CHAPTER XXXII

THE TRAGEDY

Nayland Smith leaned against the edge of the dressing-table, attired
in pyjamas. The little stateroom was hazy with smoke, and my friend
gripped the charred briar between his teeth and watched the blue-gray
clouds arising from the bowl, in an abstracted way. I knew that he was
thinking hard, and from the fact that he had exhibited no surprise
when I had related to him the particular's of the attack upon
Karamaneh I judged that he had half anticipated something of the kind.
Suddenly he stood up, staring at me fixedly.

"Your tact has saved the situation, Petrie," he snapped. "It failed
you momentarily, though, when you proposed to me just now that we
should muster the lascars for inspection. Our game is to pretend that
we know nothing--that we believe Karamaneh to have had a bad dream."

"But, Smith," I began--

"It would be useless, Petrie," he interrupted me. "You cannot suppose
that I overlooked the possibility of some creature of the doctor's
being among the lascars. I can assure you that not one of them answers
to the description of the midnight assailant. From the girl's account
we have to look (discarding the idea of a revivified mummy) for a man
of unusual height--and there's no lascar of unusual height on board;
and from the visible evidence, that he entered the stateroom through