While we were thanking Erickson, I saw that Whitson had taken the occasion also to thank Mrs. Erickson, with whom he had been talking, just a bit apart from the group.  He made no secret of his attentions, though I thought she was a bit embarrassed by them at such a time.  Indeed, she started rather abruptly toward the group which was now intent on surveying the town, and as she did so, I noted that she had forgotten her hand-bag, which lay on a deck-chair near where they had been sitting.

I picked it up to restore it.  Some uncontrollable curiosity prompted me and I hesitated.  All were still looking at the town.  I opened the bag.  Inside was a little bottle of grayish liquid.  What should I do?  Any moment she or Whitson might turn around.  Hastily I pulled off the cap of my fountain-pen and poured into it some of the liquid, replacing the cork in the bottle and dropping it back into the bag, while I disposed of the cap as best I could without spilling its contents.

Whether either she or any one else had observed me, I was not going to run any chances of being seen.  I called a passing steward.  “Mrs. Erickson forgot her bag,” I said, pointing hastily to it.  “You’ll find her over there with Mr. Whitson.”  Then I mingled in the crowd to watch her.  She did not seem to show any anxiety when she received it.

I lost no time in getting back to Kennedy and telling him what I had found, and a few moments later he made an excuse to go to our state-room, as eager as I was to know what had been in the little bottle.

First he poured out a drop of the liquid from the cap of my fountain-pen in some water.  It did not dissolve.  Successively he tried alcohol, ether, then pepsin.  None of them had any effect on it.  Finally, however, he managed to dissolve it in ammonia.

“Relatively high amount of sulphur,” he muttered, after a few moments more of study.  “Keratin, I believe.”

“A poison?” I asked.

Kennedy shook his head.  “No; harmless.”

“Then what is it for?”

He shrugged his shoulders.  He may have had some half-formed idea, but if he did it was still indefinite and he refused to commit himself.  Instead, he placed the sample in his traveling laboratory, closed and locked it, and, with our luggage, the box was ready to be taken ashore.

Nearly every one had gone ashore by the time we returned to the deck.  Whitson was there yet, talking to the captain, for the shipping at the port interested him.  I wondered whether he, too, might be suspicious of those cases consigned to Erickson and others.  If so, he said nothing of it.

By this time several vessels that looked as if they might be lighters, though fairly large, had pulled up.  It seemed that they had been engaged to carry shipments of goods to the other islands of St. John and St. Croix.

Kennedy seemed eager now to get ashore, and we went, accompanied by Whitson, and after some difficulty established ourselves in a small hotel.