“I don’t have to, dear sir; I just ain’t—that’s the answer.”
“You’ve been recognised,” insisted the captain. “You were on this ship the time of the Burden Hamman robbery. Mr. Manvers knows you by sight; I, too, recognise you.”
“Sorry,” murmured Iff—“so sorry, but you’re wrong. Case of mistaken identity, I give you my word.”
“Your word!” snapped the captain contemptuously.
“My word,” retorted Iff in a crisp voice; “and more than that, I don’t ask you to take it. I’ve proofs of my identity which I think will satisfy even you.”
“Produce them.”
“In my own good time.” Iff put his back against the wall and lounged negligently, surveying the circle of unfriendly faces with his odd, supercilious eyes, half veiled by their hairless lids. “Since you’ve done me the honour to impute to me guilty knowledge of this—ah—crime, I don’t mind admitting that I was a passenger on the Autocratic when Mrs. Burden Hamman lost her jewels; and it wasn’t a coincidence, either. I was with you for a purpose—to look out for those jewels. I shared a room with Ismay, and when, after the robbery, you mistook me for him, he naturally didn’t object, and I didn’t because it left me all the freer to prosecute my investigation. In fact, it was due to my efforts that Ismay found things getting too hot for him over in London and arranged to return the jewelry to Mrs. Hamman for an insignificant ransom—not a tithe of their value. But he was hard pressed; if he’d delayed another day, I’d ’ve had him with the goods on.... That,” said Iff pensively, “was when I was in the Pinkerton service.”
“Ah, it was?” said the captain with much irony. “And what, pray, do you claim to be now?”
“Just a plain, ordinary, everyday sleuth in the employ of the United States Secret Service, detailed to work with the Customs Office to prevent smuggling—the smuggling of such articles as, say, the Cadogan collar.”
In the silence that followed this astounding declaration, the little man hunched up his shoulders until they seemed more round than ever, and again subjected the faces of those surrounding him to the stare of his impertinent, pale eyes. Staff, more detached in attitude than any of the others present, for his own amusement followed the range of Iff’s gaze.