Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 5, No. 19, November 1944

Death at the Porthole by Baynard Kendrick

We welcome the first appearance in EQMM of Baynard Kendrick whose Captain Duncan Maclain is easily the best-known blind detective on the contemporary scene — a worthy successor to Ernest Bramah’s Max Carrados, the first and most famous of all blind sleuths. Captain Maclain, you’ll remember, crashed Hollywood in a Class A picture — “Eyes in the Dark” starring Edward Arnold as the blind detective whose assistant was a Seeing Eye dog.

Unfortunately Mr. Kendrick has never written a short story about Captain Maclain. Perhaps one of these days... But he has written shorts about Cliff Chandler who as a manhunting “type” is even more unusual than Captain Maclain. Indeed Cliff Chandler may actually be unique — your Editor knows of no other detective in fiction who specializes in protecting the welfare of transatlantic passengers on a giant ocean liner. Cliff Chandler is a ship’s detective. Odd? Not a bit: if a hotel can have a house detective, why not a ship, which is a hotel afloat.

Tired? Need a vacation? We prescribe an exhilarating trip on the S. S. Moriander...

Cliff Chandler, slim and debonair from crisp black hair to patent-leather pumps, stopped at the door of the Gold Lounge and looked inside. A delightful odor of expensive perfume drifted out into the corridor. Mingled with it was the soft laughter of many women.

The combination appealed to Cliff. In his capacity as ship’s detective of the luxurious S. S. Moriander, he was beginning to feel that life was unbearably dull. She was on her tenth voyage from Southampton to New York, and even the usual run of petty cardsharps seemed to have deserted her.

Of course you couldn’t expect trouble every time the Moriander shoved her flaring prow out into the Atlantic, but Cliff thrived on excitement. The lure of it had taken him into a private agency after college. There, his quick grasp of languages, his natural good breeding, and his hard common sense had rapidly carried him to the top. After six exciting years abroad he found himself comfortably ensconced guarding the passengers’ welfare on one of the largest ships afloat.

He leaned against the door of the Gold Lounge and looked inside. A long table had been set up near the center of the lounge. It was covered with a cloth of shimmering gold texture and topped with an array of cut-glass bottles and small ornate boxes of various shapes and sizes.

Presiding over the display was a dapper little Frenchman, Cliff recognized him from a previous trip as M. Jean Martone, manufacturer extraordinary of a select line of cosmetics. Gurgling enthusiastically over his wares were a dozen or more of the best-looking women on board.

As Cliff watched, M. Martone came around from behind the table to stand in front of a modishly gowned girl. She was touching powder to her cheeks, aided by a small mirror in a gold vanity. The Frenchman cocked his head to one side, and gave vent to a couple of disapproving clucks.

“Non! Non! Non! Mademoiselle. Not that shade, I beg of you! It is too dark, by far!” With a quick motion he reached for an open box on the table, and applied a different shade to her cheeks, wielding the tiny powder rag with a delicate touch. “Voilà!” He stepped back to regard his handiwork, twisting a waist so slender that Cliff suspected corsets under the French-cut evening clothes.

A quick flush colored the girl’s face at the Frenchman’s familiarity. With lifted chin she turned and started from the lounge. As she faced Cliff, he suddenly remembered that he had seen her once before. It had only been a brief glimpse in Clonnet’s jewelry shop in Paris, but the girl wasn’t a type easily forgotten. Her white evening gown was fitted close. Under its smooth embrace her rounded figure was slim and graceful.

Cliff followed her toward the dining saloon. It was no part of his duties to police the passengers in social pastimes, but the girl had a winsomeness which was appealing.

Several men looked up from a table in the corner. The girl passed them by unseeingly and followed the steward to a small table on the far side of the room. Cliff was pleasantly surprised to see that it was his table, too; for the rest of the voyage they would eat together, at least. Two minutes later he had introduced himself.

The girl’s name was Elsa Graves. She gave Cliff the kind of handclasp he liked, and said: “I’m such a dope at traveling. I’m scared to speak to people — and scared to tell them to go away when they speak to me.”

“If you’re traveling alone, I’d like to apply for the position of guardian for the voyage.” Cliff gave her his disarming smile.

Her deep blue eyes, watchful at first, softened as she estimated the set of Cliff’s shoulders and the cut of his evening clothes. Her answering smile started in her eyes and worked down to disclose even white teeth between parted red lips.

