"Well," Morgan observed thoughtfully, "I admit this is the rummiest kind of secret-service mission that a self-respecting hero was ever called on to undertake. It rouses my professional instincts."
He felt a glow of pleasurable excitement. Here was he, an eminent writer of detective stories, involved in one of those complicated spy plots to recover a stolen document and preserve the honour of a great Personage. It was the sort of thing that would have been nuts to Mr. Oppenheim; and, Morgan reflected, he himself had often used the background of a luxurious ocean liner, sweeping its lighted decks through waters floored with stars — full of monocled crooks sipping champagne; of pale, long-necked Ladies with a Purpose who are not interested in love-making; and of dirty work in general. (The women in a secret-service story seldom are interested in love-making; that is the trouble with it.) Although the Queen Victoria was scarcely the boat for such goings-on, Morgan considered the idea and found it good. Outside, it had begun to rain. The liner was bumping like a tub against the crash of the swell, and Morgan lurched a little as he stalked up and down the narrow cabin, revolving plans, pushing his glasses up and down his nose, becoming each second more excited with the prospect.
"Well?" demanded Peggy Glenn. "Say something, Hank! Of course we help him, don't we?"
She still seemed hurt by the behaviour of the eminent soaks; but her protective instincts had been roused and her small jaw was very square. She had even put on her shell-rimmed reading-glasses, which lent a look of unwonted sombreness (or flippant make-believe, if you like) to the thin face. And she had removed her hat, to show a mop of black bobbed hair. Sitting with one leg curled under her, she regarded Morgan almost fiercely. He said:
"My girl, I wouldn't miss it for — well, for a good deal. Ha! It is obvious,' he continued, with relish, and hoped it was true, "that there is aboard a wily and clever international crook who is determined to secure that film for purposes of his own. Very good. We therefore form a Defensive Alliance… "
"Thanks," said Warren, in some relief. "God knows I need help and — you see, you were the only people I could trust. Well, then?"
"Right. You and I, Curt, will be the Brains. Peggy will be the Siren, if we need one. Captain Valvick will be the Brawn—"
"Hah!" snorted the captain, nodding vigorously and lifting his shoulders with approval. He twinkled down on them, and raised his arm with terrific gusto. " 'For God! For de cause! For de Church! For de laws,' " he thundered unexpectedly. " 'For Charles, King of England, and Rupert off de Rhine!' Ha-ha-ha."
"What the devil's that?" demanded Morgan.
"Ay dunno yust what it mean," admitted the captain, blinking on them rather sheepishly. "Ay read it in a book once, and ay t'ink it iss fine. If ay ever get stirred up in de heart — hoooo-o! — Ay say it." He shook his head. "But ay got to be careful wit' de books. When ay finish reading one, ay got to be careful to write its name down so I don't forget and go back and read it all over again."
He looked on them with great amiability, rubbing his nose, and inquired, "But what iss dere you want me to do?"
"First," said Morgan, "it's agreed that you don't want official steps taken, Curt? I mean, you could tell Captain Whistler—?"
"Lord, no!" the other said violently. "I can't do that, don't you see? If we get this back at all, it's got to be under the strictest cover. And that's where it's going to be difficult. Out of the whole passenger-list of this boat, how are we going to pick out the person who might want to steal the thing? Besides, how did the fellow know I had that film, if I didn't know it myself?"
Morgan reflected. "That wireless message—" he said, and stopped. "Look here, you said you read it aloud, And it was only a very short time afterwards that the chap tried to burgle this cabin. It seems too much to be a coincidence… Was there anybody who might have overheard you?"
The other made scoffing noises. In the pure absorption of the debate he had absent-mindedly fished out a bottle of whisky from one of his suit-cases. "Bunk!" said Warren. "Suppose there were a crook of some description aboard. What would that cock-eyed message mean to him? It took some time for me to figure it out."
