The conference below lasted perhaps an hour.  At the end of that time the quarantine officer came up and shouted a direction from below, as a result of which the jolly-boat was cut loose, and, towed by the tug, taken to the quarantine station.  There was an argument, I believe, between Turner and the officer, as to allowing us to proceed up the river without waiting for the police.  Turner prevailed, however, and, from the time we hoisted the yellow flag, we were on our way to the city, a tug panting beside us, urging the broad and comfortable lines of the old cargo boat to a semblance of speed.

The quarantine officer, a dapper little man, remained on the boat, and busied himself officiously, getting the names of the men, peering at Singleton through his barred window, and expressing disappointment at my lack of foresight in having the bloodstains cleared away.

“Every stain is a clue, my man, to the trained eye,” he chirruped.  “With an axe, too!  What a brutal method!  Brutal!  Where is the axe?”

“Gone,” I said patiently.  “It was stolen out of the captain’s cabin.”

He eyed me over his glasses.

“That’s very strange,” he commented.  “No stains, no axe!  You fellows have been mighty careful to destroy the evidence, haven’t you?”

All that long day we made our deliberate progress up the river.  The luggage from the after house was carried up on deck by Adams and Clarke, and stood waiting for the customhouse.

Turner, his hands behind him, paced the deck hour by hour, his heavy face colorless.  His wife, dark, repressed, with a look of being always on guard, watched him furtively.  Mrs. Johns, dressed in black, talked to the doctor; and, from the notes he made, I knew she was telling the story of the tragedy.  And here, there, and everywhere, efficient, normal, and so lovely that it hurt me to look at her, was Elsa.  Williams, the butler, had emerged from his chrysalis of fright, and was ostentatiously looking after the family’s comfort.  No clearer indication could have been given of the new status of affairs than his changed attitude toward me.  He came up to me, early in the afternoon, and demanded that I wash down the deck before the women came up.

I smiled down at him cheerfully.

“Williams,” I said, “you are a coward—­a mean, white-livered coward.  You have skulked in the after house, behind women, when there was man’s work to do.  If I wash that deck, it will be with you as a mop.”

He blustered something about speaking to Mr. Turner and seeing that I did the work I was brought on board to do, and, seeing Turner’s eye on us, finished his speech with an ugly epithet.  My nerves were strained to the utmost:  lack of sleep and food had done their work.  I was no longer in command of the Ella; I was a common sailor, ready to vent my spleen through my fists.

I knocked him down with my open hand.