"You don't mind my coming?" he asked.

"No--wish you would; you can bear witness to the captain that I did everything in my power to make Miss Landis appreciate the danger--"

"Then," Iff interrupted suavely, "the collar has disappeared--we're to understand?"

"Yes," the purser a.s.sented shortly.

They scurried forward and mounted the ladder to the boat-deck, where the captain's quarters were situated in the deckhouse immediately abaft the bridge. From an open door--for the night was as warm as it was dark--a wide stream of light fell athwart the deck, like gold upon black velvet.

Pausing _en silhouette_ against the glow, the purser knocked discreetly.

Iff ranged up beside him, dwarfed by comparison. Staff held back at a little distance.

A voice from within barked: "Oh, come in!" Iff and Manvers obeyed. Staff paused on the threshold, bending his head to escape the lintel.

Standing thus, he appreciated the tableau: the neat, tidy little room--commodious for a steamship--glistening with white-enamelled woodwork in the radiance of half a dozen electric bulbs; Alison in a steamer-coat seated on the far side of a chart-table, her colouring unusually pallid, her brows knitted and eyes anxious; the maid, Jane, standing respectfully behind her mistress; Manvers to one side and out of the way, but plainly eager and distraught; Iff in the centre of the stage, his slight, round-shouldered figure lending him a deceptive effect of embarra.s.sment which was only enhanced by his semi-placating, semi-wistful smile and his small, blinking eyes; the captain looming over him, authority and menace incarnate in his heavy, square-set, st.u.r.dy body and heavy-browed, square-jawed, beardless and weathered face....

Manvers said: "This is Mr. Iff, Captain Cobb."

The captain nodded brusquely. His hands were in his coat-pockets; he didn't offer to remove them. Iff blinked up at him and c.o.c.ked his small head critically to one side, persistently smiling.

"I've heard so much of you, sir," he said in a husky, weary voice, very subdued. "It's a real pleasure to make your acquaintance."

Captain Cobb noticed this bit of effrontery by nothing more than a growl deep in this throat. His eyes travelled on, above Iff's head, and Staff was conscious of their penetrating and unfriendly question. He bowed uncertainly.

"Oh--and Mr. Staff," said Manvers hastily.

"Well?" said the captain without moving.

"A friend of Miss Landis and also--curiously--in the same room with Mr.

Iff."

"Ah," remarked the captain. "How-d'-you-do?" He removed his right hand from its pocket and held it out with the air of a man who wishes it understood that by such action he commits himself to nothing.

Before Staff could grasp it, Iff shook it heartily. "Ah," he said blandly, "h' are ye?" Then he dropped the hand, thereby preventing the captain from wrenching it away, and averted his eyes modestly, thereby escaping the captain's outraged glare.

Staff managed to overcome an impulse to laugh idiotically, and gravely shook hands with the captain. He had already exchanged a glance with the lady of his heart's desire.

An insanely awkward pause marked Iff's exhibition of matchless impudence. Each hesitated to speak while the captain was occupied with a vain attempt to make Iff realise his position by scowling at him out of a blood-congested countenance. But of this, Iff appeared to be wholly unconscious. When the situation seemed all but unendurable for another second (Staff for one was haunted by the fear that he would throw back his head and bray like a mule) Manvers took it upon himself to ease the tension, hardily earning the undying grat.i.tude of all the gathering.

"I asked Mr. Staff to come and tell you, sir," he said haltingly, "that I spoke to him about this matter the very night we left Queenstown--asked him to do what he could to make Miss Landis appreciate--"

"I see," the captain cut him short.

"That is so," Staff affirmed. "Unfortunately I had no opportunity until this afternoon--"

Alison interposed quietly: "I am quite ready to exonerate Mr. Manvers from all blame. In fact, he has really annoyed me with his efforts to induce me to turn the collar over to his care."

"Thank you," said Manvers bowing.

There was the faintest tinge of sarcasm in the acknowledgment. Staff could see that Alison felt and resented it; and the thought popped into his mind, and immediately out again, that she was scarcely proving herself generous.

"It's a very serious matter," announced the captain heavily--"serious for the service: for the officers, for the good name of the ship, for the reputation of the company. This is the second time a crime of this nature had been committed aboard the Autocratic within a period of eighteen months--less than that, in fact. It was June, a year ago, that Mrs. Burden Hamman's jewels were stolen--on the eastbound pa.s.sage, I believe."

"We sailed from New York, June 22," affirmed the purser.

"I want, therefore," continued the captain, "to ask you all to preserve silence about this affair until it has been thoroughly sifted. I believe the knowledge of the theft is confined to those present."

"Quite so, sir," agreed the purser.

"May I ask how it happened?" Staff put in.

The captain swung on his heel and bowed to Alison. She bent forward, telling her story with brevity and animation.

"You remember"--she looked at Staff--"when we met in the saloon, about half-past five, and went on deck?... Well, right after that, Jane left my rooms to return the hat you had been showing me to your steward. She was gone not over five minutes, and she swears the door was locked all the time; she remembers locking it when she went out and unlocking it when she returned. There was no indication that anybody had been in the rooms, except one that we didn't discover until I started to go to bed, a little while ago. Then I thought of my jewels. They were all kept in this handbag"--she dropped a hand upon a rather small Lawrence bag of tan leather on the table before her--"under my bed, behind the steamer trunk. I told Jane to see if it was all right. She got it out, and then we discovered that this had happened to it."

She turned the bag so that the other side was presented for inspection, disclosing the fact that some sharp instrument had been used to cut a great flap out of the leather, running in a rough semicircle from clasp to clasp of the frame.

"It wasn't altogether empty," she declared with a trace of wonder in her voice; "but that only makes it all the more mysterious. All my ordinary jewels were untouched; nothing had been taken except the case that held the Cadogan collar."

"And the collar itself, I hope?" Iff put in quietly.

The actress turned upon him with rising colour.

"You hope--!" she exclaimed.

The little man made a deprecatory gesture. "Why, yes," he said. "It would seem a pity that a crook cute enough to turn a trick as neat as that should have got nothing for his pains but a velvet-lined leather case, worth perhaps a dollar and a half--or say two dollars at the outside, if you make a point of _that_."

"How do you happen to know it was a velvet-lined leather case?" Alison flashed.

Iff laughed quietly. "My dear lady," he said, "I priced the necklace at Cottier's in Paris the day before you purchased it. Unfortunately it was beyond my means."

"A bit thick," commented the purser in an acid voice.

"Now, listen"--Iff turned to face him with a flush of choler--"you keep on that way and I'll land on you if it's the last act of my gay young life. You hear me?"

"That will do, sir!" barked the captain.

"I trust so, sincerely," replied Iff.

"Be silent!" The captain's voice ascended a full octave.

"Oh, very well, very well. I hear you--perfectly." With this the little man subsided, smiling feebly at vacancy.

Staff interposed hastily, in the interests of peace: "The supposition is, then, that the thief got in during those five minutes that Jane was away from the room?"

"It couldn't have happened at any other time, of course," said Alison.

"And, equally of course, it couldn't have happened then," said Iff.