he noise of a key turned quickly.

His steward, being questioned on the first day out, had told him that
this stateroom was occupied by an invalid gentleman travelling alone,
who preferred to remain there instead of trusting to his crutches on
a temperamental deck.

Neeland, passing the closed and curtained door, wondered whether the
invalid had made a hit, or whether he had a relative aboard who wore a
white serge skirt, white stockings and shoes, and was further endowed
with agreeable ankles.

He fitted his key to his door, turned it, withdrew the key to pocket
it; and immediately became aware that the end of the key was sticky.

He entered the stateroom, however, and bolted the door, then he sat
down on his sofa and examined his fingers and his door key
attentively. There was wax sticking to both.

When he had fully digested this fact he wiped and pocketed his key and
cast a rather vacant look around the little stateroom. And immediately
his eye was arrested by a white object lying on the carpet between the
bed and the sofa--a woman's handkerchief, without crest or initials,
but faintly scented.

After he became tired of alternately examining it and sniffing it, he
put it in his pocket and began an uneasy tour of his room.

If it had been entered and ransacked, everything had been replaced
exactly as he had left it, as well as he could remember. Nothing
excepting this handkerchief and the wax on the key indicated
intrusion; nothing, apparently, had been disturbed; and yet there was
the handkerchief; and there was the wax on the end of his door key.

"Here's a fine business!" he muttered to himself; and rang for his
steward.

The man came--a cockney, dense as his native fog--who maintained that
nobody could have entered the stateroom without his knowledge or the
knowledge of the stewardess.

"Do you think _she's_ been in my cabin?"

"No, sir."

"Call her."

The stewardess, an alert, intelligent little woman with a trace of
West Indian blood in her, denied entering his stateroom. Shown the
handkerchief and invited to sniff it, she professed utter ignorance
concerning it, assured him that no lady in her section used that
perfume, and offered to show it to the stewardesses of other sections
on the chance of their identifying the perfume or the handkerchief.

"All right," said Neeland; "take it. But bring it back. And here's a
sovereign. And--one thing more. If anybody pays you to deceive me,
come to me