Jane-Carter Investigates Episode One-Hundred and Five
Jack stepped forward to assist the
captain. Ignoring the man’s feeble struggles, they pulled off his shirt.
Across his bruised and battered back
had been tattooed, in blue and black, the fearsome figure of an octopus.
Jack bent closer to examine the strange
tattoo. Between the two foremost arms of the octopus was sketched a single
word, ‘All.’
“All,”
he read aloud. “What does that signify?”
His question angered the man on the
couch. Snatching the shirt from the captain, he made a feeble, ineffectual
effort to get his arms into it.
“I want out o’ here,” he muttered.
“Quit starin’ and give me a hand!”
“Take it easy,” advised the tugboat
captain. “We was just tryin’ to see if your back was badly hurt.”
“Sorry,” the man muttered. Relaxing, he
leaned weakly against the leather cushions. “I ain’t myself.”
“You swallowed a little water,”
remarked the captain.
“A little?” growled the other. “Half
the river went down my gullet.” As an afterthought, he added: “Thanks for
pullin’ me out.”
“You’re welcome,” responded the
captain. “Ex-sailor, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. How did you know?”
“I can usually tell ’em. Out of work?”
“No.”
“You haven’t told us your name.”
“Richard Hamsted,” the man replied
after a slight hesitation.
“We tried to catch the man who pushed
you off the bridge,” Jack said. “He got away.”
“No one pushed me off the bridge,” the
man said. “I fell.”
“You fell?” I said. “I saw you and
another man struggling—”
“You saw wrong,” the sailor
interrupted. “I was leaning over lookin’ into the water an’ I lost my balance.
That was how it happened.”
“As you please, Mr. Hamsted,” said Jack
with exaggerated politeness. “Oh, by the way, what’s the significance of that
octopus thing on your back?”
“Leave me alone, will you?” the sailor
muttered. “Ain’t a man got any right to privacy?”
“Better not bother him while he’s
feeling so low,” said the tugboat captain. “I’ll get him into some dry
clothes.”
“Nothing we can do?” I asked.
“No, thanks, he’ll be all right.”
“Well, so long,” said Jack.
“Jack, what was the matter with that
fellow?” I demanded in a whisper as soon as we were back on shore. “I didn’t
get a good look at that tattoo on his back.”
“It was as strange a tattoo as I’ve
ever seen. The picture of an octopus. Between its forearms was the word ‘All.’”
“What could that mean?”
“I would have asked, but Mr. Richard
Hamsted wasn’t in a talkative mood.”
“It seems rather mysterious, doesn’t
it?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Jack took my arm to
help me back up the steep bank. “Sailors have some funny ideas regarding
self-decoration. This Hamsted was a peculiar fellow.”
“It was odd that he would lie about being
pushed off the bridge. Jack, will you write about it for the paper?”
“The story isn’t worth more than a few
lines. We can’t say that Hamsted was pushed off the bridge.”
“Why not? It’s true.”
“Hamsted would deny it, and then the Examiner would appear ridiculous.”
“If I owned a paper, I would certainly
use the story,” I said. “It has wonderful dramatic possibilities.”
“Serious journalists aren’t supposed to
be swayed by such things as ‘dramatic possibilities.’ Your father never would
agree to write such a story. You talk him into printing the yarn, and I’ll be
glad to write it.”
“Oh well, I suppose I might as well
forget about it,” I grumbled.
We cleaned the mud from our shoes on the pavement before walking on to the waiting taxi. Florence immediately plied us with questions, displaying interest in the octopus tattoo.
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