III

A day later Mr. Snyder sat in his office reading a typewritten report.
It appeared to be of a humorous nature, for, as he read, chuckles
escaped him. Finishing the last sheet he threw his head back and
laughed heartily. The manuscript had not been intended by its author
for a humorous effort. What Mr. Snyder had been reading was the first
of Elliott Oakes' reports from the Excelsior. It read as follows:

I am sorry to be unable to report any real progress. I have
formed several theories which I will put forward later, but at
present I cannot say that I am hopeful.

Directly I arrived here I sought out Mrs. Pickett, explained
who I was, and requested her to furnish me with any further
information which might be of service to me. She is a strange,
silent woman, who impressed me as having very little
intelligence. Your suggestion that I should avail myself of
her assistance seems more curious than ever, now that I have
seen her.

The whole affair seems to me at the moment of writing quite
inexplicable. Assuming that this Captain Gunner was murdered,
there appears to have been no motive for the crime whatsoever.
I have made careful inquiries about him, and find that he was
a man of fifty-five; had spent nearly forty years of his life
at sea, the last dozen in command of his own ship; was of a
somewhat overbearing disposition, though with a fund of rough
humour; had travelled all over the world, and had been an inmate