“Doubtless,” I reflected grimly.  But I had to see the thing through now.  “That doesn’t matter at all,” I assured her civilly through clenched teeth.

She came closer—­so close that her fur coat brushed me, and her breath touched my cheek; her eyes, like gray stars now that they were less anxious, went to my head a little, I suppose.  Oh, yes, she was lovely.  Of course that was a factor.  If she had been past her first youth and skimpy as to hair, and dowdy, I don’t pretend that I should ever have mixed myself up in the preposterous coil.

“This paper,” she whispered, holding out the sheet, “has something in it.  It is not about me; it is not even true.  But if it stays aboard the ship,—­if some one sees it, it may make trouble.  Oh, you see how it sounds; I knew you would think me mad!”

“Not in the least.”  What an absurd rigmarole she was uttering!  Yet such was the spell of her eyes, her voice, her nearness that I merely felt like saying, “Tell me some more.”

“I can’t destroy it myself,” she went on anxiously.  “He—­they—­mustn’t see me do anything that might lead them to—­to guess.  But no one will think of you, nobody will be watching you; so by and by will you weight the paper with something heavy and drop it across the rail?”

My head was whirling, but a graven image might have envied me my impassivity.  I bowed.  “I shall be delighted,” I announced banally, “to do as you say.”

Her face flushed to a warm wild-rose tint as she heard me promise it, and her red lips, parting, took on a tremulous smile.

“Thank you,” she murmured in frank gratitude.  “I thought—­I knew you would help me!” Then she was gone.

My trance broken I woke to hear myself softly swearing.  I consigned myself to my proper home, an asylum; I wished the girl at Timbuktu, Kamchatka, Land’s End—­anywhere except on this ship.  As I had told the agent of the Phillipson Rifles, I am no boy.  One can scarcely knock about the world for thirty years without gaining some of its wisdom; and of all the appropriate truisms I spared myself not one.

Resentfully I reminded myself that mysteries were suspicious, that honest people seldom had need of secrecy, that idiots who, like me, consented to act blindfold would probably repent their blindness in sackcloth and ashes before long.  But what use were these sage reflections?  I had given my word to her.  I was in for the consequences, however unpleasant they proved.

Without further mental parley I went down to my cabin, where I routed out from among my traps a bronze paper-weight as heavy as lead.  Wrapping the mysterious sheet about it, I brought the package back on deck.  There was not a soul in sight; it was a propitious hour.

To right and to left the coast lights were slipping past, making golden paths on the black water as our tug pulled us out to sea.  The reservists down below were singing “Va fuori, o stranier!” I dropped my package overboard, watched it vanish, and turned to behold the sphinx-like Van Blarcom, sprung up as if by magic, regarding me placidly from the shelter of the smoking-room door.