CHAPTER XVIII.

SUSPECTS

That run home to Southampton did not begin auspiciously for Nanette. Her happiness at being on the same ship with O’Shea was distinctly blunted by the presence of an official chaperone.

Her father had some sort of pull with the line, and by dint of industrious cabling, he had contrived to get in touch with a lady he knew who was returning from South Africa: One Mrs. Porter, a really formidable matron, deep-chested, heavy-jowled, and contemplating a sinful world through spectacles of an unnecessarily unpleasant pattern.

“Pop is mad!” said Nanette. “This woman must die.”

Excluding O’Shea and myself, Nanette had come on board with a male escort of three devoted dancing partners. Lacking the society of Nanette, these were three very lonely young men, divided by a mutual distrust but united in their dislike of O’Shea.

Unreciprocated passion renders its victims clairvoyant; and each one of these three knew what the rest of the crowd at Reid’s Hotel had never suspected: that Nanette only emerged from a land of dreams when O’Shea was with her. Now, to crown a troublous situation, Mrs. Porter presented a protégé--Captain Slattery. She made it pointedly clear that no other follower would be tolerated.

I resigned my staff of office with a sigh, and settled down to be sorry for Nanette--and Slattery.

O’Shea and I stood at the door of the smoke-room watching the coast of Madeira melt into a blue distance. Nanette, in a short, sleeveless frock, came along the deck, linked between two men, one of whom was Slattery. She pretended not to see us. But right in front of the door she pulled up insistently, leaning on the rail and pointing out something to her companions. Nanette knew she had very beautiful arms. But she wanted O’Shea to know.

He smiled at me, sadly, and turning, went into the smoke-room. The girl’s dainty naïveté was hopelessly disarming. We sat down facing one another across a table, and:

“There is something I want you to do for me,” said O’Shea.

“About--Nanette?”

“No.” He shook his head, and that tragically hungry look came into his eyes that I had seen there before. “Don’t let us talk about her, Decies. I have a valuable portfolio in my stateroom.”

“Surely you will hand it over to the purser?”

“Impossible. Contrary to the rules of the game. The ship might sink. But a certain Adolf Zara is on board. Therefore----”

He paused, staring at me significantly.

“You want _me_ to take charge of it?”

“Yes. Lock it in your trunk. I don’t expect any move on this gentleman’s part. He is stalking bigger game and therefore anxious to avoid publicity. But he _might_ take it into his head to pay me an unofficial visit. I have a room to myself. You are sharing a cabin with a representative of the _Cape Times_ whom, luckily, you chance to have met before.”

“Very well,” said I. “Of course, this man, Zara, will know you are on board?”

“Naturally,” O’Shea returned. “His associates in Madeira will have advised him--although absolutely nothing to afford a clue to his assumed identity happened at Funchal. He is a dangerously clever man.”

“Have you taken a look around?”

“Yes. Have you?”

“I have. But no likely candidate for the honour of being Adolf Zara has presented himself.”

“I agree,” said O’Shea quietly. “But I have an appointment with the purser in an hour’s time. I am going carefully through the declaration sheets.”

When O’Shea left me, I was joined by the journalist, my stable-companion; a substantial Scot whom I had met in London two years before. He proposed a promenade. And just as we started the faithful three came into the smoke-room, together, and ordered drinks. Their aspects were mournful.

Then, in a shady corner outside, we discovered the explanation. Nanette was coiled up in a deck chair, her charming head turned in the direction of her neighbour on the right--Slattery. In a chair on her left, enveloped in an unnecessary rug, Mrs. Porter slumbered soundly--and almost noiselessly.

Nanette beckoned to me. As I paused, she threw a venom-laden glance at the unconscious chaperone, and:

“I do not like you, Mrs. P.,” she murmured. “The reason why is plain to see--and hear.”

Slattery, his gaze fixed upon her, smiled admiringly. He had very even white teeth. Then he looked up at me.

“I hear that your friend is the famous O’Shea,” he said. “I thought he was a movie actor.”

The words told me plainly that this was another victim of the distracting Nanette. Therefore I forgave him.

“His appearance is certainly deceptive,” I admitted.

“We were on their right at the time he was recommended for the V.C.,” Slattery went on. “I was only a pup, but _we_ saw some dirty work, too. The crack regiments always get the limelight, though.”

Nanette glanced at him under suddenly lowered lashes, and:

“Please, Mr. Decies, lead me to a cool drink with lemon in it,” she said.

She was on her feet in one graceful movement. Her ability to disentangle herself from complicated poses resembled that of an antelope. Grasping my right arm and the left of my startled Scottish companion, she moved away.

“Captain Slattery is so good-looking that he bores me,” she whispered in my ear.

O’Shea found me some little time later.

“I have ventured to have you put at a table among strangers,” he said. “Your immediate neighbour is a certain Dr. Zimmermann.”

He stared at me.

“I’ll do my best, O’Shea,” said I. “Where are _you_?”

“At the purser’s table,” he replied, “facing one John Edward Wainwright, of Halifax, Nova Scotia. These two birds may prove to be black swans, but there isn’t another query in the passenger list.”

I experienced Dr. Zimmermann at lunch and later at dinner. Apart from his audible enjoyment of the soup, I found his table manners genial. He had been studying the neolithic fauna of South Africa on behalf of some learned Munich institution blessed with a name that only Dr. Zimmermann could pronounce and that I shall never attempt to spell.

My report to O’Shea was unsatisfactory.

“He seems fairly true to type,” I said. “If he is not what he professes to be, he carries it well. How about your man?”

O’Shea shrugged in his curious way.

“He obviously knows Halifax,” was the reply. “His line appears to be steam trawlers. Having unaccountably neglected the subject of steam trawlers, I am rather at a disadvantage here.”

“I am equally rusty,” I confessed, “upon the neolithic fauna of South Africa.”

There was dancing on deck that night. Nanette danced with the faithful three in turn and with Slattery. Slattery secured more than his fair share because of the powerful backing of “Mrs. P.”

Nanette was dancing with me, in a curiously abstracted way, when suddenly she grew animated. Her eyes sparkled. She floated in my arms lightly as a feather.

Following her glance, I saw O’Shea watching us.

When I had deposited Nanette with the guardian Mrs. Porter, I returned to find O’Shea; for he had signalled to me. He was standing just inside the smoke-room door.

“Adolf Zara is active,” he said in a cautious voice.

“What do you mean?”

He glanced around the smoke-room warningly. I took the cue and looked about me. Dr. Zimmermann sat in a corner, fast asleep. Wainwright, the other suspect, formed one of a bridge party.

“Two dispatch-cases have been forced open,” O’Shea went on, “by someone who entered my cabin to-night!”