Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 59, No. 1. Whole No. 338, January 1972

The Borneo Snapshot Mystery by James Holding{©1971 by James Holding.}

The years have passed — nearly five of them — since we’ve published a new adventure in deduction about our favorite mystery writing team (fictional). Surely you remember King Danforth and Martin Leroy, partners in crime (fictional), the famous literary collaboration known as “Leroy King,” whose books have sold more than 125,000,000 copies throughout the world. Well, they and their lovely wives are still aboard the Valhalla on their round-the-world cruise, and once again a shipboard mystery strikes. What is the meaning of the strange clue — the tiny colored glass spheres on the dead man’s forehead? Strange clue indeed — but are the Great Men daunted? Not on your ’tec tintype — Leroy King rides again!

King Danforth couldn’t sleep.

The Norwegian cruise ship Valhalla, in spite of her widely advertised stabilizers, was rolling heavily as she forged through the South China Sea toward Hong Kong. It was 5:30 in the morning; the Valhalla was forty hours out of Jesselton, North Borneo, her most recent port of call; and King lay in his bunk, wide-awake. His wife, Carol, was still asleep.

Without awakening her he slid out of bed, donned slacks, jersey, and sandals, quietly opened their cabin door, and emerged on the sun deck. A glance showed him that he had the ship to himself. Not even a Norwegian deckhand was in evidence. The rising sun revealed the eastern horizon as a faintly rosy undulating line between the sky and the heaving sea.

He walked aft, toward the sunrise, feeling proud of the sea legs he had acquired in half a hundred days at sea. He needed them this morning — to counter the unpredictable movements of the deck under his feet. Ten-foot seas, he judged, the aftermath of a week-old typhoon in whose wake they sailed.

Reaching the rail at the aft end of the sun deck, he decided to descend to the main deck for his stroll and moved to the head of the railed staircase that led down to it.

It was just as he started down the stairs that he saw the body.

A man lay asprawl on the deck at the foot of the steps, supine, limbs slack and disordered, a macabre study in black and white: black hair, black dinner jacket, and black shoes; white face and ruffled white shirt front. King’s instant conjecture was that some elderly or possibly drunken passenger, trying to negotiate the staircase in the heavy seas, had fallen headlong down the stairs.

He ran down the steps and bent over the man, feeling for a pulse and trying to recognize the upturned face. It was familiar but not one to which he could attach a name. Nor could he find a pulse in the thin wrist. When he looked at the man’s face again, he understood why. A horizontal depression, deep enough to lay a finger in, ran across the man’s forehead just below the hairline, with an area of bruised and dusty skin around it.

King rose slowly to his feet. No use listening for a heartbeat. That massive skull fracture left no doubt the man was dead.

When King and his wife joined Martin and Helen Leroy in the dining room for breakfast, King told them all about it. The Leroys were jolted by the news. The death of any member of a ship’s company is always unsettling — a far more immediate reminder of man’s mortality than a random death ashore.

“His name was Calvin Speaker, apparently,” Danforth finished. “We’ve seen him around on the cruise — at informative talks and on shore excursions and so on. You know him, Mart?”

Leroy shook his head. “Calvin Speaker? Nope. Can’t place him.”

“Bushy guardsman-type mustache, long sideburns, patent-leather hair,” Danforth said.

Helen spoke up. “I think I know who he was. Quite handsome in a dark saturnine way. He used to sit beside the dance floor evenings, drinking Brandy Alexanders and staring at me a lot.”

Her husband chuckled. “Everybody does,” he said. He was proud of her good looks.

“He was traveling alone,” Danforth said, “according to the passenger list. Mr. Calvin Speaker from Sacramento.”

Carol murmured, “Poor man! It’s sad to die alone and so far away from home.”

Martin Leroy gave his partner a curious look. “Listen, King, how come this news hasn’t hit the ship’s rumor mill yet?”