"All right. All right, then! It's got to mean this. The thief was somebody who already knew about the film; that is, that there had been one made… That's possible, isn't it?"
Warren hesitated, knocking his knuckles against his turbaned forehead.
"Ye-es, I suppose it is," he admitted. "There were all sorts of rumours afloat next day; you know how it is. But we were in the library with the door locked, and naturally it can't be any of the people who were in the game… I told you there was a reception downstairs, but how anybody down there could have known—"
"Well, evidently somebody did know," Morgan argued. "And it's at a crush of a reception like that, at the home of some big pot, where you'd expect to find a specimen of the gentry we're looking for… Put it this way, just for a starter." He meditated, pulling at his ear-lobe. "The thief — we'll call him, say, Film-Flam — gets wind of your important document. But he thinks it's been destroyed and abandons any idea of pinching it. Still, he is travelling abroad on the Queen Victoria—"
"Why?" inquired Miss Glenn practically.
"How should I know?" Morgan demanded, with some asperity. His imagination had been working on opulent ballrooms full of tiaras and red shirt-ribbons; and sinister whiskery strangers smoking cigarettes round the corners of pillars. "Maybe it was accident, maybe Film-Flam is a professional diplomatic crook who dashes about from capital to capital and hopes for the best. Anyway, you've got to admit it was somebody who'd been in Washington and heard all about the indiscretion… Righto, then. He's abandoned the idea, but all the same he happens to be travelling aboard the same boat as Curt. If you looked at the passenger-list, Curt, would you recognise the name of anybody who'd been at your uncle's house that night?"
Warren shook his head.
"There were millions of 'em and I didn't know anybody. No, that won't work… But you mean this. You mean that this bird (after abandoning the idea) overhears that cable in the wireless-room, tumbles to it before I do, and takes a long chance on stealing it before I've got time to realise what I'm carrying?"
"He'd have to work fast, man. Otherwise, as soon as you knew you'd chuck it overboard. And here's another thing," crowed Morgan, stabbing his finger into his palm as the idea grew on him. "The field of search isn't as wide as you'd think at first. Again this is only a theory, but look here! — isn't this chap pretty sure to be somebody who has scraped an acquaintance with you already? I mean, if I were an international crook, even though I didn't think you were carrying that roll of film, I'm jolly certain I'd try to get into your good graces. As Uncle Warpus's favourite nephew, you'd be a valuable person to make friends with… Doesn't that sound reasonable?"
By this time they were all eagerly engrossed, in the business, floundering as they tried to stand or sit in the creaking cabin, and each playing with theories. Warren, who had produced paper cups and was pouring out drinks, stopped. He handed a cup carefully to Peggy Glenn before he spoke. Then he said:
"It's a funny thing you should say that…
"Well?"
"Aside from yourselves, I know very few people aboard this tub. The weather's been too bad, for one thing. But it's funny." He blew into a folding paper cup savagely to open it; then he looked up. "There were — let's see — there were five people in the wireless-room at the time my cable came through, aside from the operator and myself. There was
Captain Whistler, who was having some kind of whispered row with the operator; he walked out in a turkey-cock rage. There was a girl I hadn't seen before. Wash out the captain and that girl, and there were three men. One of 'em I didn't know; didn't notice him at all… But the last two are the only other people I do know. One was that fellow Woodcock, the travelling salesman for the bug-powder firm; and the other was Dr. Kyle, who sits at our table."
There was a hoot of derision from Peggy Glenn at the mention of the latter name. Even Morgan, whose profession of necessity made him doubly suspicious of any respectable person, inclined to agree with her. They had both heard of Dr. Kyle. He was one of the more resounding names in Harley Street — a noted brain specialist who had figured as alienist in several murder trials. Morgan remembered him at the table — a tall, lean, rather sardonic Scot, slovenly except for his well-brushed hair, with shrewd eyes under ragged brows whisking upwards at the outer corner, and two deep furrows running down his cheeks. To imagine this distinguished loony-doctor in the role of Film-Flam strained even Morgan's credulity. If he were given a choice in crooks, he would have preferred to fasten on the bouncing Mr. Charles Woodcock, commercial traveller for "Swat," the instant eradicator of insects. But, distinctly, Dr. Kyle must be counted out.
