Elsa shook her head, and tears crept into her eyes again. “No. Accommodations were scarce. I had to share a cabin.”
Friendliness left Cliff Chandler’s voice. “That’s a lie. You were carrying a gun in your handbag tonight, Elsa Graves. I checked up on you with the purser. You deliberately asked for half of 115. Now you’re deliberately asking for trouble. You’re facing a nasty murder. Isn’t it time to think fast and talk straight?”
“I guess you’re on the level,” Elsa said slowly. She leaned toward Cliff. “I did take that cabin with Dorette Maupin. You’re a detective. So am I. Dorette Maupin was a diamond smuggler.”
“And you are—” Cliff broke off, studying the box of powder in his hand.
“An employee of Clonnet et Cie, the Paris jewelers. A steady stream of uncut diamonds has been getting by the U. S. Customs — diamonds bought from Clonnet. I’ve traced two previous purchases indirectly to Monsieur Martone. Clonnet, like most of the fine houses, is determined to stamp out the smuggling of its gems.”
Cliff gave a low whistle. “I was wondering about this extra box of powder in Dorette’s suitcase. I noticed another one just like it in your cabin. Is that yours?”
Elsa shook her head. “It’s Dorette’s, too. And there’s no doubt, Cliff,” she declared earnestly, “that Dorette and Martone were working together. He makes lots of crossings taking samples of powder to the United States—”
Cliff’s fingers swiftly dug under the cellophane wrapper of the powder box and tore it loose. The opened lid disclosed an inner wrapping of brittle paper. Cliff ripped it off while Elsa bent over to watch.
He spread a copy of the ship’s newspaper and carefully dumped out the sweet pinkish contents of the box. Cliff smoothed it out thinly, then turned his attention to the box again. There was an inner container of thin pasteboard which came away with a little effort. Underneath, wrapped in fine tissue, was a tiny stone.
Elsa took it from him and rolled it around on her palm.
“So that’s how they’ve been running them in. I think a thorough search of M. Martone’s suite might not be a waste of time.”
Cliff was silent a moment, thinking of Dorette Maupin’s frightened face when she had collided with him on deck a few hours before. “There are some things I must know, Elsa. Think hard. Was Dorette asleep when you came down with me tonight?”
“I don’t believe so, but I’m not sure. She stirred restlessly — that was all.”
“Was she wearing a sleeping cap in bed?”
She paused, thinking. “A pink net one, I believe.”
“Was the porthole open when you went to bed?”
“Yes. It wasn’t raining then.”
“Now think, Elsa. This is vital. Was the porthole open when you left your room to call me a few minutes ago?”
“It was open when I found—” She stared at him wildly. “Don’t look at me like that, Cliff. I know what you’re thinking — that nobody would stop to close a porthole with a dead girl on the floor.”
“Did you?”
“I didn’t know she was dead! Listen, Cliff. I heard her fall. It woke me up and I called — but she didn’t answer. When I switched on the light she was lying there on the floor. I was half-asleep and thought she was ill. The rain was blowing in the porthole, so I unhooked it and let it down. Then I started to lift her into bed and saw there was something wrong.” Her voice was husky, horrified, her cheeks white.
“Quit worrying,” Cliff advised her. “Let me do that. They put M. Mar-tone in the ship’s infirmary after his ducking tonight. It’s a good time to pay his suite a visit.”
“But if he’s in the infirmary—”
“He couldn’t very well have killed that girl in there,” Cliff concluded. “Yet he’s public suspect No. 1. I met Dorette on deck during the excitement tonight. She was the only witness to Martone’s ducking. If he and Dorette had quarreled — and she had pushed him overboard—”
“What makes you think that?”
“She was frightened and unstrung when I met her. But I can tell you more after I take a look through his things.”
He put on slacks and a sports shirt over his pajamas. Elsa watched as he strapped a .38 under his arm. He slipped into a light overcoat and said, “I think you’d better wait in here.”
“I certainly will not,” she protested. “If you’ll let me back into 115, I’ll get into some clothes. I’m coming along!”
Cliff took Elsa’s arm when they came out onto the broad promenade of “A” deck and guided her to a large window. There he stopped, peering through slightly opened slats of a Venetian blind into a dimly lighted room.
“First,” he said, “we’ll locate Mar-tone. This is the infirmary. Wait here. I’m going to speak to the night orderly.”
He went inside, walked down a short narrow passage to a small office, but the orderly was not in sight. Cliff stepped cautiously into the ward.
The single occupant seemed to be sleeping quietly. Walking lightly, Cliff approached close enough to the bed to identify M. Martone. He was about to leave to rejoin Elsa when something unusual caught his eye. Each bed in the ward was flanked by a square table and all of the tables except one were topped with heavy squares of thick plate glass.
The table from which the glass was missing was nearest the door. Cliff looked at it thoughtfully. He was thinking of the nasty cut and bruise on the back of Dorette Maupin’s soft neck.
He found Elsa Graves leaning against the rail staring down into the swirling black water below. Pancakes of light, marking the portholes of the few late-reading passengers, dotted the side of the Moriander. Two of the lighted ports, just below where they were standing, held Cliff’s attention like the yellow eyes of some evil animal.
“Look, Elsa,” he whispered, pointing, “those lights just underneath us are in my stateroom and yours. Can you think of any way in which Dorette might have been killed — by someone standing right here?”
“Good heavens, Cliff!” She turned toward him. “You think something was dropped from here? But why would she put her head out of the porthole?”
“She might have been tricked into it.”
“Yes, that’s possible, but hard to prove.” Hopelessness was in her tone.
“I doubt if it can be proved,” said Cliff. “But sometimes the cleverest murderer will give himself away. Let’s take a run down to Martone’s suite.”
Cliff’s private passkey admitted them. His quick fingers pushed down the switch by the door. Two pink-shaded lamps glowed into life, revealing the long table he had seen earlier in the Gold Lounge.
The samples were set out on it in orderly array. Obviously M. Martone had returned to his cabin and arranged it before the trip on deck which had nearly been his last. The door to an inner stateroom was slightly ajar.
Cliff crossed the sitting-room and pushed the door wide, disclosing a bedroom containing two expensive wardrobe trunks.
“We can look around in there later,” he told Elsa. “Right now I want to see about that powder. I don’t imagine the opened sample boxes will show much. Let’s have a look at this stack of unopened ones first.”
Feverishly they set to work opening boxes and emptying powder. At one end of the gold cloth a small pile of uncut diamonds began to grow.
There were thirty diamonds in the pile, and nearly a hundred empty boxes on the floor, when Elsa said: “I think that’s all.”
She straightened up from the table. As she did so Cliff caught the expression on her face. Forewarned by her dawning look of terror he cautiously turned around.
Jean Martone, slender as a girl, in striped silk pajamas, was leaning against the side of the bedroom door. He was smiling, but the smile stopped short of his eyes. In his right hand, resting nonchalantly against his hip, was an automatic pistol.