und with dazed eyes. Lanyard dropped on a
knee and set the glass to her lips. She gulped twice, mechanically, her
gaze fixed to his face. Then suddenly memory cleared, and she uttered a
bubbling gasp of returning dread.

"Popinot!" she cried, as Lanyard hastily took the glass away.
"Popinot--he was there--I saw him--standing there!"

A trembling arm indicated the starboard deck just forward of the
companion housing. But of course, when Lanyard looked, there was no one
there ... if there had ever been....

XXIII

THE CIGARETTE

Lanyard found himself exchanging looks of mystification with Collison,
and heard his own voice make the flat statement: "But there is
nobody...." Collison muttered words which he took to be: No, and never
was. "But you must have seen him from the bridge," Lanyard insisted
blankly, "if...."

"I looked around as soon as I heard her call out," Collison replied;
"but I didn't see anybody, only mademoiselle here--and you, of course,
with that match."

"Please help me up," Liane Delorme asked in a faint voice. Collison
lent a hand. In the support and shelter of Lanyard's arm the woman's
body quivered like that of a frightened child. "I must go to my
stateroom," she sighed uncertainly. "But I am afraid..."

"Do not be. Remember Mr. Collison and I... Besides, you know, there was
nobody..."

The assertion seemed to exasperate her; her voice discovered new
strength and violence.

"But I am telling you I saw ... that assassin!"--she shuddered
again--"standing there, in the shadow, glaring at me as if I had
surprised him and he did not know what next to do. I think he must have
been spying down through the skylight; it was the glow from it that
showed me his red, dirty face of a pig."

"You came aft on the port side, didn't you?" Lanyard enquired of the
second mate.

Collison nodded. "Running," he said--"couldn't imagine what was up."

"It is easy not to see what one is not looking for," Lanyard mused,
staring forward along the starboard side. "If a man had dropped flat
and squirmed along until in the shelter of the engine-room ventilators,
he could have run forward--bending low, you know--without your seeing
him."

"But you were standing here, to starboard!"

"I tell you, that match was blinding me," Lanyard affirmed irritably.
"Besides, I wasn't looking--except at my sister--wondering what was the
matter."

Collison started. "Excuse me," he said, reminded--"if mademoiselle's