“The doctor asked me to keep it quiet until next of kin is notified and official cause of death determined — you know the routine. Then the Captain will announce it.”

“Cause of death!” Helen caught him up. “I thought you said he fell down the steps and cracked his head.”

“Yeah,” Martin Leroy said. “Didn’t he?”

“The doctor thinks so.”

“Don’t you?” Leroy stared at his friend. “What are you hinting at?”

Helen curled her beautiful lips. “Now don’t tell me there’s something mysterious about this! Just because you two write mystery stories, you surely aren’t looking for a plot in a poor lonely man falling down the stairs!”

King rubbed a big hand over his hair and reached for another piece of toast. “There were a couple of odd things about Calvin Speaker’s death.”

“Odd?” Leroy asked.

“The guy still had his dinner jacket on, for one thing.”

“At five-thirty this morning?”

“Right.” On the Valhalla it was de rigueur to dress for dinner every night at sea except Sundays.

“What else?” asked Leroy.

“He had dust on his forehead.”

Helen said, “You’re trying to make something out of that?”

Danforth put marmalade on his toast and shrugged.

Leroy said, “Because he still had his dinner jacket on, King, you think he fell down the stairs last night?”

Danforth nodded.

“So what’s odd about that?” Helen wanted to know.

“If he fell down the steps last night, the night watchman or a deckhand should have found him long before I did this morning. They scrub down the decks every night, you know. And the night watchman makes four complete rounds of the ship, inside and out, every night.”

Leroy nodded. “And what’s odd about Speaker having dust on his forehead?”

“Yes,” his wife chimed in, “isn’t it perfectly natural for a man who falls down a whole flight of steps to get some dust on his head?”

Danforth answered almost reluctantly. “Not on this ship, it isn’t. They keep it cleaner than a baby’s crib. I rubbed my finger over those stair treads this morning and got no dust at all. Not a speck.”

Leroy, munching his third buckwheat cake, said, “Excellent procedural technique, my boy. Under the circumstances I agree that dust was extremely odd. What did Dr. Hagen say?”

“He didn’t say what he was obviously thinking — that I was out of my skull to ask about a spot of dust on a dead man’s forehead.”

Helen gave King a dazzling smile. “My respect for the doctor rises, darling. He’s a fine diagnostician to recognize you so quickly as a mental case.”

“Thanks.” Danforth grinned. “I love it when you’re sweet to me like that. Is Helen sweet to you too, Mart?”

“Never,” Leroy confessed. “But then, she’s my wife.”

Carol snapped, “Stop that horrible joking when poor Mr. Speaker is hardly cold yet!”

“You bring up an important point,” Leroy said. “How about that, King? Any rigor mortis when you found him?”

“Some. Dr. Hagen thought it was ghoulish of me to ask about that too.”

“I like the doctor better all the time,” Helen said.

King continued, “So I compromised. I suppressed my curiosity about rigor mortis and settled for a promise from the doc that he’d take a look at that funny gray dust on Speaker’s forehead.”

“You mean under a microscope?”

“Exactly. And report his findings—” Danforth looked toward the dining-room entrance. “There’s Dr. Hagen now. Excuse me.” He got up and went over to the doorway. The others watched him greet the tall ship’s doctor. Dr. Hagen said something to Danforth, then shook his head and turned away. King came back to the table and sat down. “He had to get back to the sick bay.”

Leroy said, “How about the dust on Speaker’s forehead?”

“You’ll never guess what it was.”

“I will,” Carol said. “I figured it out long ago. Dandruff.”

“Quiet, woman,” Leroy commanded, “while two mature minds wrestle with this odd discrepancy in an otherwise run-of-the-mill accident. Well, King?”

“The dust on Speaker’s forehead seemed to consist of — get this — tiny colored glass spheres.”

Silence greeted this announcement. Then Helen said, “There goes my newfound respect for the doctor. He’s a mental case himself.”

“Did he say anything else, King?” Leroy asked.

