Mr. Curtis G. Warren's ordinarily lazy and good-humoured face was now malevolent. The odour of recent profanity hung about him like garlic. Round his head a wet towel had been wound like a turban; there was a slight cut of somebody's knuckles. Mr. Warren's greenish eyes regarded them bitterly out of a lean, newly-scrubbed face; his hair, over the bandage, stuck up like a goblin's; and in his hand he had a strip of what resembled motion-picture film with perforations for sound, torn at one end. He sat on the edge of his berth, faintly visible in the yellowish twilight through the porthole, and the whole cabin was wildly disarranged.
"Come in," said Mr. Warren. Then he exploded. "When I catch," he announced, drawing a deep breath like one who begins an oration, and spacing his words carefully— "when I catch the white-livered, greenly empurpled so-and-so who tried to get away with this — when I get one look at the ugly mug of the lascivious-habited son of a bachelor who runs around beaning people with a blackjack—"
Peggy Glenn wailed, "Curt!" and rushed over to examine his head, which she turned to one side and the other as though she were looking behind his ears. Warren broke off and said, "Ow!"
"But, my dear, what happened?" the girl demanded. "Oh, why do you let things like this happen? Are you hurt?"
"Baby," said Warren in a tone of dignity, "I can tell you that it is not alone my dignity which has suffered. By the time they have finished stitching up my head, I shall probably resemble a baseball. As to my deliberately encouraging all this to happen… Boys," he said, appealing moodily to Morgan and the captain, "I need help. I'm in a jam, and that's no lie."
"Ha!" growled Valvick, rubbing a large hand down across his moustache. "You yust tell me who smack you, eh? Ha! Den ay take him and—"
"I don't know who did it. That's the point."
"But why…?" asked Morgan, who was surveying the litter in the cabin; and the other grinned sourly.
"This, old son," Warren told him, "is right in your line. Do you know if there are any international crooks on board? The Prince or Princess Somebody kind, who always hang out at Monte Carlo? Because an important State document has been pinched… No, I'm not kidding. I didn't know I had the damned thing; never occurred to me; I thought it had been destroyed… I tell you I'm in bad trouble, and it's not funny. Sit down somewhere and I'll tell you about it."
"You go straight to the doctor!" Peggy Glenn said, warmly. "If you think I'm going to have you laid up with amnesia or something—"