“That may be quite an order, Mr. Chandler, unless you can persuade this ship to stand on its own feet and behave!”

“You’ve been ill?” he asked sympathetically.

“I’ll?” She wrinkled her nose delightfully. “For two days I’ve been trying to die in 115. I’m rooming with a French girl named Dorette Maupin. She’s a dear. Only the fact that she’s been worse than I have has helped me to survive. We’ve shared our lemon juice and—”

“You’re in stateroom 115?” Cliff asked, surprised. “We’re neighbors. I’m in 114, right across the hall.”

“I know!” Elsa laughed. “I spied on you once — when you came down last night. I hoped you’d be a motherly old soul who could look in on me if I were ill. I hated you desperately when you turned out to be a man.”

“I trust that’s diminished this evening — with the storm.”

“This evening,” said Elsa, “I’ve reached a point where I can enjoy my dinner.”

Cliff signaled the steward, gave the order, and turned back to the girl. She was carrying a gold-trimmed white handbag. As Cliff turned back, she held it open in her hand and was busy with lipstick, using the open top of the bag for a mirror. Unexpectedly she raised her eyes and saw him watching her.

Cliff smiled quickly, but he was glad the steward appeared just then and saved his making any remark. Unless he was badly mistaken, the delightful Elsa Graves was packing a gun.

They talked desultorily over their soup, and Cliff’s efforts failed to get him much information. All they brought forth was that she had been in Paris for two years studying art and was on her way home to some small town in the Middle West.

She was chattering on about her experience in the art schools when shouts from the deck outside brought them both to their feet.

“What is it?” Elsa asked, and briefly her face was drawn with fear.

“You have nerves,” Cliff told her. “You’d better stay right here. It’s probably just a scuffle in the Second Class on the deck below. I’ll find out and report if it’s really exciting.”

He stepped outside and was hurrying toward a group of passengers near the rail when the small form of a girl detached itself from the crowd and bumped violently into him.

Momentarily he stared down into troubled eyes, searching an olive-skinned piquant face, old beyond its years. The light from the saloon window obliquely touched over-red lips and errant blue-black hair.

“Pardon, M’sieu’. He fell overboard!” Her worried eyes swept Cliff’s face. “I saw him run to the rail and I turned away. I thought him ill, M’sieu’ — seasick. I had no wish to embarrass him. I walked part way down the deck — then I heard a yell. When I turned around, he was falling over the edge. I screamed for help. Oh, M’sieu’, will they find him?”

Her question was so marked with anxiety that Cliff asked quickly, “Do you know him?”

“I have never seen him before. Oh, what’s that?” She pointed toward the soft blackness of the sea.

The rhythmic cadence of the Moriander’s turbines had died away while they were talking. On the port side, slipping swiftly astern, a splash of crimson fire dyed the ocean’s hills and dales dull red.

“It’s a flare,” Cliff explained. “It’s attached to a life ring. If the man’s still alive and can swim, they’ll pick him up shortly. They’re lowering a boat now.”

“Oh, I am so relieve — for him,” she breathed. “Now — I must go below. Thank you, M’sieu’, for your kindness.”

Cliff lingered to watch the heavy surfboat hauled up the side, and a limp bedraggled bundle of black and white removed from it. Then he turned back to the dining saloon.

“A man fell overboard,” he reported gravely. “Yes, he was rescued. And who do you think it was? Our friend, M. Martone, the cosmetician.”

“Poor fellow,” Elsa murmured. “I don’t like him — but he’s such a helpless little man.”

“All of us are rather helpless,” Cliff said soberly, “when we’re alone in the middle of the ocean.”

They finished dinner, listened to the orchestra, and later sat through a movie in the lounge. The wind had abated somewhat when they went below after a late turn on deck.

Elsa offered her hand before she went into 115. “You’re a swell guardian,” she said. “Do try to make the weather respect your authority tomorrow.”

“I’ll see to it!” Cliff assured her. “I’m certainly not going to let it keep my ward out of circulation. Good night.”

It was quarter to three by the luminous hands of his watch when he was roused by a tapping on his door. He sat up and swung his feet to the floor. Clammy wetness made him draw them quickly up and switch on the reading light to find his slippers. Wisps of rain, which had started since he retired, were blowing in through the open port.

Still almost half-asleep, he searched around for his dressing gown. The tapping on the door continued, timid, but more insistent — conveying a hint of dread and fear by its stealthy staccato.

