. The--er--it sha'n't stop on deck. That would be
to keep Jonah under our eyes. I've thought of a place where we can
ignore it till to-morrow, when we'll land it as early as we can at St.
Heliers. I'm afraid the local authorities will want to tie us up in a
lot of red tape. But the worst will be to catechize us as if we were
witnesses in court. Meanwhile, let's forget the whole affair."

"Righto!" promptly exclaimed all three of the younger guests; but Mr.
Pollen was not thus to be deprived of his morbid morsel.

"Certainly," he agreed. "But before the subject is shelved, _where_ is
the 'place' you speak of? I mean, where is the coffin to rest throughout
the night?"

Roger gave a grim laugh, and looked obstinate. "I'll tell you this
much," he said. "None of you'll have it for a near neighbour, so none of
you need worry."

After that, even Mr. Pollen could not persist. We disposed of an
enormous tea, after the excitement, and then some of us played bridge.
When we separated, however, to pace the deck--two by two, for a
"constitutional" before dinner--one could see by the absorbed expression
on faces, and guess by the low-toned voices, what each pair discussed.

My companion, Lord Glencathra, thought that Somebody must have died on
Some Ship, and been thrown overboard. But I argued that this could
hardly be, because--surely--bodies buried at sea were not put into
coffins, were they? I had heard that the custom was to sew them up in
sailcloth or something, and weight them well. Besides, there was the
broken rope tied round the coffin, which seemed to show that it had been
tethered, and got loose--in the storm, perhaps. How did Lord Glencathra
account for that fact? He couldn't account for it. Nor could any one
else.

CHAPTER V

WHAT I FOUND IN MY CABIN

I did all I could to make dinner a lively meal, and with iced Pommery of
a particularly good year as my aide-de-camp, superficially at least I
succeeded. But whenever there was an instant's lull in the conversation,
I felt that everyone was asking him or herself, "_Where_ is the coffin?"

The plan had been to have a little moonlight fox-trotting and jazzing on
deck; but with that Black Thing hidden somewhere on board, we confined
ourselves to more bridge and star-gazing, according to taste. I, as
professional Brightener, nobly kept Mr. Pollen out of everybody's way by
annexing him for a stroll. This deserved the name of a double
brightening act, for I bri