“Oh, you shall have your search.”  Monk gave in as one who indulges a childish whim.  “But I can tell you now what we’ll find—­or won’t.”

“Then Heaven help us all!” Liane went swiftly to the door of her room, but there hesitated, looking back in appeal to Lanyard.  “I am afraid....”

“Let me have a look round first.”

And when Lanyard had satisfied himself there was nobody concealed in any part of Liane’s suite, and had been rewarded with a glance of gratitude—­“I shall lock myself in, of course,” the woman said from the threshold—­“and I have my pistol, too.”

“But I assure you,” Monk commented in heavy sarcasm, “our intentions are those of honourable men.”

The door slammed, and the sound of the key turning in the lock followed.  Monk trained the eyebrows into a look of long-suffering patience.

“A glass too much...  Seein’ things!”

“No,” Lanyard voiced shortly his belief; “you are wrong.  Liane saw something.”

“Nobody questions that,” Phinuit yawned.  “What one does question is whether she saw a man or a figment of her imagination—­some effect of the shadows that momentarily suggested a man.”

“Shadows do play queer tricks at night, at sea,” Monk agreed.  “I remember once—­”

“Then let us look the ground over and see if we can make that explanation acceptable to our own intelligences,” Lanyard cut in.

“No harm in that.”

Phinuit fetched a pocket flash-lamp, and the three reconnoitred exhaustively the quarters of the deck in which the apparition had manifested itself to the woman.  By no strain of credulity could the imagination be made to accept the effect of shadows at the designated spot as the shape of somebody standing there.  On the other hand, when Phinuit obligingly posed himself between the mouth of the companionway and the skylight, it had to be admitted that the glow from either side provided fairly good cover for one who might wish to linger there, observing and unobserved.

“Still, I don’t believe she saw anything,” Monk persisted—­“a phantom Popinot, if anything.”

“But wait.  What is it we have here?”

Lanyard, scrutinising the deck with the flashlamp, stooped, picked up something, and offered it on an outspread palm upon which he trained the clear electric beam.

“Cigarette stub?” Monk said, and sniffed.  “That’s a famous find!”

“A cigarette manufactured by the French Regie.”

“And well stepped on, too,” Phinuit observed.  “Well, what about it?”

“Who that uses this part of the deck would be apt to insult his palate with such a cigarette?  No one of us—­hardly any one of the officers or stewards.”

“Some deck-hand might have sneaked aft for a look-see, expecting to find the quarterdeck deserted at this hour.”

“Even ordinary seamen avoid, when they can, what the Regie sells under the name of tobacco.  Nor is it likely such a one would risk the consequences of defying Captain Monk’s celebrated discipline.”