However, when he pointed out this difficulty to Warren, it seemed to make the American all the more certain Dr. Kyle was the culprit.
"Absolutely!" said Warren excitedly. "It's always people like that. Besides — suppose somebody's impersonating him? There's an idea for you! What better disguise would there be for an international crook than as the respectable head of a bughouse? Say, if we were to tax him with it— jump on him suddenly, you see—"
"You want to be shoved in the psychopathic ward?" demanded Morgan. "No, we can't do that; not with Kyle. Besides, it's nonsense! We've got to rule out Kyle, and get a good working plan… "
Captain Valvick shifted from one foot to the other.
"Excuse me," he suggested, with a sort of thunderous timidity, and beamed on them. "Ay got a idea, ay half."
"H'm!" said Morgan dubiously.
"Ay tell you," pursued the captain, peering round to be sure they were not overheard, "dis feller dat bat you one, he hass got only half de film, eh? Well, den, ay tell you what. He got only half de film; den maybe he iss going to come back, eh? So we stand watch and when he come back we say, 'Hey—!' "
"Yes, I know," interrupted Warren, with a gloomy air. "I'd thought of that, too, but it won't work. That's what always happens in the stories; but you can bet your last shirt this bird is too cagy for that. He knows I'm wise to him, he knows I'll take good care of that film; if I don't pitch the rest of it overboard right away. No, no. He won't take any risk like that."
For some time Peggy Glenn had been sitting silent, her chin cupped in her hands, studying the matter. Her glossy hair was tousled across her forehead, and now she suddenly looked up with such an expression of diabolical brightness and practicality that she almost crowed.
"You men," she said, rather scornfully—"you men— just messing about, that's all! Now you let me tell you what to do, and you'll have your film back to-night. Yes, I mean it. I fancy I've got an idea" — she struggled to conceal the pleasure that was making her tilt up her chin and grow as excited as Warren—"and it's a ripping idea! Whee! Listen. In a way, Captain Valvick is right. We've got to trap this chap into coming back for the rest of the film… "
Warren made a weary gesture, but she frowned him down.
"Will you listen to me? I tell you we can do it. Because why? Because we are the only people on the whole boat— we four — who know Curt was attacked and why he was attacked. Very well. We give it out publicly that we came in here and found Curt lying on the floor unconscious, dead to the world with a bad scalp wound. We have no suspicions that there was an attack or theft. We don't know how it happened; we suppose that he must have come in here drunk or something, and staggered about and finally fell and bashed himself over the head—"
Warren raised his eyebrows.
"Baby," he said with dignity, "it is not that I myself have any objection to the charming picture you have just described. But I only want to remind you that I am a member of the American Diplomatic Service. The Diplomatic Service, Baby. The rules laid down for the strictness of my behaviour would cause annoyance among the seraphim and start a riot in a waxworks. I dislike offering suggestions, but why don't you say that in the course of my customary morning opium debauch I went cuckoo and batted my head against the wall? My chief would like that fine."
"Oh, all right," she conceded primly, "if you must keep to your nasty old rules. Then — say you were ill or sea-sick; anyway, that it was an accident. Well, that you haven't recovered consciousness… "
Morgan whistled. "I begin to see this. Curt, I believe the wench has got something!"
"Yes," said Warren, "and in another minute I'm going to tell you what it is. Go on, Baby. Here, have another drink. After I am picked up insensible, what then?"
