"What was it?"
"A gold wrist-watch."
The Captain felt a prickling sensation at the tips of his fingers; it had always happened, as long as he could remember, when there was a need for caution or a hint of danger. But all he said was:
"What did Mrs. Youngdahl do?"
"Well, of course, she was very surprised, and probably a bit flustered. She thanked him—rather coldly, I imagine—and he went off again. By that time I gather he was more than a little tight. Then she thought about it for a bit, and then she came and told me."
"Does she think he was stealing it?"
"Frankly, yes."
"Has she ever lost anything before?"
"No, sir. But there was that wallet that disappeared from B42, next door. She mentioned that."
"Has she told anyone else?"
"I don't think so, sir. I asked her not to, and she promised she wouldn't."
The Captain, silently commending this piece of discretion, sat back in his chair, and gave himself to thought. It all fitted in, but it was not going to be easy to pin any of it down. The old man, even when he was not drunk, was a well-known eccentric; it was perfectly possible that he had wandered into the wrong cabin, and conceivable that he had picked up the watch in mistake for his own. But at that point, coincidence began to wear a strained expression. Women's wrist-watches were nothing like men's wrist-watches, and the difference was immediately apparent, even to a drunk man. When a wrist-watch was picked up, it didn't go into a pocket, it went on to a wrist—there to be discovered, instantly, to be the wrong shape or size or feel. It was as impossible to make a mistake in this respect, as it was with someone else's hat.
He made his decision. "See Mrs. Youngdahl again," he ordered. "Explain that I have been told about this, and that I'm making the most rigorous inquiries. Ask her, again, not to say anything about it to anyone else, for the moment. Make that as a personal favour to me."
"Yes, sir," said Wexford.
"And ask the Professor to come and see me, now."
The Professor was really magnificent; his performance could not be faulted, whether he was guilty or innocent, whether he was covering up a crime or retrieving a social embarrassment. He was drunk, of course—so much the Captain recognized; but he was drunk in the way that true habitues were drunk, solemnly and owlishly proud of the fact that the rest of the world had not quite caught up with him. He was as good a man drunk, he seemed to declare, as a hundred lesser men sober. ... As regards the incident, he made no effort to argue the facts, or to minimize them. It had simply been a deplorable mistake.
"I'll forget my own name next!" he exclaimed, with infectious, positively bouncing good humour. "I cannot imagine what came over me. I must indeed be getting old! ... I thought things looked a little odd in the cabin—you know, clothes and things—and then poor Mrs. Youngdahl came in and found me there. She must have had the most terrible shock. I do hope she is not too disturbed."
"Sheis disturbed," said the Captain. He looked at the old man, seated in a corner of the cabin, and his eyes were unwinkingly direct. "So, in a way, am I. There's the matter of the wrist-watch."
"God bless my soul, yes!" agreed the Professor heartily. "That is an extraordinary affair, isn't it? I was picking up a few of my things—at least, I thought they were my things—small change and so on, and I must have dropped it into my pocket." He sighed. "Habits, habits. . . . We are creatures of them, I'm afraid. If I had only stopped to think, instead of allowing my attention to wander—"
"Professor," said the Captain suddenly.
The Professor's rheumy eyes came round to him. "Yes, sir?" he answered politely.
"What sort of watch have you?"
The Professor shook his head, as if he could scarcely credit what he was about to say. "Now that, if I may so express it, is the most ridiculous part of a ridiculous affair. Believe it or not, I don't even possess a wrist-watch! Affected sort of things—I never could abide them!" With a wavering hand he dug into the pocket of his braided evening waistcoat, and drew out a ponderous pocket-watch on the end of a heavy gold chain. "This, sir, is my watch, and it was my father's before me. Designed and made by the Swiss firm of Wechsler, in 1885. It doesn't lose five seconds in an entire year! I can assure you, they don't make watches like this nowadays."
"Quite so," said the Captain, with incisive irony. "There could be no similarity." He waited, but as the Professor, brushing tobacco ash from his lapel, did not appear to have heard him, he added: "You see the difficulty, don't you?"
"Difficulty, sir?" The manner was fractionally stiffer. "I don't quite take your point."
"You were in the wrong cabin—a natural mistake." The Captain put into his voice a disciplinary emphasis. "You picked up certain things from the dressing-table—a natural mistake. Then you picked up a wrist-watch—a natural mistake. Then what did you do?"
The Professor's air of bonhomie evaporated sharply. "Upon my soul," he said, with dignity, "I don't understand."
"Upon my soul," said the Captain, "nor do I. You could not conceivably have mistaken that watch for your own. It must have been less than half the size. You could not have put it on your wrist, because you don't wear a wrist-watch. You slipped it into your pocket. Why?"
After a moment's heavy silence: "I take the very strongest objection," said the Professor, struggling to rise to his feet, "to the expression 'slipped it into my pocket'. It savours of—" he waved his hand, "—you are perfectly well aware what it savours of. I made a mistake, and I am sorry. I put the watch in my pocket, among my loose change, and I am sorry. But I utterly repudiate the suggestion, the charge that—"
"Professor," interrupted the Captain curtly. "I am not making any charges. All I want is your explanation of how you came to mistake a wrist-watch for anything else, and why you put it into your pocket."
There was another silence, much longer. The Professor was looking down at his patent-leather shoes, which were old, cracked, yet highly polished; if he were playing for time, it was done with a wonderfully natural air. Finally his head came up, and he looked at the Captain with simple humility.
"Captain," he said, "I have a confession to make. It is intended for your ears alone, and I would be grateful if you would honour that confidence. The truth is, I—er—have been under the weather lately. As a consequence, I was somewhat in liquor this evening— there, I won't try to dissemble any further! I must have thought I was in my own cabin, dressing for dinner, and I naturally took everything off the dressing-table and put it in my pocket. Without thinking." The eyes went down again; it could have been shame just as well as shiftiness; the Captain could not make up his mind. "I beg you to understand," said the Professor, "that I am deeply sorry for this lapse of behaviour, and it certainly will not occur again."
It was thin, thought the Captain, in the silence that followed; thin as a liar's web, thin as a poor man's soup; but it might be true. ... He was aware that he could not take the thing much further, at this stage; short of a direct charge of theft, which would be difficult to substantiate, all he could do was to exhibit a wary, qualified acceptance. He realized also that if this had been a single story, told by a single man, he might have passed it without question; it was only because he had the "gang" idea ever-present in his mind that he was suspicious.