Roger gave a grim laugh, and looked obstinate. "I'll tell you this much," he said. "None of you'll have it for a near neighbour, so none of you need worry."
After that, even Mr. Pollen could not persist. We disposed of an enormous tea, after the excitement, and then some of us played bridge. When we separated, however, to pace the deck—two by two, for a "constitutional" before dinner—one could see by the absorbed expression on faces, and guess by the low-toned voices, what each pair discussed.
My companion, Lord Glencathra, thought that Somebody must have died on Some Ship, and been thrown overboard. But I argued that this could hardly be, because—surely—bodies buried at sea were not put into coffins, were they? I had heard that the custom was to sew them up in sailcloth or something, and weight them well. Besides, there was the broken rope tied round the coffin, which seemed to show that it had been tethered, and got loose—in the storm, perhaps. How did Lord Glencathra account for that fact? He couldn't account for it. Nor could any one else.
CHAPTER V
WHAT I FOUND IN MY CABIN
I did all I could to make dinner a lively meal, and with iced Pommery of a particularly good year as my aide-de-camp, superficially at least I succeeded. But whenever there was an instant's lull in the conversation, I felt that everyone was asking him or herself, "Where is the coffin?"
The plan had been to have a little moonlight fox-trotting and jazzing on deck; but with that Black Thing hidden somewhere on board, we confined ourselves to more bridge and star-gazing, according to taste. I, as professional Brightener, nobly kept Mr. Pollen out of everybody's way by annexing him for a stroll. This deserved the name of a double brightening act, for I brightened the lives of his fellow guests by saving them from him; and I brightened his by encouraging him to talk of Well-Connected People.
"Who was she before she married Lord Thingum-bob?" ... or, "Yes, she was Miss So-and-So, a cousin of the Duke of Dinkum," might have been heard issuing sapiently from our lips, had any one been mentally destitute enough to eavesdrop. But I had my reward. Dear little Shelagh Leigh and Roger Fane seemed to have cheered each other. I left them standing together, elbows on the rail, as they had stood before the affair of the afternoon. The moonlight was shining full upon Shelagh's bright hair and pearl-white face, as she looked up, eager-eyed, at Roger; and he looked—at least, his back looked!—as if there were nobody on land or sea except one Girl.
Having lured Mr. Pollen to make a fourth at a bridge table where the players were too polite to kill him, I ventured to vanish. There being no one on board with whom I wished to flirt, my one desire after two hard hours of Brightening was to curl up in my cabin with a nice book. I quite looked forward to the moment for shutting myself cosily in, for the cabin was a delicious pink-and-white nest—the biggest room on board, as a tribute to my princesshood.