"Well... it's this: Is or isn't your right name Lanyard, Michael Lanyard?"
This time it was Lanyard who, thinking rapidly, held the pause so long that his querist's uneasiness could not contain itself.
"Is that my answer? I mean, does your silence--?"
"That's an unusual name, Michael Lanyard," cautiously replied its proprietor. "How did you get hold of it?"
"They say it's the right name of the Lone Wolf. Guess I don't have to tell you who the Lone Wolf is."
"'They say'? Who, please, are 'they'?"
"Oh, there's a lot of talk going around the ship. You know how it is, a crew will gossip. And God knows they've got enough excuse this cruise."
This was constructively evasive. Lanyard wondered who had betrayed him. Phinuit? The tongue of that plain-spoken man was hinged in the middle; but one couldn't feel certain. Liane Delorme had made much of the chief engineer; though she seemed less likely to talk too much than anyone of the ship's company but Lanyard himself. But then (one remembered of a sudden) Monk and Mussey were by reputation old cronies; it wasn't inconceivable that Monk might have let something slip...
"And what, Mr. Mussey, if I should admit I am Michael Lanyard?"
"Then I'll have something to say to you, something I think'll interest you."