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to Mme. Storey and she threw both guns in the drawer and closed
it.
    “You’re better off without it,” she said, smiling. “Sit down and relax.
Smoke a cigarette. I am not your enemy. In fact, I’m sorry for you, though
you appear to have got yourself into this mess. Well, we usually do.”
    He sat down staring at her sullenly. He couldn’t make her out at all. He
lit a cigarette in trembling fingers. One could see the promising boy he had
been with his nice eyes, and thick wavy hair brushed straight back. Probably
spoiled by his mother.
    “You and Adele are not divorced,” said Mme. Storey.
    “No,” he growled.
    “Were you living together up to the time she sailed?”
    “Off and on.”
    “When Adele told you she was going to make this cruise you didn’t
object.”
    Holder was silent.
    “Then why have you started to kick up a dust now?”
    His muttered answer was the same he had given Adele. “I got to
thinking.”
    “What started you thinking?”
    “Aah! what’s the use of all these questions!” he blurted out.
    “Somebody is using you as a tool,” said Mme. Storey calmly, “and I want to
find out who it is.”
    This was evidently a new thought to him. He stared at her with distended
eyes, but said nothing.
    “Somebody’s been after you,” she suggested. “Got you all stirred up.”
    He shook his head. “Nobody ever said anything.”
    “Then it was a letter; an anonymous letter. Signed Well-Wisher or
something like that. Good old Well-Wisher!”
    “God! How do you know that?” he said, staring.
    “I am merely following out a process of deduction,” she said with a shrug.
“This letter asked you as a man and an American if you were willing to stand
for your wife going on a cruise in Horace Laghet’s yacht. It told you what
other men would think of you. It suggested that if you had a spark of
manliness in you, you’d put a stop to it.”
    From the frightened look that appeared in his eyes it was evident that she
had hit on the truth, or close to it.
    “Such letters always run true to form,” she went on. “It suggested that
you ship aboard the yacht so you could see what went on…”
    “That was the second letter,” he muttered, forgetting himself.
    “Oh, there were two,” said Mme. Storey. “Sort of follow-up system. I
suppose the second letter told you just where to go, what to say, what name
to give. Told you everything would be made easy for you very likely. Told you
you had friends who wouldn’t see you wronged!”
    His hang-dog look confessed that she was right.
    “And you fell for it!”
    “I was like a crazy man,” he muttered. “I couldn’t help myself.”
    “What happened after you got aboard?” she asked.
    “Nothing. I was treated like anybody else.”
    “Who approached you? What proposition has been made?”
    No answer from Holder.
    Mme. Storey took the gun out of the drawer and examined it. “You got this
after you came aboard?”
    “Well, I found it in my bunk,” he muttered. “There was a box of shells
with it.”
    “And you were glad to get it,” she suggested. “You didn’t trouble where it
came from.”
    No answer.
    “Sooner or later you would have shot Horace Laghet.”
    “Well, that’s my business,” he growled.
    “You would certainly have shot him that first day when he attacked you if
you’d had the gun then.”
    He scowled and twisted in his seat.
    “And what would have happened afterwards? You would have gone to the
chair, or at least to prison for life, and somebody would have reaped a
golden harvest from Horace Laghet’s death.”
    Holder said nothing.
    “What do you propose to do about it?” she asked.
    Like a child he took refuge in his stubborn silence.
    “Are you willing to put yourself in my hands?”
    “What do you want to do?” he asked suspiciously.
    “Arrange for your passage from Curaçao back to New York.”
    “And leave her with him!” he growled. “I’m only flesh and