Peggy took one look, and then turned away, white-faced. Morgan felt a constriction in his throat as he stepped up beside Warren and Valvick. A blanket had been neatly spread under the sheet and over the mattress; but stains were already soaking through it. When they swept off the blanket, the colours of the blue-and-white striped mattress were not very distinguishable in a great sodden patch spread for some length down.
"Is it…?" asked Morgan, and took a deep draw on his cigarette. "Is it…?"
"Oh, yes. It iss blood," said Captain Valvick.
It was so quiet that even across that distance Morgan imagined he could hear the liner's bell. They were moving almost steadily now, with a deep throb below decks in the ship and a faint vibration of glassware. Also Morgan imagined the pale classic-faced girl lying unconscious, with the dim light burning above her in the berth, and the door opening as somebody came in…
"But what's happened to her? Where is she now?" Warren asked, in a low voice. "Besides," he added, with a sort of dull argumentative air—"besides, he couldn't have done that with a blackjack."
"And why should he do it, anyway?" asked Peggy, trying to control her voice. "Oh, it's absurd! I won't believe it! You're scaring me! And — and, anyway, where did he get the linen for the bed? Where is she, and why?… Oh, you're trying to frighten me, aren't you?"
"Steady, Baby," said Warren, taking her hand without removing his eyes from the bed. "I don't know why he did it, or what he expected to gain by making the bed over. But we'd better cover that up again."
Carefully putting down his pipe on the edge of the thrumming washstand, Morgan choked back his revulsion and bent over to examine the berth. The stains were still
wet, and he avoided them as much as he could. So strung up was he into that queer, clear-brained, almost fey state of mind that sometimes comes in the drugged hours of the morning, that he was not altogether surprised when he heard something rattle deep down between mattress and bulkhead. He yanked over a corner of the sheet, wound it round his fingers, and groped.
"Better not look, old girl," he said after a pause. "This won't be pretty."