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something, ain’t she?”
    I turned to see that Englehorn had come up behind me. He was looking past me at the girl like I’d seen him look once at a racing yacht.
    “I wouldn’t have the slightest doubt about that, Captain. What do you know about her, anyway?”
    “Not much. She’s got money, no question about that, and plenty of it. So much money that I’m pretty sure she’s not in this for the profit. She paid me in cash and it was all in brand-new thousands.”
    “An idealist, huh?”
    “Maybe. But she never mentioned any politics or causes or nothin’ to me. To tell you the truth, I think she’s in it more for fun than conviction.”
    He shook his head and I knew he was having thoughts about Pat similar to those I’d been having.
    I jerked my thumb toward the poop and said: “I’ll say this: she makes your old tub look like a cruise ship.”
    “She does add a certain element of distinction, I admit.”
    Distinction, indeed, I thought, as the girl stretched and began doing a peculiar series of exercises—not calisthenics or anything like that. Just sitting there, almost motionless, pitting one tawny muscle against another. She barely moved but I could see sweat break out all over her in a glistening shimmer. It made that bronze body look molten.
    “You know,” said the Captain as much to himself as me, “for all of that dynamite in my hold I think that girl out there might be the most dangerous cargo this ship has ever carried.”
    I had to get back to my cabin and make myself a stiff drink. Holy cow, but this was going to be some trip.
    Pat and I ate our meals with the captain and the first mate—a tough mug but honest and absolutely dedicated to Englehorn. His name was Bart and he never opened his mouth but to eat. The rest of us talked about everything but the guns. Pat had the knack of an expert newspaperman in getting people to talk about themselves, not that it was ever very difficult so far as I’ve been concerned. But what amazed me is that she got the usually taciturn Englehorn to open up, Englehorn who normally had little to say about anything that didn’t directly involve whatever matter was immediately at hand, and at that he’d think twice about it. Good old practical level-headed Englehorn. She had him talking about his adventures in the South Seas before and after the Great War and he told her stuff that raised even my jaded hair. Cripes, I thought, I’ve been wasting my time. I should have been making movies about the captain instead of big game hunters and cannibals. Pat couldn’t seem to get enough of it, with no story too harrowing or too gruesome for her. She wrung every last detail from him, licking her pretty lips at each blood-curdling incident as though she had just eaten a liqueur-filled chocolate. I tell you, it kind of gave me the creeps.
    Then she got onto me about poor old Kong and, of course, I was off like Billy Sunday in a tent full of sinners. But I’d told the story so many times that it hardly occupied my mind very much—so with the unoccupied part I was able to watch Pat pretty closely. I thought I figured her out just then: she was a thrill junky. Hearing about things that guys like the captain and I have done got her windows all steamy. An armchair adventuress, I figured, getting her kicks second-hand.
    Which just goes to show how little I knew.
    What it took me almost all the way to San Serif to realize is that for all of our talking, I’d learned virtually nothing at all about Patricia Wildman. She had a slippery way of seeming to have answered a question directly while actually changing the subject entirely. I’ll give you an example.
    “What do you do back in New York?” I’d asked her once.
    “Oh, I don’t live in New York all the time,” she replied. “I run a little business there, but it doesn’t require much from me. It pretty much looks after itself.”
    “Really? And what might that be?”
    “It’s almost more of a hobby that gives me