was rather attractive in a queer way, for it went with the frank predatoriness of some small, harried and hunted animal. Nobody could enjoy food or warmth or clothing as Gili obviously did, who had not had to go without them.

  But then Daisy Belle Cates, with all her money and her internationally famous and social name, probably had had to scrounge for food too, while France was occupied.

  What happened when you were adrift on the Atlantic in a lifeboat? Nothing about the Lerida, the tiny Portuguese cargo ship in which they had finally set out from Lisbon, led Marcia to think that the lifeboats would be either adequate or in good condition.

  Marcia, like the other women, wore slacks and two sweaters and heavy seaman’s shoes. Even at that time of year, it was cold on the water at night. She felt bulky and stuffed with clothing; if the lifeboat swamped she wouldn’t have a chance with all that clothing. But there wasn’t a chance to keep afloat, swimming, in a sea like that anyway.

  If the lifeboat didn’t turn over while they launched it, if it didn’t capsize at the first wave, they might drift for days, before they were seen and picked up.

  And they might never be picked up.

  Well, there was no use thinking of that. She got up quickly; merely to move, to stop thinking, to do something. There was nothing to do, of course; she went to the mirror and tied her thick, red scarf around her neck. The ship lurched and she steadied herself against the washbasin. It brought her very near her own reflection in the mirror and she looked at it for a moment, with a kind of objective interest. Her face, that she had lived with nearly twenty-five years. It was very strange to think that the curious and deep association of body and spirit could snap so suddenly.

  She was frightened; well, why not? All of them were frightened. She reached for lipstick automatically, pretending she wasn’t afraid, and was not in the least fooled by her own pretense. How many times had she lipsticked the mouth she saw now in the mirror!

  It was a good mouth, warm and sweetly curved. It was a good face, as a matter of fact, very tanned, so her blue eyes with her black heavy lashes looked intensely blue—as blue as the Mediterranean whose sun had provided the tan. Her hair was black, smoothly drawn to a chignon at the back of her neck; she wore a snug, black beret. She didn’t look frightened; she looked puzzled, the black slender arches of her eyebrows drawn together.

  Daisy Belle was watching her, unders
tanding. Marcia turned and caught her clear, hard gaze. Daisy Belle said: “Seems queer, doesn’t it? In another hour this face, this hand...” She smoked and said with a little shrug: “My face isn’t much to part with, but I’ve always been, proud of my legs.”

  Gili gave a faint scream. Daisy Belle added practically: “All the same, you’d better get your coat on, Marcia. We’re not dead yet.”

  Marcia lurched to the bunk and put on her fur coat. She caught a glimpse of the label: Revillon Frères, London, Paris, New York. How queer it was to see that label, proclaiming the incredible existence of another world, incredibly remote. She remembered when she’d bought that coat. It was a crisp fall day in Paris, and she had met Mickey later in the cocktail room of the George the Fifth. They’d gone for a walk in the Bois de Boulogne with the trees a hazy pinkish bronze, and he’d bought her violets. The Maginot Line was still standing, and outwardly Paris was unchanged. By the time the next fall came around the Germans were in Paris and Mickey was in a concentration camp and she was in the cold little villa near Marseilles.

  Mickey suddenly opened the door and, as he did so, the ship plunged down, down into the trough of a wave again and nobody spoke, nobody moved until that terrible shuddering and groaning and straining ceased. Sluggishly, as if with a great effort, the ship began to climb another wave. Mickey said loudly and roughly above the tumult: “Are you ready?”

  She felt a sudden surge of pity for him, he looked so white. It was so wrong, so very pitiable that all his enormous, stubborn struggle just for life should have come at last to this. He had looked like that the day, almost a month ago now, that he’d come to her in Marseilles, stumbling, white and hungry, wearing a hunted look as if the Nazis were still after him. They weren’t, of course; he’d escaped and now the Americans were in Marseilles and the war was over, but Mickey couldn’t comprehend it physically. He knew it in his mind, but his tortured, starved, sensitive body still cringed. Even in Lisbon he would not believe in his own safety; he still walked close to buildings, in their shadow, listening nervously behind him; he hated lighted places and people; he slunk along, his blond head bent and his shoulders slumped and his eyes darting quick, surreptitious glances this way and that. It had made her heart ache to contrast this present war-scarred Mickey with the Mickey she had once known—who walked so confidently, head up, shoulders back, smiling and easy upon a concert stage; who bent so effortlessly and yet so full of power over the keyboard. And his hands! She couldn’t even now bear to think of his hands, those beautiful, strong, square-fingered musician’s hands, now so scarred and mangled.

  She went to him, staggering as the ship staggered. Gili slid down from the upper bunk and lurched toward Mickey and seized his lapels in her strong hands. “Mickey, Mickey,” she cried. “This is horrible. I don’t want to leave the ship. I’m afraid.”

  It was queer how alert, how receptive to small impressions your mind could be in a moment of danger. Marcia thought swiftly that Mickey had learned patience; he had been patient, even kind, with Gili, ever since she had joined their small party. Luther and Daisy Belle Cates, herself and Mickey, Gili—all trying to get away from Europe, joining forces in Lisbon because they drifted together, because they got passage together on this small, dirty cargo boat, which was now going down.