“Just not to bother him anymore. In a nice way, of course.”

Martin Leroy said with the enthusiasm of the true puzzle-solver, “What, may I ask, are a bunch of microscopic glass spheres doing on board a ship at sea, let alone on a dead man’s forehead?”

“How about that glassy powder on a nail file?” Carol offered. “You know, like sandpaper?”

“Or some of that shiny stuff in a city sidewalk? Mica, is it?” Helen said.

Danforth shook his head. “Sorry, ladies. They aren’t spheres. And besides, the doctor said colored glass spheres. Red, blue, and green.”

“Oh, colored!” Helen was undismayed. “How about some of the stuff on one of those sparkly masks they wear in Rio for the Carnival?”

Leroy suddenly put down his fork with a clatter. His dark eyes glowed. “Please,” he begged, “will you dispense with these childish guessing games for a moment? And let the genius in your midst be heard?”

“Mart, you know what the dust is?”

“I thought you’d never ask. Of course I know what it is. Anyone with a reasonably keen interest in amateur photography would know. At least,” he amended with a broad deprecatory smile, “anyone who has total recall like me.”

“Total recall!” Helen scoffed. “Why, you can’t even remember your social-security number!”

Danforth said, “Please ignore your unappreciative wife, Mart. What’s the dust?”

Leroy narrowed his eyes dramatically. “The dust is the material they coat on home movie screens.”

“Hey!” Danforth exclaimed. “Now you mention it, I think that’s it. To make the surface reflective, right?”

“We’re very impressed,” Carol said, “but so what?”

Her husband answered, “It just might mean that Calvin Speaker didn’t fall down those steps at all.”

“Here we go again!” Helen moaned. “You mean he may have been murdered, I suppose?”

“Maybe. Or at least killed somewhere else than on that staircase.”

“Like where?”

“Like somebody’s cabin where there’s a home movie screen.”

“I can see what’s coming next,” Carol announced. “Killed last night in somebody’s cabin where there’s a home movie screen, kept in the cabin all night, then brought out on deck and pushed down those steps to make it look like an accident.”

“You’re beginning to learn, my dear,” said Leroy. “No doubt by association with your brilliant husband, my partner. But that would account for the dinner jacket at daybreak and the dust on the forehead.”

Helen laughed. “I can think of another way to account for the dinner jacket. And not necessarily involving a movie screen, either.”

“You mean he spent the night in some blonde’s cabin?” her husband asked. “Some sordid shipboard intrigue. Forget it. We’ve got a great clue here that could mean murder. So let’s not get side-tracked by romance.”

“Spoken like a true mystery fan,” agreed Danforth. “So who on board would have a home movie screen in his cabin?”

“Almost anybody,” Helen said.

“No, it’s unlikely that any of the passengers would bring a movie screen on a cruise. Cameras, yes. Screen, no.”

“How about the crew?” Carol suggested.

Her husband shook his head. “Not likely.”

“Listen.” Leroy took over. “How about narrowing it down, for the nonce, to the likeliest possibility?”

“The ship’s photographer,” Danforth said. “Okay.”

“Gregory?” Helen asked. “That nice youngster?”

“That nice youngster with a movie screen in his cabin which I have personally seen.”

“But he wouldn’t kill anyone!”

“I don’t think he would, either,” Leroy murmured. “All the same I’d like to examine Gregory’s movie screen.”

After breakfast they took a leisurely turn around the promenade deck. As they passed the bulletin board on which the ship’s photographer posted the candid shots he took during shore excursions, Danforth said, “Wait a minute. Mart. Maybe there’s a picture of Calvin Speaker here.” They stopped and scanned the rows of photographs pinned to the board.

The latest batch covered the Valhalla’s visit to Jesselton, North Borneo. The Leroys and Danforths had already seen the display — had, indeed, ordered two prints from the ship’s photographer as keepsakes of the cruise: a shot of the four of them grouped around a heavy-homed water buffalo.

