“You are rather theatrical, aren’t you?” she scoffed, and turned away. But a second later she came back to me, and put her hand on my arm. “Tell me where it is,” she begged. “You are making a mystery of it, and I detest mysteries.”
I saw under her mask of lightness then: she wanted desperately to know where the axe was. Her eyes fell, under my gaze.
“I am sorry. There is no mystery. It is simply locked away for safe-keeping.”
She bit her lip.
“Do you know what I think?” she said slowly. “I think you have hypnotized the crew, as you did me—at first. Why has no one remembered that you were in the after house last night, that you found poor Wilmer Vail, that you raised the alarm, that you discovered the captain and Karen? Why should I not call the men here and remind them of all that?”
“I do not believe you will. They know I was locked in the storeroom. The door—the lock—”
“You could have locked yourself in.”
“You do not know what you are saying!”
But I had angered her, and she went on cruelly:—
“Who are you, anyhow? You are not a sailor. You came here and were taken on because you told a hard-luck story. How do we know that you came from a hospital? Men just out of prison look as you did. Do you know what we called you, the first two days out? We called you Elsa’s jail-bird And now, because you have dominated the crew, we are in your hands!”