"I was about to say," pursued Iff serenely, "that I'll lay two to one
that the Cadogan collar has disappeared."
Manvers continued to stare, his eyes blank with amazement. "You've got
your nerve with you, I must say," he growled.
"Or guilty knowledge? Which, Mr. Manvers?"
A reply seemed to tremble on Manvers' lips, but to be withheld at
discretion. "I'm not the captain," he said after a slight pause; "go and
cheek him as far as you like. And we're keeping him waiting, if I may be
permitted to mention it."
Iff turned to Staff, with an engaging smile. "Rejecting the guilty
knowledge hypothesis, for the sake of the argument," said he: "you'll
admit I'm the only suspicious personage known to be aboard; so it's not
such a wild guess--that the collar has vanished--when I'm sent for by
the captain at this unearthly hour.... Lead on, Mr. Manvers," he wound
up with a dramatic gesture.
The purser nodded and turned toward the door. Staff jumped up and
followed the pair.
"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 assented 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 embarrassment 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,
sturdy body and heavy-browed, square-jawed, beardless and weathered
face....