The whole Jesselton shore trip was represented. Tanjong Aru beach, from which had been visible the towering jungled mountain on which the fast-disappearing orangutan was making its last stand against extinction; the unicorn and lion dances performed by Malay and Chinese children; the rubber plantations, rice fields, native villages; the water-buffalo races at Penampang; the exhibition of blowgun marksmanship by a Murut native. In almost every scene one or more cruise passengers appeared, but in none of them could they spot the face of Mr. Calvin Speaker.

Leroy indicated an empty space in one of the rows of photographs. “There’s no picture number 432,” he said with a quick glance at Danforth, “although apparently there was one, judging from the thumbtack hole in the board.”

Flanking the empty space were two pictures — numbers 431 and 433 — of cruise passengers standing beside the naked Murut tribesman who had demonstrated the accuracy of his blowgun by placing breath-expelled darts neatly in a small pig-shaped target forty yards away. The savage, flamboyant in feathered plumes and nothing else, was selling blowguns to the fascinated tourists from a small bundle of guns at his feet.

“Do you suppose,” asked Danforth carefully, “that the missing photo number 432 could be a picture of Calvin Speaker? And that it has been, for some unknown reason, removed from this display?”

“There’s one way to find out,” Leroy replied. “And we wanted to look at Gregory’s movie screen anyway.”

King cleared his throat. “May we meet you two charmers in our deck chairs shortly?” he said to the wives. “We are about to undertake negotiations of the utmost delicacy and can’t permit ourselves to be distracted by two beautiful women.”

With the haughty air of dowagers denied an invitation to the fete of the season, Carol and Helen went off to their deck chairs while Leroy and Danforth thoughtfully made their way to the ship’s photographer’s cabin-cum-dark-room on the main deck.

Danforth knocked. After a moment Gregory opened the door halfway and peered out into the corridor. “Yes?” he inquired. Then he recognized them, and his somewhat distraught expression sharpened into a welcoming smile. “What can I do for you?”

“May we come in for a minute, Greg?” Leroy asked. “Got a little problem.”

“Sure.” Gregory stepped aside and they went in past him. He waved at his bunk. “Sit down. What’s your problem? Do you need a photographic consultant on your next plot?” Like almost everyone on the Valhalla, Gregory knew that his two visitors were the famous literary collaboration known as “Leroy King,” whose books have sold more than 125,000,000 copies throughout the world. “If so, I’m your man.”

Danforth and Leroy ranged themselves side by side on the edge of his bunk. Gregory remained standing, his back to the door. “We’ve got two problems, actually,” Danforth said.

Gregory, faintly red of eye and uneasy of manner, said, “Let’s have ’em. I’ll present my bill for expert advice later.” He was obviously keeping it light.

Leroy said, “First problem: I want to show some color slides in my cabin. May I borrow your movie screen?”

Gregory shook his head regretfully. “I’m sorry, but it’s broken, Mr. Leroy. Fell over during the rough seas last night and got a tear in it.”

“Oh? A bad one?”

“Pretty bad. Too big a tear to be of much use, I’m afraid. Look, I’ll show you.” Gregory stooped and pulled a rolled-up screen from under the bunk. “I had it set up in here last night to run through a few of my own slides,” he explained, “and a big wave tipped it over.” He pulled the screen out of its cylindrical metal housing. “See?”

There was a long rough-edged slit near the center of the unrolled screen.

Leroy said, “Some of the reflective coating has even been knocked off.” He pointed to the tear in the screen. “See that smooth spot?” He stood up as though to leave. “Well, thanks anyway, Greg.”

“Wait a minute, Mart,” said Danforth. “I want to ask about that picture.”

Leroy sat down again. Gregory moved his feet restlessly on the carpet. “What picture?” Gregory inquired.

Danforth said, “I want to order a print of picture number 432, Greg. From the prom deck bulletin board.”