"Then," the girl continued, beaming excitedly, "we tell everybody you were taken to the infirmary, where you are still in a stupor. You see, if we tell it at the table it will go all about the boat. It's supposed to be an accident, so there'll be no investigation. In the meantime here will be the cabin, open and unguarded. Don't you think this crook will see his opportunity? Of course he will. He'll come back straightaway — and there you are."
She tossed up her head, her hazel eyes shining and her lower lip folded over the upper in defiant triumph. There was a silence.
"By God! it's good!" exploded Morgan, driving his fist into his palm. Even Warren was impressed; he sat like a thoughtful Indian prophet, staring at the paper cup, while Captain Valvick chuckled and Peggy said: "Hoo!" in a pleased tone. "But wait a bit," Morgan added, "what about the steward, the one you sent to tell us? He knows."
"Stewards never talk," the girl said wisely; "they know too much as it is. Make it certain with a good tip. Then you can go ahead… By the way, Curt, is the cabin next to this one vacant? That's where you want to hide and wait for him, if it is."
"Why not in here?"
"He'd see you straightaway, you silly! And you've got to catch him with the goods. It's no good saying, 'Cough up, you villain!' unless you can catch him dead to rights. He'd only say he'd got into the wrong cabin by mistake, and then where are you? He must have the film on his person— then," she added judicially, "I dare say you may land him one, dear, if you like."
"Ah-hh!" Warren breathed, and dreamily fingered a large fist. "Yes, Baby, the next cabin is unoccupied, as it happens. Tell you what. I'll install myself in there, and get the steward to bring me some dinner. Captain Valvick can keep watch with me. You two go down to dinner and spread the glad news. Then you can join us afterwards. We'll probably have a long wait. The ingredients for cocktails might not be out of place… "
"But we mustn't get drunk," said Miss Glenn, as though she were uttering a careful definition of terms.
"Oh, no!" said Warren vigorously. "Not at all. Of course not. Ha-ha! The idea is absurd. But look here, I wish we had more dope on our mysterious crook. If we could only find out something about him… " He frowned. "Wait a minute. I've got an idea. Captain, you know Captain Whistler pretty well, don't you?"
"Dat old barnacle?" inquired the other. "Coroo! Ay know him when he wass not so stuck up, you bet. He got a hawful temper, I tell you. De first time ay know him wass in Naples, when he come in wid de cargo-boat where de chief mate hass de religious mania and go crazy and t'ink he is Yesus." The breath whistled through Valvick's large moustache; his sandy eyebrows rose and he illustrated the drama. "De chief mate walk up on de bridge and fold his arms and say, 'Ay am Yesus.' De captain say, 'You are not Yesus.' De chief mate say, 'Ay am Yesus and you are Pontius Pilate,' and smack —he haul off and bust
Captain Whistler in de yaw, and dey got to put 'im in irons. Iss a fact. Ay t'ank of it w'en you say Dr. Kyle iss a mad doctor, because Captain Whistler don' like de people which go nutty. Anudder time—'
"Listen, old man," begged Warren. "Spare the Odyssey for a minute. If there were any big international crook aboard, or there were a rumour of it, Captain Whistler would be the one to know about it, wouldn't he? They'd wireless him, wouldn't they, even if he kept it under cover?"
Valvick massively lifted his head sideways and scratched his cheek.
"Ay dunno. It depend on wedder dey know it at de port. Maybe. You want me to hask him?"
"Well — not exactly. Sort of sound him out, you see? Don't let on you know anything. You might do it before dinner; and then we'd be all ready to keep watch."
The other nodded vigorously, and Warren looked at his watch. "Nearly time for the bugle to dress for dinner. We're all set, then?"
There was an enthusiastic chorus in the affirmative. For all these people had within them the true, glorious harebrained spirit of adventure; and Warren poured them a quick one as a toast to the new gamble as lights came on through the vibrating sleekness of white decks, and rain-squalls spattered the portholes, and the voice of a bugle began to brattle past state-room doors, and the stately Queen Victoria shouldered on towards the wild business that was to be.