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ve seen you together. We're not supposed to tell everyone."
"But he was perfectly well an hour ago. I was talking to him."
"1 know you were; I saw you. The illness must have come on him directly you left him terrible bad he was. I'm told the doctor thought he was dying bad attack of heart disease or something like that. And now he doesn't know what it is so I hear. Yes, sir, coming."
Someone else had called that steward; he moved off to wait on him, leaving me in a cheerful state. Not much more than an hour ago I had been talking to Mr. Thompson, who was to all appearances a great strong man, as fit and well as ever he was in his life. Directly I had left him, according to the steward, he was taken by a mysterious illness and was on the point of death and apparently still was. What did it mean? I had gone from him to my cabin, to find that woman playing tricks with Sadie Lawrence's berth. She possibly had reason to suspect my connection with Mr. Thompson. Could she, or her friends, have had a hand in striking him down? How had they done it?
What did it matter how they had done it if they had? The bare possibility was a terrible one to contemplate. It suggested what was waiting for me. So resolved were they to have me wholly at their mercy that they had disposed of the only being who could have protected me against them. There should be no one willing and able to lift a finger on my behalf.
I got up from the table and went on deck tumbled on deck would be perhaps the better way of putting it, because my legs seemed to be tottering and my feet did as they liked. Directly I got into the open air a voice addressed me.
"Well, old dear, how goes it? Done yourself a treat? Got room for any more? Have a tiddly?"
It was Sadie Lawrence. She was seated at one of those expanding tables, with a tray on top, which the stewards were always willing to place on deck for people who for any reason preferred to have their food on deck. An undesirable-looking male person was her compan
