I waited for him to proceed, and in the pause that ensued, while he
licked his dry lips with his tongue, the thing ambushed in his skull
peered at me through his eyes and seemed almost on the verge of leaping
out and pouncing upon me.

"Well, sir," he began again, this time more coherently, "it's just a
little thing--foolish on my part, of course--a whim, so to say--but you
will remember, near the beginning of the voyage, I showed you a scar on
my head . . . a really small affair, sir, which I contracted in a
misadventure. It amounts to a deformity, which it is my fancy to
conceal. Not for worlds, sir, would I care to have Miss West, for
instance, know that I carried such a deformity. A man is a man, sir--you
understand--and you have not spoken of it to her?"

"No," I replied. "It just happens that I have not."

"Nor to anybody else?--to, say, Captain West?--or, say, Mr. Pike?"

"No, I haven't mentioned it to anybody," I averred.

He could not conceal the relief he experienced. The perturbation went
out of his face and manner, and the ambushed thing drew back deeper into
the recess of his skull.

"The favour, sir, Mr. Pathurst, that I would prefer is that you will not
mention that little matter to anybody. I suppose" (he smiled, and his
voice was superlatively suave) "it is vanity on my part--you understand,
I am sure."

I nodded, and made a restless movement with my book as evidence that I
desired to resume my reading.

"I can depend upon you for that, Mr. Pathurst?" His whole voice and
manner had changed. It was practically a command, and I could almost see
fangs, bared and menacing, sprouting in the jaws of that thing I fancied
dwelt behind his eyes.

"Certainly," I answered coldly.

"Thank you, sir--I thank you," he said, and, without more ado, tiptoed
from the room.

Of course I did not read. How could I? Nor did I sleep. My mind ran
on, and on, and not until the steward brought my coffee, shortly before
five, did I sink into my first doze.

One thing is very evident. Mr. Pike does not dream that the murderer of
Captain Somers is on board the _Elsinore_. He has never glimpsed that
prodigious fissure that clefts Mr. Mellaire's, or, rather, Sidney
Waltham's, skull. And I, for one, shall never tell Mr. Pike. And I
know, now, why from the very first I disliked the second mate. And I
understand that live thing, that other thing, that lurks within and peers
out through the eyes. I have rec