Elsa Graves was standing in the passageway pressed close to his door. Its unexpected opening flung her into the room. Cliff had a glimpse of dainty bare feet and black pajamas.

“Dorette!” she blurted out. “In there — in our cabin — dead! Dead — Cliff!”

“Listen to me, Elsa!” His voice was kind, but commanding enough to stave off her threatened hysterics. “You wait here. I’ll be back shortly — and then you’ll have to talk. Now try to compose yourself.”

When he felt she was calm enough to be left alone, he stepped across the hallway to 115, closed the door and leaned against it, gazing down at the pajama-clad body of the girl he had met on deck so short a time before.

Death always saddened Cliff Chandler — and Dorette Maupin was far too young to die. Yet without its heavy make-up her face appeared older than it had on deck. Older and harder.

Cliff knelt down beside her and passed his hand over her dark, carefully waved hair. For a second or two he squatted motionless, staring intently at his outstretched palm. Slowly he rubbed it down the side of his bathrobe, got to his feet, and turned his eyes toward the porthole.

The heavy, brassbound, circular glass was down, closed, but swinging loose and unfastened. Above it was a strong brass hook suspended from the ceiling — used to hold it up for ventilation. Quickly he turned back to the lifeless form beside him, lifting it slightly. There was no doubt about it. At the nape of the neck Dorette Maupin’s hair was wet.

Cliff bit down tightly on his lower lip. Across the back of the dead girl’s slender neck was an ugly bruise. Clotted blood seeped out from one side of it. Gently Cliff placed a hand on each side of her face and moved her head from side to side. He knew then why the head had lolled so limply when he raised the body. Dorette Maupin was dead with a broken neck.

He covered the body with a blanket, then straightened up and turned his attention to the cabin.

Both beds were mussed. On the head of one hung a pink net sleeping cap, one of those wisps women wear at night to protect their waves. Cliff touched it with a finger — it was slightly damp. On a chair were intimate feminine garments — and more on the lounge under the porthole.

Working swiftly, Cliff found a traveling bag with the initials “D.M.” It yielded an identifying passport and more clothes. Under the chic Paris underwear which cascaded from the traveling bag was an unopened box of face powder bearing the label “Chez Martone.”

It was an ornate oval box, cellophane-wrapped and bright with printed flowers. Cliff carried it with him when he locked the door of 115 and stepped across the corridor to his own stateroom.

Elsa Graves was just where he had left her — sitting disconsolately on the lounge. He gave her hand a reassuring pat and spoke quietly.

“There are some things I must know without delay. I told you my name — but I didn’t tell you this. I’m a detective employed by this line.”

She paled.

“You’re in a jam, Elsa,” he continued, “but I can help you if you’ll tell me the truth. Dorette Maupin was murdered.”

“That’s preposterous — impossible.”

“Is it?” Cliff lighted a cigarette and asked through the smoke, “Did you know Dorette Maupin before you came on board?”

Elsa shook her head, and tears crept into her eyes again. “No. Accommodations were scarce. I had to share a cabin.”

Friendliness left Cliff Chandler’s voice. “That’s a lie. You were carrying a gun in your handbag tonight, Elsa Graves. I checked up on you with the purser. You deliberately asked for half of 115. Now you’re deliberately asking for trouble. You’re facing a nasty murder. Isn’t it time to think fast and talk straight?”

“I guess you’re on the level,” Elsa said slowly. She leaned toward Cliff. “I did take that cabin with Dorette Maupin. You’re a detective. So am I. Dorette Maupin was a diamond smuggler.”

“And you are—” Cliff broke off, studying the box of powder in his hand.

“An employee of Clonnet et Cie, the Paris jewelers. A steady stream of uncut diamonds has been getting by the U. S. Customs — diamonds bought from Clonnet. I’ve traced two previous purchases indirectly to Monsieur Martone. Clonnet, like most of the fine houses, is determined to stamp out the smuggling of its gems.”

Cliff gave a low whistle. “I was wondering about this extra box of powder in Dorette’s suitcase. I noticed another one just like it in your cabin. Is that yours?”

Elsa shook her head. “It’s Dorette’s, too. And there’s no doubt, Cliff,” she declared earnestly, “that Dorette and Martone were working together. He makes lots of crossings taking samples of powder to the United States—”

Cliff’s fingers swiftly dug under the cellophane wrapper of the powder box and tore it loose. The opened lid disclosed an inner wrapping of brittle paper. Cliff ripped it off while Elsa bent over to watch.

