"It is a pity we cannot forbid any one to land until we like," said the professor.
"There is not so much mystery about it as all that," said the captain, "although it isn't quite plain sailing. One of our passengers, a swell doctor, who examined the body with our ship's doctor directly after the discovery, will give you the benefit of his opinion, and I am detaining another passenger, a Mr. Majendie."
"Then there is some doubt as to the servant's guilt?" I said.
"I don't think so, but you shall hear the whole story."
"First, we should like to see the body," said Quarles. "We might be influenced unconsciously by your tale. It is well to come to the heart of the matter with an open mind."
The captain sent for the ship's doctor and a stewardess, and with them we went to the cabin, which had been kept locked.
The body, which lay in the berth where it had been found, an upper berth with a porthole, had been washed and attended to by the stewardess. The lower berth had been used by the traveler for some of his clothes—they were still there, neatly folded. The dead man's trunk was on a sofa on the opposite side of the cabin, a sofa which could be made into a third berth if necessary. Except that the body had been attended to, the cabin was just as it had been found.
"I took the stained sheets away," said the stewardess, "but I thought it would be wiser not to move him from the upper berth."
"It is a pity he couldn't have been left just as he was," Quarles answered; "you have no doubt washed away all the evidence."
He was a long time examining the wound, a particularly jagged one in the neck, a stab rather than a cut, but with something of both in it.