Stasia was turning the leaves slowly, making here and there a comment, Mr. Carruthers looking over her shoulder till he stopped her with a large forefinger suddenly on one page.
“Who is this? Where did you sketch him?” he asked.
Cynthia leaned across the table. “Oh, that man? Isn’t it a wicked face? I wish you could have seen ...”
But Mr. Carruthers was impatient. He took the book from Stasia. “Tell me about this. When did you sketch this? Last night? And what was this, part of the costume? Make-up?”
“No,” Cynthia laughed, “it was a bad scar, a fairly new one for it was still pink and raw-looking. I think he had tried to cover it with that harlequin ruff, but when he grew warm he forgot about it, and pushed the ruff away from his face.”
Mr. Carruthers had already pushed the little electric bell with an insistent finger. Before the hurrying steward had reached the table, Mr. Carruthers barked, “Ask Captain Wain if we can see him immediately, in his office, and tell the purser to join us there.” Then he turned to Cynthia, “I’d like you to come along and tell the Captain what you just told me. And may we borrow your sketch book for an hour or two?”
Puzzled and excited, Cynthia followed Stasia and her father out of the lounge, down the corridor towards the captain’s office. Captain Wain was a plump little man with a ruddy complexion that had weathered many storms, white walrus whiskers, and a blue uniform with lots of glittering buttons. Behind him stood the purser whom Cynthia already knew, a lean, hatchet-faced man, with small sharp eyes and an apologetic manner.
Mr. Carruthers held the door for the two girls, then closed it firmly behind him and plunged immediately into his subject.
“It’s this matter of Goncourt,” he stated, and opened Cynthia’s sketchbook where his thumb had been keeping the place. “I want you two to see this.”
The Captain leaned to look at the portrait of the man in the ruff, and passed it to the purser with no comment save a brief “Mmumph!”