He spread a copy of the ship’s newspaper and carefully dumped out the sweet pinkish contents of the box. Cliff smoothed it out thinly, then turned his attention to the box again. There was an inner container of thin pasteboard which came away with a little effort. Underneath, wrapped in fine tissue, was a tiny stone.

Elsa took it from him and rolled it around on her palm.

“So that’s how they’ve been running them in. I think a thorough search of M. Martone’s suite might not be a waste of time.”

Cliff was silent a moment, thinking of Dorette Maupin’s frightened face when she had collided with him on deck a few hours before. “There are some things I must know, Elsa. Think hard. Was Dorette asleep when you came down with me tonight?”

“I don’t believe so, but I’m not sure. She stirred restlessly — that was all.”

“Was she wearing a sleeping cap in bed?”

She paused, thinking. “A pink net one, I believe.”

“Was the porthole open when you went to bed?”

“Yes. It wasn’t raining then.”

“Now think, Elsa. This is vital. Was the porthole open when you left your room to call me a few minutes ago?”

“It was open when I found—” She stared at him wildly. “Don’t look at me like that, Cliff. I know what you’re thinking — that nobody would stop to close a porthole with a dead girl on the floor.”

“Did you?”

“I didn’t know she was dead! Listen, Cliff. I heard her fall. It woke me up and I called — but she didn’t answer. When I switched on the light she was lying there on the floor. I was half-asleep and thought she was ill. The rain was blowing in the porthole, so I unhooked it and let it down. Then I started to lift her into bed and saw there was something wrong.” Her voice was husky, horrified, her cheeks white.

“Quit worrying,” Cliff advised her. “Let me do that. They put M. Mar-tone in the ship’s infirmary after his ducking tonight. It’s a good time to pay his suite a visit.”

“But if he’s in the infirmary—”

“He couldn’t very well have killed that girl in there,” Cliff concluded. “Yet he’s public suspect No. 1. I met Dorette on deck during the excitement tonight. She was the only witness to Martone’s ducking. If he and Dorette had quarreled — and she had pushed him overboard—”

“What makes you think that?”

“She was frightened and unstrung when I met her. But I can tell you more after I take a look through his things.”

He put on slacks and a sports shirt over his pajamas. Elsa watched as he strapped a .38 under his arm. He slipped into a light overcoat and said, “I think you’d better wait in here.”

“I certainly will not,” she protested. “If you’ll let me back into 115, I’ll get into some clothes. I’m coming along!”

Cliff took Elsa’s arm when they came out onto the broad promenade of “A” deck and guided her to a large window. There he stopped, peering through slightly opened slats of a Venetian blind into a dimly lighted room.

“First,” he said, “we’ll locate Mar-tone. This is the infirmary. Wait here. I’m going to speak to the night orderly.”

He went inside, walked down a short narrow passage to a small office, but the orderly was not in sight. Cliff stepped cautiously into the ward.

The single occupant seemed to be sleeping quietly. Walking lightly, Cliff approached close enough to the bed to identify M. Martone. He was about to leave to rejoin Elsa when something unusual caught his eye. Each bed in the ward was flanked by a square table and all of the tables except one were topped with heavy squares of thick plate glass.

The table from which the glass was missing was nearest the door. Cliff looked at it thoughtfully. He was thinking of the nasty cut and bruise on the back of Dorette Maupin’s soft neck.

He found Elsa Graves leaning against the rail staring down into the swirling black water below. Pancakes of light, marking the portholes of the few late-reading passengers, dotted the side of the Moriander. Two of the lighted ports, just below where they were standing, held Cliff’s attention like the yellow eyes of some evil animal.

“Look, Elsa,” he whispered, pointing, “those lights just underneath us are in my stateroom and yours. Can you think of any way in which Dorette might have been killed — by someone standing right here?”

“Good heavens, Cliff!” She turned toward him. “You think something was dropped from here? But why would she put her head out of the porthole?”

“She might have been tricked into it.”

“Yes, that’s possible, but hard to prove.” Hopelessness was in her tone.

“I doubt if it can be proved,” said Cliff. “But sometimes the cleverest murderer will give himself away. Let’s take a run down to Martone’s suite.”

Cliff’s private passkey admitted them. His quick fingers pushed down the switch by the door. Two pink-shaded lamps glowed into life, revealing the long table he had seen earlier in the Gold Lounge.

