For a trip that had begun with such rich promise of the unusual, my
voyage on the _Re d'Italia_ proved a gratifying anticlimax during its
first few days. The weather was bad. We plowed forward monotonously,
flagless, running between dark-gray water and a lowering, leaden sky.
Screws throbbed, timbers creaked, and dishes crashed as the Gulf Stream
took us, and great waves reared themselves round us like myriads of
threatening Alps.

After that first night the girl kept discreetly to her stateroom. I was
relieved; but I thought of her a good deal. I had little else to do.
Pacing a drunken deck and smoking, I wove unsatisfactory theories,
asking myself what was her need of secrecy, what the item she wanted
hidden, what the errand that had made her sail on the vessel a week
after the spectacular torpedoing of a sister-ship? Did she know this Van
Blarcom or did she merely dread any notice? And above all, who was the
man and had he been watching when I tossed that wretched extra across
the rail?

I saw something of him, of course, as time went on. Naturally we four
bold spirits, the ubiquitous McGuntrie, Van Blarcom, the young reservist
Pietro Ricci,--a very good sort of fellow,--and I were herded together
beyond escape. Also, a foursome at bridge seemed divinely indicated by
our number, and to avert a sheer paralysis of ennui we formed the habit
of winning each other's money at that game.

As we played I studied Van Blarcom, but without results. It was
ruffling; I should have absorbed in so much intercourse a fairly
definite impression of his personality, profession, and social grade.
But he was baffling; reticent, but self-assured, authoritative even,
and, in a quiet way, watchful. He smoked a good cigar, mixed a good