. She's my trained nurse."

"Fire _her_, then, and drink your head off."

"I can't. He's got all my money. If I did, he wouldn't give me sixpence
to buy a drink with."

This woful possibility brought a fresh wash of tears. Grief was
interested. Of all unique situations he could never have imagined such a
one as this.

"They were engaged to take care of me," Pankburn was blubbering, "to
keep me away from the drink. And that's the way they do it, lollygagging
all about the ship and letting me drink myself to death. It isn't right,
I tell you. It isn't right. They were sent along with me for the express
purpose of not letting me drink, and they let me drink to swinishness
as long as I leave them alone. If I complain they threaten not to let me
have another drop. What can a poor devil do? My death will be on their
heads, that's all. Come on down and join me."

He released his clutch on the rail, and would have fallen had Grief
not caught his arm. He seemed to undergo a transformation, to stiffen
physically, to thrust his chin forward aggressively, and to glint
harshly in his eyes.

"I won't let them kill me. And they'll be sorry. I've offered them fifty
thousand--later on, of course. They laughed. They don't know. But I
know." He fumbled in his coat pocket and drew forth an object that
flashed in the faint light. "They don't know the meaning of that. But I
do." He looked at Grief with abrupt suspicion. "What do you make out of
it, eh? What do you make out of it?"

David Grief caught a swift vision of an alcoholic degenerate putting
a very loving young couple to death with a copper spike, for a
copper spike was what he held in his hand, an evident old-fashioned
ship-fastening.

"My mother thinks I'm up here to get cured of the booze habit. She
doesn't know. I bribed the doctor to prescribe a voyage. When we get to
Papeete my manager is going to charter a schooner and away we'll sail.
But they don't dream. They think it's the booze. I know. I only know.
Good night, sir. I'm going to bed--unless--er--you'll join me in a night
cap. One last drink, you know."

II

In the week that followed at Papeete Grief caught numerous and bizarre
glimpses of Aloysius Pankburn. So did everybody else in the little
island capital; for neither the beach nor Lavina's boarding house
had been so scandalized in years. In midday, bareheaded, clad only
in swimming trunks, Aloysius Pankburn ran down the main street from
Lavina's to