The samples were set out on it in orderly array. Obviously M. Martone had returned to his cabin and arranged it before the trip on deck which had nearly been his last. The door to an inner stateroom was slightly ajar.

Cliff crossed the sitting-room and pushed the door wide, disclosing a bedroom containing two expensive wardrobe trunks.

“We can look around in there later,” he told Elsa. “Right now I want to see about that powder. I don’t imagine the opened sample boxes will show much. Let’s have a look at this stack of unopened ones first.”

Feverishly they set to work opening boxes and emptying powder. At one end of the gold cloth a small pile of uncut diamonds began to grow.

There were thirty diamonds in the pile, and nearly a hundred empty boxes on the floor, when Elsa said: “I think that’s all.”

She straightened up from the table. As she did so Cliff caught the expression on her face. Forewarned by her dawning look of terror he cautiously turned around.

Jean Martone, slender as a girl, in striped silk pajamas, was leaning against the side of the bedroom door. He was smiling, but the smile stopped short of his eyes. In his right hand, resting nonchalantly against his hip, was an automatic pistol.

There was a quality about the effeminate Frenchman which was implacable as death itself. His utter lack of excitement, the skillful ease with which he nursed the automatic, were forcible proofs that Jean Martone was a killer. Cliff decided without hesitation that any rash move was out of the question. Martone would shoot, accurately and fast.

“Ah! The so charming mademoiselle who so persistently uses the wrong shade of powder!” Martone’s gaze moved languidly from Elsa to Cliff. “I am force’ to ask your help, Mademoiselle. You will take the cords from the window curtains and tie this impetuous monsieur, who has wasted ten thousand francs’ worth of my powder.”

“It’s a good bluff, Martone, but I already know you.” Cliff measured his chances. “I know that you and Dorette Maupin were working together. I know you quarreled with her — and that she pushed you overboard tonight. I know how you sneaked out of the infirmary and killed her less than two hours ago.”

“Your imagination, Monsieur, it is sublime!” Martone’s slim body was erect in the doorway. “You will hurry Mademoiselle.” Moving slowly, as though in a daze, Elsa began to remove the cords from the heavy silk portieres at the windows.

“You took the plate-glass top from a table in the infirmary,” Cliff went on flatly. “Then, when the orderly went to his supper, you sneaked out onto the deserted promenade deck. Leaning over the rail you lowered something attached to a string, and let it tap against the porthole of 115. When Dorette Maupin, wakeful and upset, reached for it, you pulled it away. Then she did what you hoped for — stuck her head out of the porthole to see what was going on. It wasn’t hard, Martone, to drop that heavy glass table-top down on the back of her neck!”

Elsa was coming toward him, the heavy cords dangling from her hand. “Hold out your wrists, Monsieur,” said Martone, without a change of voice.

Cliff stood rigid, his back toward the Frenchman. Elsa’s slim hand was creeping under his coat. Slowly he extended his wrists, and at the same moment Martone guessed what the girl was up to.

Martone’s automatic cracked, but its sound was lost in the blast of Cliff’s own .38 which Elsa snatched from under Cliff’s arm and fired twice. When he swung around M. Martone was dead on the floor with a bullet between his eyes.

“You know,” said Elsa, “it’s a crying shame to waste all that beautiful powder. I think I’ll collect it and take it home with me. I’ll never have to buy any more.”

Cliff divided his time the following day between phoning the New York and Paris police, messing about with test tubes in Dr. Knott’s private laboratory, and arranging a place on the top deck where he and Elsa could spend a quiet evening.

They were stretched out in deck chairs in a sheltered spot between two lifeboats when Cliff reached out through the darkness and secured her slim hand. “This is one of the privileges of a ship’s detective,” he said with a note of affection.

“Holding the passengers’ hands?”

“No.” He gave a quick laugh. “Using the top deck, forbidden to passengers.”

She offered no resistance. “You’re a handsome devil, Cliff Chandler — and a smart one. I still don’t see how you solved the way Dorette was killed.”

“That was easy,” he assured her, “compared to some of the things I’ve had to work out today.”

“Today?”

“Listen, Elsa. The purser appraised those diamonds we found last night. The duty on the entire lot is only $2,500.”

For a moment he was silent, then he said, “Don’t you think $2,500 is a small amount to force Martone into a murder?”

“I thought they quarreled — and he killed her because she pushed him overboard.”

