All this was recited with much pantomime and urging the reins of an imaginary horse. With an expiring sigh Captain Valvick shook his head in a melancholy fashion, and then twinkled benevolently.
"Ay could never get dat girl to go out again. Ha-ha-ha!"
"But I don't see the point," protested Peggy Glenn, who was regarding him in some perplexity. "How is that like Curt Warren?"
"Ay don't know," admitted the other, scratching his head. "Ay yust wanted to tell de story, ay guess… Maybe he is sea-sick, eh? Ha-ha-ha! Ah! Dat remind me. Haff ay ever told you de story about de mutiny ay 'ave when de cook always eat all de peas out of de soup and—"
"Sea-sick?" the girl exclaimed indignantly. "Bosh! At least — poor old fellow, I hope not. My uncle is having a terrible time of it, and he's suffering worse because he's promised to give a performance of his marionettes at the ship's concert… Do you think we'd better go and see what's wrong with Curt?"
She paused as a white-coated steward struggled out of a door near by and peered round in the darkening light. Morgan recognised him as his own cabin steward — a cheerful-faced young man with flat black hair and a long jaw. He had, now, a rather conspiratorial manner. Sliding down the gusty deck, he beckoned towards Morgan and raised his voice above the crash and hiss of water.
"Sir," he said, "it's Mr. Warren, sir. 'Is compliments, and 'e'd like to see you. And 'is friends too… "
Peggy Glenn sat up. "There's nothing wrong, is there? Where is he? What's the matter?"
The steward looked dubious, and then reassuring, "Oh no, miss! Nothing wrong. Only I think somebody's 'it him."
"What?"
"Hin the eye, miss. And on the back of th 'ead. But 'e's not a bit upset, miss, not 'im. I left 'im sitting on the floor in the cabin," said the steward, rather admiringly, "with a towel to 'is 'ead and a piece of movie film in 'is 'and, swearing something 'andsome. And 'e'd taken a nasty knock, miss; that's a fact."
They stared at each other, and then they all hurried after the steward. Captain Valvick, puffing and snorting through his moustache, threatened dire things. Tearing open one of the doors, they were kicked by its recoil in the wind into the warm, paint-and-rubbery odour of the corridor. Warren's cabin, a large double which he occupied alone, was an outside one on C deck, starboard side. They descended heaving stairs, struck off past the gloomy staircase to the dining-room, and knocked at the door of C 91.
Mr. Curtis G. Warren's ordinarily lazy and good-humoured face was now malevolent. The odour of recent profanity hung about him like garlic. Round his head a wet towel had been wound like a turban; there was a slight cut of somebody's knuckles. Mr. Warren's greenish eyes regarded them bitterly out of a lean, newly-scrubbed face; his hair, over the bandage, stuck up like a goblin's; and in his hand he had a strip of what resembled motion-picture film with perforations for sound, torn at one end. He sat on the edge of his berth, faintly visible in the yellowish twilight through the porthole, and the whole cabin was wildly disarranged.
"Come in," said Mr. Warren. Then he exploded. "When I catch," he announced, drawing a deep breath like one who begins an oration, and spacing his words carefully— "when I catch the white-livered, greenly empurpled so-and-so who tried to get away with this — when I get one look at the ugly mug of the lascivious-habited son of a bachelor who runs around beaning people with a blackjack—"
Peggy Glenn wailed, "Curt!" and rushed over to examine his head, which she turned to one side and the other as though she were looking behind his ears. Warren broke off and said, "Ow!"
"But, my dear, what happened?" the girl demanded. "Oh, why do you let things like this happen? Are you hurt?"
"Baby," said Warren in a tone of dignity, "I can tell you that it is not alone my dignity which has suffered. By the time they have finished stitching up my head, I shall probably resemble a baseball. As to my deliberately encouraging all this to happen… Boys," he said, appealing moodily to Morgan and the captain, "I need help. I'm in a jam, and that's no lie."
"Ha!" growled Valvick, rubbing a large hand down across his moustache. "You yust tell me who smack you, eh? Ha! Den ay take him and—"
"I don't know who did it. That's the point."
"But why…?" asked Morgan, who was surveying the litter in the cabin; and the other grinned sourly.
"This, old son," Warren told him, "is right in your line. Do you know if there are any international crooks on board? The Prince or Princess Somebody kind, who always hang out at Monte Carlo? Because an important State document has been pinched… No, I'm not kidding. I didn't know I had the damned thing; never occurred to me; I thought it had been destroyed… I tell you I'm in bad trouble, and it's not funny. Sit down somewhere and I'll tell you about it."
"You go straight to the doctor!" Peggy Glenn said, warmly. "If you think I'm going to have you laid up with amnesia or something—"
"Baby, listen," the other begged, with a sort of wild patience; "you don't seem to get it yet. This is dynamite. It's — well, it's like one of Hank's spy stories, only it's something new along that line, now that I come to think of it., Look here. You see this film?"
Ho handed it to Morgan, who held it up for examination against the fading light through the porthole. The pictures were all of a portly, white-haired gentleman in evening clothes, who had one fist lifted as though making a speech and whose mouth was split wide as though it were B vary exploitive speech. There was, moreover, a very curious, bleary look about the dignified person; his tie was skewered under one ear, and over his head and shoulders had been sprinkled what Morgan at first presumed to be snow. It was, in fact, confetti.
And the face was vaguely familiar. Morgan stared at it for some time before he realised that it was none other than a certain Great Personage, the most pompous starched-shirt of the Administration, the potent rain-maker and high priest of quackdoodle. His cheerful, soothing voice over the radio had inspired millions of Americans with dreams of a fresh, effulgent era of national prosperity in which there should be instalment plans without ever any payments demanded, and similar American conceptions of the millennium. His dignity, his scholarship, his courtly manners—
"Yes, you're right," Warren said wryly. "It's my uncle. Now I'll tell you about it… and don't laugh, because it's absolutely serious.