With a brusque movement Gregory pushed himself away from the door against which he was leaning. His ruddy face lost some of its color. With a visible effort he said, “What number was that, Mr. Danforth?”

“432.”

“432? What do you want with that one? My whole 430 series just shows the Borneo blowgun man with various passengers, that’s all. You weren’t in any of them.”

Danforth said slowly, “I want a picture of Calvin Speaker, Greg. He was a very nice chap, we all thought.” Very slightly he emphasized the past tense.

Gregory slumped against the door bonelessly and closed his eyes for a moment. Leroy and Danforth watched him in silence. At length the photographer said, “I should have had better sense. When I saw you two at the door I had a feeling you knew. But damn it, I didn’t kill him!”

“Didn’t you?” Leroy asked softly.

“No! But who’ll believe me?”

“Maybe we will. Why’d you fake the accident if you didn’t kill him — the falling-down-the-stairs bit?”

Gregory licked his lips. “Why? Isn’t it obvious? What do you think my job on this ship would be worth if I naively reported to the Captain that one of his passengers was lying dead of a fractured skull on the floor of my cabin? I’d be blacklisted forever as a ship’s photographer, even if they didn’t charge me with murder, for God’s sake! Don’t you realize that on a cruise the passenger is always right, the staff member never?” He rubbed a hand over his eyes, a gesture that emphasized his youth and vulnerability, “How’d you find out about the screen and picture number 432?”

Danforth told him. At the end Gregory said. “It would be my luck that you found the body. You, of all people. A detective-story writer, for God’s sake!”

Danforth said grimly, “If you didn’t kill Speaker, who did?”

“He killed himself, you might say.” Gregory told the story in a monotone. At midnight the previous night, needing fresh film to photograph a birthday party in the bar, he had returned to his cabin and met Speaker just leaving it with one of Gregory’s negatives in his hand. Quite naturally Gregory asked him what the hell he was doing in his cabin, meanwhile snatching the negative from him, pushing him back into the cabin, and closing the door.

Speaker had tried to apologize. Then, getting no encouragement from Gregory, he had surprisingly tried to buy the negative, offering Gregory one hundred dollars for it. This sum was so large that suspicion was immediately added to Gregory’s anger, and he refused to sell. Whereupon Speaker, in a sudden fury, lunged across the narrow stateroom, intent, Gregory thought, on taking the negative from Gregory by force. His movement happened to coincide with a violent lurch of the ship in the heavy seas that were running, with the result that he was catapulted across the room, his head striking first against the movie screen erected at the foot of Gregory’s bunk, and then, with sickening force, against the edge of the bunk.

“That’s the God’s truth,” Gregory finished. “So help me. Do you believe me?”

Danforth answered obliquely. “Why’d you wait until dawn to dump him at the foot of the steps? His dinner jacket was what made me suspicious in the first place.”

“Oh, lord!” Gregory said, stricken. “I never thought of the dinner jacket! The night steward was polishing passengers’ shoes across from my door nearly all night long. I couldn’t carry Speaker’s body out of here until the steward went away.”

“Where’s the negative that Speaker was so anxious to get hold of?” Leroy asked. “Picture number 432, I suppose?”

“Yeah. Here it is.” The photographer reached into a file beside the door. “Along with a print I made of it while I was waiting for the steward to leave last night. I thought it might explain Speaker’s interest in it, but it’s not much help. Just shows Speaker with the Borneo blowgun man.”

Danforth stood up. “Let us have it for a while, will you?”

“Sure, take it.” Gregory handed the print to Leroy. “You going to report me to the Captain? I suppose you have to.”

“Not right away,” Leroy answered after a glance at Danforth. “What do you say, King? Speaker’s dead. And Greg can’t go anywhere till we get to our next port, anyway. Personally I’m inclined to believe him about Speaker’s death.”

