"Oh! He's been worried about financial matters has he? Yes, yes," said the captain heavily. "But let's come down to terms, Mr. Morgan? Do you vouch for the truth of this crazy story?"
"Go and see, why don't you?" shouted the exasperated Warren. "That's what I've been asking you to do from the first, if you'd had any sense. Here you're keeping Miss Glenn shivering M my coat, and all of us standing out here on n zero deck when that poor girl may be dying. Aren't you coming, Doctor?"
"We are all coming," said the captain, with sudden decision. He beckoned his two subordinates, and the weird little procession went down to the door. Warren tugged it open, while they all piled through; a pale-faced Peggy, trembling and breathing deeply in the warm air. For a moment they blinked against the light.
"All right, there you are," said Warren, himself shivering as he stood against the wall of the white passage. "There's where she got caught in the door. You see the blood on the rubber matting… "
The captain looked at him.
"Blood? What blood? I don't see any blood."
There was none, although Morgan knew it had been there. He took off his spectacles, wiped them, and looked again without result. And again he felt in the pit of his stomach that uneasy sensation that behind this foolery there was moving something monstrous and deadly.
"But—!" said Warren desperately. He stared at the captain, and then threw open the door of the state-room beside his.
The light in the roof was burning. The berth on which they had laid the injured girl was empty; the pillow was not disarranged, or the tucked-back sheets wrinkled. There was not even the smeared towel with which Peggy had wiped blood from the girl's face. A fresh towel, white and undisturbed, swung from the rack of the washstand.
"Yes?" said Captain Whistler stormily. "I'm waiting."