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“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe he’s aboard.”
“Don’t you?”
“What sort of a chap is he? Tell me that.”
Alleyn said, “You tell me. You’ve got just as good a chance of being right.”
“Me!”
“You or anyone else. May I smoke?”
“Here—” the captain began and reached for a cigarette box.
“A pipe, if you don’t mind.” Alleyn pulled it out and as he talked, filled it. “These cases,” he said, “are the worst of the lot from our point of view. We can pick a card-sharp or a conman or a sneak-thief or a gunman or a dozen other bad lots by certain ma
“Ah!” Captain Ba
The two men looked at each other, and Alleyn’s heart sank. He knew pigheadedness when he met it.
The ship’s engines, now at full speed, drove her, outward bound, upon her course. There was no more fog; a su
“What,” Captain Ba
“No,” Alleyn agreed, “that’s fair enough and more than I bargained for. First of all, perhaps I ought to tell you what I don’t want. Particularly, I don’t want to be known for what I am.”
“Is that so?”
“I gather that supercargoes are a bit out-of-date, so I’d better not be a supercargo. Could I be an employee of the company going out to their Durban office?”
Captain Ba
“Why? On account of age?”
“It’s nothing to do with age. Or looks. Or rather,” Captain Ba
“I’m afraid I don’t quite—”
“You don’t look ill, either. Voyage before last, outward bound, we carried a second cousin of the managing director’s. Getting over d.t.’s, he was, after taking one of these cures. You’re not a bit like him. You’re not a bit like a detective, either, if it comes to that,” Captain Ba
“I’m sorry.”
“Have you always been a ’tec?”
“Not absolutely.”
“I know,” Captain Ba
“Will they?”
“It’s a fact.”
“Fair enough. Who is your chairman?”
“Sir Graeme Harmond.”
“Do you mean a little fat man with pop eyes and a stutter?”
“Well,” said Captain Ba
“I know him.”
“You don’t tell me!”
“He’ll do.”
“Do!”
“I’d better not use my own name. There’s been something in the papers. How about C. J. Roderick?”
“Roderick?”
“It happens to be the first chunk of my own name, but it’s never appeared in print. When you do this sort of thing you answer more readily to a name you’re used to.” He thought for a moment. “No,” he said. “Let’s play safer and make it Broderick.”
“Wasn’t your picture in last night’s Herald?”
“Was it? Hell!”
“Wait a bit.”
The captain went into his stateroom and came back with a copy of the paper that had so intrigued Mr. Cuddy. He folded it back at the snapshot of piquant Beryl Cohen and Superintendent R. Alleyn (inset).
“Is that like me?” Alleyn said.
“No.”
“Good.”
“There may be a very slight resemblance. It looks as if your mouth was full.”
“It was.”
“I see,” said Captain Ba
“We’ll have to risk it.”
“I suppose you’ll want to keep very much to yourself?”
“On the contrary. I want to mix as much as possible with the passengers.”
“Why?”
Alleyn waited for a moment and then asked, “Have you got a good memory for dates?”
“Dates?”
“Could you, for instance, provide yourself with a cast-iron alibi plus witnesses for the fifteenth of last month between ten and eleven P.M., the twenty-fifth between nine P.M. and midnight, and for last night during the half-hour before you sailed?”
Captain Ba
“There you are, you see.”
Captain Ba
“Do I look like a sex monster?” he furiously demanded.
“Don’t ask me,” Alleyn rejoined mildly. “I don’t know what they look like. That’s part of the trouble. I thought I’d made it clear.”
As Captain Ba
“Here! I’m clear for the fifteenth. We were berthed in Liverpool and I was aboard with visitors till two in the morning.”
“If that can be proved we won’t pull you in for murder.”
Captain Ba
“I mean no more than I say, and that’s not much. After all, you don’t come aboard your own ship clutching an embarkation notice.”
Captain Ba
Alleyn stood up. “I know,” he said, “what a bind this is for you and I really am sorry. I’ll keep as quiet as I reasonably may.”
“I’ll bet you anything you like he hasn’t shipped with us. Anything you like! Now!”
“If we’d been dead certain we’d have held you up until we got him.”
“It’s all some perishing mistake.”
“It may be.”
“Well,” Captain Ba
Alleyn said it would suit admirably. “And if I can just be treated as a passenger—”
“I’ll tell the chief steward.” He went to his desk, sat down behind it, pulled a slip of paper towards him and wrote on it, muttering as he did so, “Mr. C. J. Broderick, relative of the chairman, going out to a post at the British Embassy in Canberra. That it?”
“That’s it. I don’t, of course, have to tell you anything about the need for complete secrecy.”