The great liner was grandly sweeping up to Quarantine, when Dennis McNerney leaped from his berth and followed the startled cabin-boy, who shook him roughly.
"Come down, sir! THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG!" the boy babbled. "Get Doctor Atwater, instantly!" cried McNerney, as he rushed down into the ship's hold.
One glance at the guarded door was sufficient.
One of the careless keepers was clamoring for admittance, while the other bent over a rigid form lying there, prone and ghastly, in the gray morning light stealing in at the little porthole.
"It happened while I was out at breakfast," pleaded the unfaithful watcher, whom McNerney roughly cast aside.
Atwater was at McNerney's elbow when the frightened inmate had unlocked the door of the strong room. One shake of the recumbent form told the story. "He has cheated the executioner," solemnly said Atwater, letting the lifeless hand fall heavily from his grasp.
"He lay that way all the while since your last visit," said the sullen derelict keeper.
A hasty search of the cell showed an empty vial. "Chloral! Here is the key to the mystery!" cried Atwater, examining the coat, flung aside when the body was lifted. "See this torn sleeve! The murderer had hidden the bottle of poison here in the thick breast-wadding of the coat under the coat-sleeve. He waited coolly for the deed till the last night before our landing."
Atwater again inhaled the odor of the narcotic. "Chloral, sure enough!" he slowly said. "A two-ounce vial, and probably mingled with some more deadly poison! Probably the 'knock-out drops' the wretch used formerly to peddle to convicts!"
An hour later a circle of astonished police officials stood around the corpse of the crafty criminal who had passed beyond man's jurisdiction. "A desperate wretch," said the chief of detectives. "Fritz Braun, the mysterious druggist. He was prepared for the worst!"