With Gregory’s thanks echoing in their ears they went to their deck chairs on the lee side of the boat deck. Here, while Danforth told the girls about their talk with Gregory, Leroy studied Gregory’s candid picture of Calvin Speaker and the naked blowgun marksman.

When Danforth finished his account he turned to his partner. “Does the photo give us anything?”

Leroy handed the print to Carol. “Just another tourist picture. Calvin Speaker buying one of those blowguns from the Murut.”

Carol looked at the picture, passed it on to Helen. After a moment Helen said, “Speaker isn’t looking at the Murut or his blowgun, really. He’s looking over his shoulder, as if to see whether or not anyone’s watching him.”

“And smoothing back his hair with one hand,” Danforth added.

“He looks sort of uneasy to me,” Carol remarked.

“Why, for Pete’s sake, would he be uneasy?” Danforth asked. “Buying a blowgun from a native isn’t that shameful.”

“The native is naked,” pointed out Carol primly.

“Let me have a look,” Danforth said. He took the print from Helen. After examining it he said, “Speaker not only looks uneasy he looks different somehow.”

“Different?” asked Leroy.

“Yeah. Different from the way he looked this morning when I found him at the foot of the steps.”

“He was dead this morning,” Carol reminded him. “And he was alive in that picture. There’s a pretty big difference, if you ask me.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean Speaker’s appearance is different in this picture.”

“Let me have another look,” Helen said. “I’m the only one of us who seems to have noticed poor Mr. Speaker before today.”

Danforth handed her the photograph. She looked at it in silence. Then she turned to Danforth. “His forehead is too high,” she said.

Danforth snatched the picture. “That’s it — that’s what’s different. A higher forehead. His face seems too thin and long between those sideburns.”

“Impossible,” said Leroy. “A man’s forehead doesn’t expand or contract in a matter of forty-eight hours, King! Perhaps having his hand on his head in the picture changes the visual impression of his face.”

Carol spoke up in a challenging tone. “I just thought of something,” she said, “and I don’t want either of you geniuses to take credit for it. Okay?”

“Okay.” Danforth grinned at her. “The credit is entirely yours for whatever it is you’ve thought of. What is it?”

Carol said, “There is a way a man’s forehead can grow higher—”

“I know how!” said Helen suddenly.

Carol went on as though she had not been interrupted. “I’ll try not to be too technical about this, but when one is dealing with rudimentary intelligences—”

“Come on, come on,” Leroy urged her. “What you’re trying to say is that Speaker wore a hairpiece, aren’t you? And in this picture the hairpiece has slipped back on his head a bit?”

“What I’m trying to say,” Carol exclaimed with an indignant look at Leroy, “is that I’m going to join Women’s Lib! Tomorrow!”

Danforth stared at the picture in his hand. “By George, that’s it, Mart! Speaker’s not smoothing back his hair — he’s trying to hold it on! Or trying to resettle his hairpiece farther forward on his forehead!”

Leroy nodded. “It must have come loose from its moorings during the Borneo shore excursion.”

“Poor Mr. Speaker was bald!” Helen said. “No wonder he’s embarrassed in the picture. If your hairpiece suddenly came unstuck—”

Thoughtfully Leroy said, “Embarrassed? I’m not sure that’s the right word.”

“Why not?” demanded Carol. “Here’s a man who wears a wig to conceal his baldness from his fellow passengers. And suddenly his wig comes loose. Wouldn’t you be embarrassed?” Danforth, still studying the snapshot, said, “I’d say Mr. Speaker looks more scared than embarrassed.”

“Scared?” Helen said. “Why would he be scared? Or who would he be scared of?”

“There you have me,” said Danforth. “But it’s, certainly not the blowgun salesman, naked or not.”

“In view of the circumstances surrounding his demise,” suggested Leroy, “I’d say he was scared of having his picture taken with his wig at half mast.”

“Why?” asked Carol.

