He held out the paper to me, a useless thing to do, since he allowed the ray from the torch to wander slowly round the cabin again.
"We must look at the pile with the chain," he muttered in a disconnected way, as though he were thinking of something quite different.
"And at the ninth link of the chain," I said.
"Yes, at the ninth link. A conundrum, Wigan. A——"
He stopped. His eyes had suddenly become fixed upon some object behind me. The electric ray fell slanting close by me, and when I turned I saw that the end of it was under the cushioned seat on one side of the table. The light fell upon a golf club—a rusty mashie.
"That man on the green was one of the crew, Wigan," said Quarles; and then when I picked up the club we looked into each other's eyes.
"Did I not say the yacht had a queer feeling about her?" he said in a whisper.
I knew what he meant. The mashie had something besides rust on it now, something wet, moist and sticky.
Quarles glanced at the door of the galley as he put the paper on the table, careful to place it in the exact position in which he had found it; then he went quickly to the cabin aft.
On either side of a fixed washing cabinet there was a bunk, and in one of them lay the man we had seen on the green. The wound upon his head told to what a terrible use the club had been put since he had played with it that afternoon. He had been fiercely struck from behind, and then strong fingers had strangled out whatever life remained in him. He was fully dressed, and there had been little or no struggle. His would-be sportsmanlike attire was barely disarranged, and even in death his pose was stiff, and his set face exhibited no emotion. Quarles lifted up one of his hands and looked at the palm and at the nails. He let the light rest upon the hand that I might see it. Then he pointed to a straight mark across the forehead, just below the hair, and nodded.