“Only as he had been with me—through the circumstance of casual meeting as fellow shipmates.”
“Er—was he, in your opinion, Miss Strong, a man who drank to excess?”
“I do not know that he drank at all—he certainly had not been drinking up to half an hour before I saw that body fall overboard,” she answered, “for I was with him on deck up to that time.”
“It is very strange,” said the captain. “He did not look to me like a man who was subject to fainting spells, or anything of that sort. And even had he been it is scarcely credible that he should have fallen completely over the rail had he been taken with an attack while leaning upon it—he would rather have fallen inside, upon the deck. If he is not on board, Miss Strong, he was thrown overboard—and the fact that you heard no outcry would lead to the assumption that he was dead before he left the ship’s deck—murdered.”
The girl shuddered.
It was a full hour later that the first officer returned to report the outcome of the search.
“Mr. Caldwell is not on board, sir,” he said.
“I fear that there is something more serious than accident here, Mr. Brently,” said the captain. “I wish that you would make a personal and very careful examination of Mr. Caldwell’s effects, to ascertain if there is any clew to a motive either for suicide or murder—sift the thing to the bottom.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” responded Mr. Brently, and left to commence his investigation.
Hazel Strong was prostrated. For two days she did not leave her cabin, and when she finally ventured on deck she was very wan and white, with great, dark circles beneath her eyes. Waking or sleeping, it seemed that she constantly saw that dark body dropping, swift and silent, into the cold, grim sea.