“Because he didn’t want to be seen that way. To avoid it he was willing to try theft, bribery, assault, and possibly even murder on Gregory. Just to keep this picture out of circulation.”

“Why?” asked Carol. “This is the last time I’ll ask you.”

“For fear somebody who saw this picture might recognize him. That seems to be obvious.” Danforth gazed over the rail at the long foam-capped swells that paraded by the ship. “Recognize his true identity, that is.”

“Whoa!” Helen said. “Are you saying that Calvin Speaker wasn’t Calvin Speaker? That he was somebody else?”

“Could be,” said Leroy judiciously. “Very probable, in fact. Give me another look at that picture, King.” Then, after a moment’s study, “The sideburns and mustache could be fake, too.”

“Or recently grown,” added Danforth, “to go with the wig.”

Leroy brooded over the photograph in his hand. “At this point I could bear to take a look at Calvin Speaker’s remains. Couldn’t you?”

“We’d better go to the Captain, then,” said Danforth, “because Dr. Hagen has had me and my curiosity up to here by now. He’ll defend his domain from us with drawn sword, I’m afraid, unless the Captain intercedes.”

At pre-luncheon cocktails Leroy and Danforth reported to their wives.

“Captain Thorsen went with us,” Danforth said, “so the doctor grudgingly let us look at Speaker before they put him in the — er — ship’s freezer.”

“Ghouls!” said Helen, shivering.

“The sideburns are genuine, but the mustache was fake, it turned out,” said Leroy.

“So Calvin Speaker wasn’t Calvin Speaker?”

“Right,” said Leroy. He smiled at his wife.

She put her head on one side and regarded him narrowly. “You want me to ask who Calvin Speaker really was, don’t you?”

“Please,” said her husband, still smiling.

“All right, who was he?” Helen obliged him. “Anybody we know?”

“Nobody we know,” said Danforth. “But old Mr. Total Recall, he knew him all right — once the doctor removed the wig and mustache.”

Leroy nodded complacently. “It was child’s play for me to identify this bald character known to us as Calvin Speaker.”

Carol and Helen knew they were being baited. They also knew that Leroy did have an excellent memory. So his wife couldn’t resist repeating her question: “Who was Calvin

Speaker, Mart?”

“Clark Anselm,” said Leroy.

Helen looked blank. So did Carol. “Who on earth is Clark Anselm?” Carol finally asked.

“Number Three on the F.B.I.’s most-wanted list, that’s who,” Danforth explained. “The bank robber who blew up the City Savings and Trust in San Francisco four months ago. Killing two people in the process. And escaping scot-free with eighty-some thousand dollars of the bank’s money. Mart recognized him from seeing his picture in the newspapers at the time.”

“That sweet Calvin Speaker a bank robber?” Helen protested.

“Then why do you suppose he was carrying sixty-seven thousand dollars in cash with him on this cruise?” Leroy asked. “Captain Thorsen had his cabin searched, at our suggestion, and they found big bundles of U.S. currency stashed away all over the joint.”

“The money from the bank?”

“Most of it, anyway,” Leroy grinned at his wife. “I also remembered, fortunately, that a reward of five thousand dollars was offered for Clark Anselm’s apprehension.”

“Whee!” Helen crowed. “Order us another drink, Carol — I think we’ve just earned ourselves five thousand dollars!”

Danforth shook his head. “Sorry, ladies. The reward is for someone more deserving.”

“If you mean who I think you mean, I will join Women’s Lib!” said Carol indignantly. “Leroy King?”

“Wrong again,” Danforth said. “Gregory. The ship’s photographer. He’ll get the reward if they take our recommendation. After all, he’s the one who really exposed Anselm.”

No one laughed at the pun. Helen rocked in her chair as though in pain. “There goes our five thousand dollars!” she moaned. “Excuse me, will you, while I put on my sackcloth dress and throw dust on my head?”

“Forget the dust on the head, darling,” advised Leroy. “Remember what happened to Calvin Speaker.”