"Do you happen to know anything about this craft's personal history?"
"No. What are you talking about! Why?"
"Well, I do," I offered. "For one thing, she's changed her name. And it happens this isn't the first time she's—Well, damn it all, fourteen years ago I helped pick up this whatever-she-is off the Virginia Capes—in the same sort of condition. There you are!" I was yapping like a nerve-strung puppy.
McCord leaned forward with his hands on the table, bringing his face beneath the fan of the hanging-lamp. For the first time I could mark how shockingly it had changed. It was almost colourless. The jaw had somehow lost its old-time security and the eyes seemed to be loose in their sockets. I had expected him to start at my announcement; he only blinked at the light.
"I am not surprised," he remarked at length. "After what I've seen and heard—" He lifted his
fist and brought it down with a sudden crash on the table. "Man—let's have a nip!"
He was off before I could say a word, fumbling out of sight in the narrow stateroom. Presently he reappeared, holding a glass in either hand and a dark bottle hugged between his elbows. Putting the glasses down, he held up the bottle between his eyes and the lamp, and its shadow, falling across his face, green and luminous at the core, gave him a ghastly look—like a mutilation or an unspeakable birthmark. He shook the bottle gently and chuckled his "Dead men's liquor" again. Then he poured two half-glasses of the clear gin, swallowed his portion, and sat down.
"A parrot," he mused, a little of the liquor's colour creeping into his cheeks. "No, this time it was a cat, Ridgeway. A yellow cat. She was—"
"Was?" I caught him up. "What's happened—what's become of her?"
"Vanished. Evaporated. I haven't seen her since night before last, when I caught her trying to lower the boat—"