"Look here, Mr. Crawshay," he protested, "supposing you are right, and
that you are on the track of a conspiracy, how do you account for a
physician from the finest hospital in New York and one of the
best-known young ladies in America being mixed up in it?"

Crawshay acknowledged the difficulties of the supposition.

"As regards the physician," he said thoughtfully, "I must confess that
I am without information concerning him, a fact which increases my
suspicion of Robins, for I should have had his _dossier_, and also
that of the man Phillips, by wireless twenty-four hours ago."

"What about Miss Beverley then?" the captain enquired. "Her family is
not only one of the oldest in America, but they are real Puritan,
Anglo-Saxon stock, white through and through. She has a dozen
relatives in Congress, who have all been working for war with Germany
for the last two years. She also has, as she told me herself, a
brother and four cousins fighting on the French front--the brother in
the Canadian Flying Corps, and the cousins in the English Army."

"There I must confess that you have me," Crawshay admitted. "What you
say is perfectly true. That is one of the mysteries. No plot would be
worth solving, you know, if it hadn't a few mysteries in it."

"If you will allow me a word, Mr. Crawshay," the purser intervened, "I
think you will have to leave Doctor Gant and his patient and Miss
Beverley out of your speculations. I have our own ship doctor's word
for it that Mr. Phillips' condition is exactly as has been stated. Mr.
Jocelyn Thew may or may not be a suspicious character. Anything you