his chair, carefully composing himself in the position in
which he had been resting when the lights went out. His cigarette was
still aglow; good Turkish has this virtue among many others, that left
to itself it will burn on to the end of its roll.

The next instant, however, he was on his feet again. A beam of light
had swept across the saloon skylight, coming from below, the beam of a
portable electric torch. It might have been the signal for the first
piercing scream of Liane Delorme. A pistol shot with a vicious accent
cut short the scream. After a brief pause several more shots rippled in
the saloon. A man shouted angrily. Then the torch-light found and
steadied upon the mouth of the companionway. Against that glare, a
burly figure was instantaneously relieved, running up to the deck. As
it gained the topmost step a final report sounded in the saloon, and
the figure checked, revolved slowly on a heel, tottered, and plunged
headforemost down the steps again.

A moment later (incredible that the stipulated ten minutes should have
passed so swiftly!) the lights came on, and with a still-fuming stump
of cigarette between his fingers Lanyard went below.

His bewildered gaze discovered first Liane Delorme, drawn up
rigidly--she seemed for some reason to be standing tiptoe--against the
starboard partition, near her stateroom door. Her fingers were clawing
her cheeks, her eyes widely dilate with horror and fright, her mouth
was agape, and from it issued, as by some mechanical impulse, shriek
upon hollow shriek--cries wholly flat and meaningless, having no
character of any sort, mere automatic reflexes of hysteria.

On the opposite side of the saloon, not far from the door to his own
quarters, Monk lay semi-prone with a purple face and protruding
eyeballs, far gone toward death through strangulation. Phinuit, on his
knees, was removing a silk handkerchief that had been twisted about
that scrawney throat.

At the foot of the companionway steps, Popinot, no phantom but the
veritable Apache himself, was writhing and heaving convulsively; and
even as Lanyard looked, the huge body of the creature lifted from the
floor in one last, heroic spasm, then collapsed, and moved no more.

Viewing this hideous tableau, appreciating what it meant--that
Popinot, forearmed with advice from a trusted quarter, had stationed
himself outside the door to Monk's stateroom, to waylay and garotte the
man whom he expected to emerge therefrom la