“It is curious that you heard nothing,” she said slowly. “You slept with this door open, didn’t you?”
“I was locked in.”
She stooped quickly and looked at the lock.
“You broke it open?”
“Partly, at the last. I heard—” I stopped. I did not want to tell her what I had heard. But she knew.
“You heard—Karen, when she screamed?”
“Yes. I was aroused before that,—I do not know how,—and found I was locked in. I thought it might be a joke—forecastle hands are fond of joking, and they resented my being brought here to sleep. I took out some of the screws with my knife, and—then I broke the door.”
“You saw no one?”
“It was dark; I saw and heard no one.”
“But, surely—the man at the wheel—”