“Be tranquil, mademoiselle,” Monk begged.  “What you ask is already done.  I gave the orders you ask as soon as I received your telegram, this morning.  You need not fear that even a rat has found his way aboard since then, or can before we sail, without my knowledge.”

“Thank God!” Liane breathed—­and instantly found a new question to fret about.  “But your men, Captain Monk—­your officers and crew—­can you be sure of them?”

“Absolutely.”

“You haven’t signed on any new men here in Cherbourg?” Lanyard asked.

Monk worked his eyebrows to signify that the question was ridiculous.  “No such fool, thanks,” he added.

“Yet they may have been corrupted while here in port,” Liane insisted.

“No fear.”

“That is what I would have said of my maid and footman, twenty-four hours ago.  Yet I now know better.”

“I tell you only what I know, mademoiselle.  If any of my officers and crew have been tampered with, I don’t know anything about it, and can’t and won’t until the truth comes out.”

“And you sit there calmly to tell me that!” Liane rolled her lovely eyes in appeal to the deck beams overhead.  “But you are impossible!”

“But, my dear lady,” Monk protested, “I am perfectly willing to go into hysterics if you think it will do any good.  As it happens, I don’t.  I haven’t been idle or fatuous in that matter, I have taken every possible precaution against miscarriage of our plans.  If anything goes wrong now, it can’t be charged to my discredit.”

“It will be an act of God,” Phinuit declared:  “one of the unavoidable risks of the business.”

“The business!” Liane echoed with scorn.  “I assure you I wish I were well out of ’the business’!”

“And so say we all of us,” Phinuit assured her patiently; and Monk intoned a fervent “Amen!”

“But who is Dupont?” Lanyard reiterated stubbornly.

“An Apache, monsieur,” Liane responded sulkily—­“a leader of Apaches.”

“Thank you for nothing.”

“Patience:  I am telling you all I know.  I recognised him this morning, when you were struggling with him.  His name is Popinot.”

“Ah!”

“Why do you say ‘Ah!’ monsieur?”

“There was a Popinot in Paris in my day; they nicknamed him the Prince of the Apaches.  But he was an older man, and died by the guillotine.  This Popinot who calls himself Dupont, then, must be his son.”

“That is true, monsieur.”

“Well, then, if he has inherited his father’s power—!”

“It is not so bad as all that.  I have heard that the elder Popinot was a true prince, in his way, I mean as to his power with the Apaches.  His son is hardly that; he has a following, but new powers were established with his father’s death, and they remain stronger than he.”

“All of which brings us to the second part of my question, Liane:  Why Dupont?”

Liane shrugged and studied her bedizened fingers.  The heavy black brows circumflexed Monk’s eyes, and he drew down the corners of his wide mouth.  Phinuit fixed an amused gaze on a distant corner of the room and chewed his cigar.