“That was exactly what he said, Miss Lee.  The captain came down just then, and ordered Mr. Singleton on deck.  I think he went, for I did not hear his voice again.  I thought, from the sounds, that Mr. Vail and the captain were trying to get Mr. Turner to his room.”

Mrs. Johns had been sitting back, her eyes shut, holding a bottle of salts to her nose.  Now she looked up.

“My dear woman,” she said, “are you trying to tell us that we slept through all that?”

“If you did not hear it, you must have slept,” the stewardess persisted obstinately.  “The door into the main cabin was closed.  Karen came down just after.  She was frightened.  She said the first mate was on deck, in a terrible humor; and that Charlie Jones, who was at the wheel, had appealed to Burns not to leave him there—­ that trouble was coming.  That must have been at half-past twelve.  The bell struck as she put out the light.  We both went to sleep then, until Mrs. Turner’s ringing for Karen roused us.”

“But I did not ring for Karen.”

The woman stared at Mrs. Turner.

“But the bell rang, Mrs. Turner.  Karen got up at once and, turning on the light, looked at the clock.  ‘What do you think of that?’ she said.  ‘Ten minutes to three, and I’d just got to sleep!’ I growled about the light, and she put it out, after she had thrown on a wrapper.  The room was dark when she opened the door.  There was a little light in the chart-room, from the binnacle lantern.  The door at the top of the companionway was always closed at night; the light came through the window near the wheel.”

She had kept up very well to this point, telling her story calmly and keeping her voice down.  But when she reached the actual killing of the Danish maid, she went to pieces.  She took to shivering violently, and her pulse, under my fingers, was small and rapid.  I mixed some aromatic spirits with water and gave it to her, and we waited until she could go on.

For the first time, then, I realized that I was clad only in shirt and trousers, with a handkerchief around my head where the accident in the hold had left me with a nasty cut.  My bare feet were thrust into down-at-the-heel slippers.  I saw Miss Lee’s eyes on me, and colored.

“I had forgotten,” I said uncomfortably.  “I’ll have time to find my coat while she is recovering.  I have been so occupied—­”

“Don’t be a fool,” Mrs. Johns said brusquely.  “No one cares how you look.  We only thank Heaven you are alive to look after us.  Do you know what we have been doing, locked in down here?  We have been—­”

“Please, Adele!” said Elsa Lee.  And Mrs. Johns, shrugging her shoulders, went back to her salts.

The rest of the story we got slowly.  Briefly, it was this.  Karen, having made her protest at being called at such an hour, had put on a wrapper and pinned up her hair.  The light was on.  The stewardess said she heard a curious chopping sound in the main cabin, followed by a fall, and called Karen’s attention to it.  The maid, impatient and drowsy, had said it was probably Mr. Turner falling over something, and that she hoped she would not meet him.  Once or twice, when he had been drinking, he had made overtures to her, and she detested him.