  Mickey said, patiently, looking down at Gili: “We’ve got to leave the ship. The Captain says she’s going down. Come on...”

  Daisy Belle put out her cigar as carefully as if she intended to return. “Where is Luther?”

  “He’s on deck. Hurry.”

  “I hope he’s wrapped himself up. He catches such frightful colds. He’s had pneumonia twice. And with his heart...I hope he’s wrapped himself up.”

  That was fantastic too; as fantastic as the thought that she, Marcia Colfax, stood a very excellent chance of ceasing to exist in another hour or so.

  “Hurry,” said Mickey. “They’re waiting....”

  “I won’t go,” screamed Gili suddenly. “I won’t go...”

  There were sounds from the passageway beyond Mickey; somebody ran past, shouting something in Portuguese. Mickey dragged Gili’s clutching hands away and shouted above the tumult: “Come on—I tell you they’re waiting....”

  So this was what it was to abandon ship; something you never thought to find yourself doing. The passageways were no different; just as narrow and dark and smelling as strongly of stale cooking as they’d been all along. Presently this very linoleum her feet were treading upon would be at the bottom of the Atlantic, there to rot forever. These steps, this ladder—Marcia followed Mickey, and Gili followed her, and Daisy Belle, who must be feeling much the sense of unreality that Marcia felt, came last. They got on deck, and wind and spray and darkness flung themselves upon their faces so they leaned against the nearest bulkhead. Mickey shouted: “Keep together....”

  There was no sign of the ship’s Captain. There was tumult, voices shouting all around them, but Marcia could distinguish no words. The lights were thin, diffused, so running, moving figures were blurs of blackness. She felt Mickey’s hand and reached backward vaguely for Daisy Belle, but Luther came out of the chaos, his thin, bony face vaguely white. “Where’s Daisy Belle?” he shouted. Marcia tried to tell him she was near. There was a rattle and clatter as of chains and something bumped hard against the ship; there was a loud kind of shriek and scream of metal somewhere near. Daisy Belle’s voice rose shrilly, telling Luther not to leave her. Then seamen were lifting Marcia through the furious darkness and chaos and clamor of storm and night and wind. She could feel their arms and swift motions and could barely see their faces. Suddenly she was in the lifeboat.

  She moved over on the seat; Daisy Belle was beside her. Others, dim shapes, with blurred white faces were in the boat too. Two of them, seamen apparently, were shouting at each other in Portuguese: she could not understand a word and their voices were rough with terror and angry sounding; there was some difficulty in lowering the boat, for there were loud and peremptory shouts from above and from the boat. They were waiting, of course, for a good moment to lower. What could be a good moment in a storm like that!

  Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad storm; perhaps it was merely the unseaworthiness of the little ship. Daisy Belle said grimly yet breathlessly: “I keep thinking of the Titanic. Luther’s father was on her, you know.”

  Luther himself not far away, said hoarsely: “I hope to God they don’t spill us all in the sea.”

  It was horrible to feel motion and to be able to see so little. How did they know what they were doing, those seamen up above and the others in the boat? “She’s going down,” shouted Luther suddenly in a high, shrill voice. “For God’s sake, hurry...”

  The lights of the ship were tilted crazily; perhaps they themselves were tilted; the whole world resolved itself into a crazy pattern of noise, of light, of darkness, of tumult, of spray and of cold.

  Daisy Belle said, panting: “Now if they can pull away quick...Luther, I’ll take an oar.”

  Mickey was there; quite suddenly he came, lurching, from the roar and tumult and crazy quilt of motion. “It’s okay,” he was shouting. “It’s okay....Now then...” But they dropped down, down, down, as if there was never any end of that drop; a wave broke; there was salty cold water everywhere; they were going to be capsized.

  She reached backward into the wetness and darkness. Mickey wasn’t there; she clutched the seat beneath her. Some force seemed to come up strongly under the little boat, pushing it upward, and there was air again in their faces. Luther Cates was swearing and Gili somewhere was screaming. And then Marcia knew the lifeboat was moving, pulling away from the ship which already stood out a black bulk with lights above them. “We made it,” said Daisy Belle harshly. They started then, again, down the long, long, horrible glide into the trough of a wave.

  The rest of the night was like that.

  Nobody knew when or even if the ship went down. She was a small, crowded Portuguese cargo boat, with a few cabins which were at a premium, so many people wanted to get away from Europe out of Lisbon; and her destination had been Buenos Aires. Sometime in the maelstrom her few tilting, blinking lights simply disappeared and nobody noticed it. If other lifeboats were successfully lowered they did not know that, either. Their only preoccupation was the darkness, the waves, the cold, the sea water; the long, sickening glides down, thinking that every second was to be that second which would pitch them into the sea, and then the equally long and in a queer way equally sickening thrust upward. All existence became a matter of clinging to the boat, of huddling together, of trying to row, of trying to bail out sea water. It was a completely instinctive and completely primitive struggle with wind and waves and cold. Horrible, wet cold that stiffened hands and body, so it seemed the blood could not flow through so stiff and hard a substance, as if there could be no life in anybody’s heart. At first, spasmodically, the women tried to help; soon they could only cling to the boat, to each other, fight for air, for Life.