“I changed my mind today. Mar-tone fell overboard, Elsa — fell overboard in an attempt he made to push Dorette into the sea. She was a strong girl, on guard, and too quick for him. His stake was high — a quarter of a million dollars—”

“You found more gems?”

“Those diamonds were a plant, a red herring, Elsa, designed to cover the really valuable part of M. Martone’s samples — the powder you collected last night and took to your cabin.”

“The loose powder? But that’s preposterous — impossible.”

“You said the same thing about Dorette’s being killed last night, yet it was true. I analyzed a sample of that powder. M. Martone would gladly have paid duty on smuggled diamonds — if the customs had concentrated on the diamonds and let his powder through. That product of „Chez Martone“ is sixty per cent heroin!”

“Heroin,” Elsa breathed. “So that’s why Dorette was killed.”

“Exactly,” said Cliff. “Just one more thing and I’m through. You said that Dorette was wearing her pink net sleeping cap in bed — yet she didn’t have it on when you found her on the floor?”

“That’s right.”

“Then she must have been getting dressed for some reason. Otherwise, why would she have removed the cap which she wore to protect her hair?” Elsa sat up slightly in her chair and leaned closer to him. Her hand in his had grown cold. “Do you think she had planned to go up to the infirmary and kill Martone? Just as she took off her cap she saw something dangling in front of her porthole. She stuck out her head and—”

“That’s perfect,” said Cliff, “except for one thing. When I went into your cabin and examined the room, Dorette Maupin’s pink sleeping cap, hanging away from the porthole on the head of the bed, was wet!”

Their chairs were close to the edge of the top deck, without a protective rail. Elsa jerked her hand loose from Cliff’s hold and attacked him with the fury of a tigress. Throwing her whole weight against his chest, she shoved his light chair toward the void which marked a drop into the sea.

Cliff’s powerful hands closed about her wrists. She tore one loose, scratched at his face, and pushed again. The chair slid back a few inches, then stopped, for Cliff had taken great care in the afternoon to see that it was firmly secured. From behind a nearby lifeboat three husky deckhands materialized and pinioned the frantic girl.

“You damned flatfoot!” she screamed. “You can’t put this over on me! I’ll—”

Cutting into her hysterics, Cliff said calmly, “Elsa Graves, you’re under arrest for the murders of Dorette Maupin, agent of the French Sûreté, and Jean Martone, your accomplice in an international traffic of narcotics!”

“Of course Martone and the Graves girl were working together,” Cliff told Captain Jordan a short while later. “They were running heroin in the „Chez Martone“ powder, when they discovered that Dorette Maupin of the French Sûreté was on their trail.”

“And the diamonds?”

“Were a screen. If anything broke badly, Martone would admit petty smuggling — and take a small rap at the worst. Who’s going to bother with face powder when there are diamonds in the boxes?”

“Who, indeed?” asked Captain Jordan.

“The gentle Elsa hit on a scheme to double-cross Martone, and get rid of Dorette at the same time. Somehow she tricked Dorette into looking out of the porthole — then dropped the heavy brass-bound window of the port down on Dorette’s neck.

“Then she made a mistake. She took off the dead girl’s sleeping cap and hung it on the head of the bed to make it look as though Dorette was about to get dressed. That sleeping cap was wet, Captain, and so were Dorette’s neck and hair, from the rain. The girl must have had that cap on when she stuck her head out of the port and was killed — and Elsa must have taken it off her. That sewed Elsa up in the bag.”

The Captain rubbed his chin. “What about the table-top missing from the infirmary? And that yam about Martone dropping it down on Dorette’s neck?”

“Hooey!” said Cliff. “That’s what Elsa wanted me to think — and I’m an obliging sort of cuss when I want to please a lady. She went up to the infirmary, got that table top, and threw it overboard herself before she called me. She figured — and cleverly, too — that would hang the job on Martone. She got a nice break when Martone broke in on us searching his quarters. He thought she was still on his side. It must have been a surprise when she took my gun and shot him. She couldn’t have done it if he’d been suspicious of her.

“Then she made a daring move. She took the powder which we’d dumped on the gold tablecloth. That tipped me off to the real game. You can put that powder in alcohol. The talc precipitates, and you have a nice tincture of heroin. I tried it in doctor’s lab today — and the thought of it makes me very dry.”

“Is that so?” said Captain Jordan, hastily moving his Scotch out of reach. “Sometime, Cliff, why don’t you take a great big jump into the sea.”