"But I assure you," Monk commented in heavy sarcasm, "our intentions are those of honourable men."
The door slammed, and the sound of the key turning in the lock followed. Monk trained the eyebrows into a look of long-suffering patience.
"A glass too much... Seein' things!"
"No," Lanyard voiced shortly his belief; "you are wrong. Liane saw something." "Nobody questions that," Phinuit yawned. "What one does question is whether she saw a man or a figment of her imagination--some effect of the shadows that momentarily suggested a man."
"Shadows do play queer tricks at night, at sea," Monk agreed. "I remember once--"
"Then let us look the ground over and see if we can make that explanation acceptable to our own intelligences," Lanyard cut in.
"No harm in that."
Phinuit fetched a pocket flash-lamp, and the three reconnoitred exhaustively the quarters of the deck in which the apparition had manifested itself to the woman. By no strain of credulity could the imagination be made to accept the effect of shadows at the designated spot as the shape of somebody standing there. On the other hand, when Phinuit obligingly posed himself between the mouth of the companionway and the skylight, it had to be admitted that the glow from either side provided fairly good cover for one who might wish to linger there, observing and unobserved.
"Still, I don't believe she saw anything," Monk persisted--"a phantom Popinot, if anything."
"But wait. What is it we have here?"