"Of course, so far as you know, nobody on the boat suspected that the fellow who called himself Gavitt was anything but the 'roustie' he was passing himself off for? You didn't know of his having any talk with any of the upper-deck people?"
"Only once," said the day-clerk, promptly.
"When was that?"
"It was one day just after the 'man-overboard' incident, a little while after dusk in the evening. I was up here in the texas, getting ready to go to supper. Gavitt—we may as well keep on calling him that till you've found another name for him—Gavitt had been cubbing for the pilot. I saw him go across the hurricane-deck and down the companion to the saloon-deck guards; and a minute later I heard him talking to somebody—a woman—on the guards below."
"You didn't hear what was said?"
"I didn't pay any attention. Passengers, women passengers especially, often do that—pull up a 'roustie' and pry into him to see what sort of wheels he has. But I noticed that they talked for quite a little while; because, when I finished dressing and went below, he was just leaving her."
Broffin rose up from the bunk on which he had been sitting and laid a heavy hand on Maurice's shoulder. "You ain't going to tell me that you didn't find out who the woman was, Clarence—what?" he said anxiously.
"That's just what I've got to tell you, Matt," returned the clerk reluctantly. "I was due at the second table, and I didn't go as far forward as the stanchion she was holding on to. All I can tell you is that she was one of the half-dozen or so younger women we had on board; I could guess at that much."
Broffin's oath was not of anger; it was a mere upbubbling of disappointment.
"Maurice, I've got to find that young woman if I have to chase her half-way round the globe, and it's tough luck to figure out that if you hadn't been in such a blazing hell of a hurry to get your supper that night, I might be able to catch up with her in the next forty-eight hours or so. But what's done is done, and can't be helped. Chase out and get your passenger list for that trip. We'll take the women as they come, and when you've helped me cull out the names of the ones you're sure it wasn't, I'll screw my nut and quit buzzing at you."