Phinuit finished his drink.  “I’ll say it was a gay young party.  The next time I feel the call to crime, believe me!  I’m going out and snatch nursing bottles from kids asleep in their prams....  But they must be asleep.”

Monk lifted himself by sections from his chair.

“It was a good yarn first time I heard it,” he mused aloud.  “But now, I notice, even the Sybarite is getting restless.”

In the course of Phinuit’s narrative the black disks of night framed by the polished brass circles of the stern ports had faded out into dusky violet, then into a lighter lilac, finally into a warm yet tender blue.  Now the main deck overhead was a sounding-board for thumps and rustle of many hurried feet.

“Pilot come aboard, you think?” Phinuit enquired; and added, as Monk nodded and cast about for the visored white cap of his office:  “Didn’t know pilots were such early birds.”

“They’re not, as a rule.  But if you treat ’em right, they’ll listen to reason.”

The captain graphically rubbed a thumb over two fingers, donned his cap, buttoned up his tunic, and strode forth with an impressive gait.

“Still wakeful?” Phinuit hinted hopefully.

“And shall be till we drop the pilot, thanks.”

“If I hadn’t seen de Lorgnes make that safe sit up and speak, and didn’t know you were his master, I’d be tempted to bat an eye or two.  However....”  Phinuit sighed despondently.  “What can I do now to entertain you, dear sir?”

“You might have pity on my benighted curiosity....”

“Meaning this outfit?” Lanyard assented, and Phinuit deliberated over the question.  “I don’t know as I ought in the absence of my esteemed associates....  But what’s bothering you most?”

“I have seen something of the world, monsieur, and as you are aware not a little of the underside of it; but never have I met with a combination of such peculiar elements as this possesses.  Regard it, if you will, from my view-point, that of an outsider, for one moment.”

Phinuit grinned.  “It must give you furiously to think—­as you’d say.”

“But assuredly!  Take, for example, yourself, a man of unusual intelligence, such as one is not accustomed to find lending himself to the schemes of ordinary criminals.”

“But you have just admitted that we’re anything but ordinary.”

“Then Mademoiselle Delorme.  One knows what the world knows of her, that she has for many years meddled with high affairs, that she had been for many years more a sort of queen of the demi-monde of Paris; but now you tell me she has stopped to profit by association with a professional burglar.”

“Profit?  I’ll say she did.  According to my information, it was she who mapped out the campaigns for de Lorgnes; she was G.H.Q. and he merely the high private in the front line trenches; with this difference, that in this instance G.H.Q. was perfectly willing to let the man at the front cop all the glory....  She took the cash and let the credit go, nor heeded rumblings of the distant drum!”