“No, sir.” he hesitated. “Well, not right away. But I thought it a bit funny so I asked him to have a look. He couldn’t see anything.”

“Damn! How long after Mr. Dexter left before he took this look?”

“A minute. Maybe closer on two. Couldn’t be sure, sir.”

“But whatever Mr. Dexter saw, it was aft?”

“Yes, sir.”

I moved out on the wing bridge and looked aft. There was no one to be seen on any of the two decks below. The crew had long finished washing down decks and the passengers were still at breakfast. Nobody there. Nothing of any interest at all to be seen. Even the wireless office was deserted, its door closed and locked. I could see the brass padlock clearly, gleaming and glittering in the morning sun as the Campari pitched slowly, gently, through the ever lengthening swell.

The wireless office! I stood there perfectly rigid for all of three seconds, a candidate, in Ferguson’s eyes, for a strait jacket if ever there had been one, then took off down the companionway the same way as I had come up, three steps at a time. Only a smart piece of braking on my part and a surprisingly nimble bit of dodging on the captain’s prevented a head-on collision at the foot of the companionway. Bullen put into words the thought that was obviously gaining currency around the bridge.

“Have you gone off your bloody rocker, mister?”

“The wireless office, sir,” I said quickly. “Come on.” I was there in a few seconds, Bullen close behind. I tried the padlock, a heavy-duty, double-action Yale, but it was securely locked.

It was then that I noticed a key sticking out from the bottom of the padlock. I twisted it, first one way, then the other, but it was jammed fast. I tried to pull it out and had the same lack of success. I became aware that Bullen was breathing heavily over my shoulder.

“What the devil’s the matter, mister? What’s got into you all of a sudden?” “One moment, sir.” I’d caught sight of Whitehead making his way up to the bridge and beckoned him across. “Get the bo’sun. Tell him to bring a pair of pliers.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll get the pliers”

“I said, ‘Tell the bo’sun to bring them,’“ I said savagely. “Then ask Mr. Peters for the key to this door. Hurry!”

He hurried. You could see he was glad to escape. Bullen said, “Look here, mister…”

“Dexter left the bridge because he saw something funny going on. So Ferguson said. Where else but here, sir?”

“Why here? Why not…”

“Look at that.” I took the padlock in my hand. “That bent key. And everything that’s happened has happened because of here.”

“The window?”

“No good. I’ve looked.” I led him round the corner to the single square of plate glass. “Night curtains are still drawn.”

“Couldn’t we smash the damned thing in?”

“What’s the point? It’s too late now.”

Bullen looked at me queerly but said nothing. Half a minute passed in silence. Bullen was getting more worried every second. I wasn’t. I was as worried as could be already. Jamieson appeared, on his way to the bridge, caught sight of us, made to come towards us, then carried on as Bullen waved him away. And then the bo’sun was there, carrying a pair of heavy insulated pliers in his hand.

“Open this damned door,” Bullen said curtly. Macdonald tried to remove the key with his fingers, failed, and brought the pliers into use. With the first tug of the pliers the key in the lock snapped cleanly in half. “Well,” Bullen said heavily, “That helps.” Macdonald looked at him, at me, then back at the broken key still held in the jaws of the pliers.

“I didn’t even twist it, sir,” He said quietly. “And if that’s a Yale key,” he added with an air of faint distaste, “Then I’m an Englishman.” he handed over the key for inspection. The break showed the grey, rough, porous composition of some base metal. “Homemade, and not very well made at that, either.”

Bullen pocketed the broken key. “Can you get the other bit out?”

“No, sir. Completely jammed.” He fished in his overalls, produced a hacksaw. “Maybe this, sir?”

“Good man.” It took Macdonald three minutes hard work the hasp, unlike the padlock, was made of tempered steel — and then the hacksaw was through. He slid out the padlock, then glanced enquiringly at the captain.

“Come in with us,” Bullen said. There was sweat on his brow. “See that nobody comes near.” He pushed open the door and passed inside; I was on his heels.

We’d found Dexter all right, and we’d found him too late. He had that old-bundle-of-clothes look, that completely relaxed huddled shapelessness that only the dead can achieve; face down, outflung on the corticene flooring, he hardly left standing room for Bullen and myself.

“Shall I get the doctor, sir?” It was Macdonald speaking: He was standing astride the storm sill, and the knuckles of the hand holding the door shone bonily through the tautened skin.

“It’s too late for a doctor now, bo’sun,” Bullen said stonily.

Then his composure broke and he burst out violently: “My god, mister, where’s it all going to end? He’s dead you can see he’s dead. What’s behind what murderous fiend why did they kill him, mister? Why did they have to kill him? Damn it to hell, why did the fiends have to kill him? He was only a kid what real harm did young Dexter ever do anybody?” It said much for Bullen at the moment that the thought never even occurred to him that the dead man was the son of the Chairman and Managing Director of the Blue Mail Line.

That thought would come later.

“He died for the same reason that Benson died,” I said.

“He saw too much.” I kneeled beside him, examined the back and sides of his neck. No marks there at all. I looked up and said, “Can I turn him over, sir?”

“It can’t do any harm now.” Bullen’s normally ruddy face had lost some colour and the lips were clamped in a thin hard line.

I heaved and pulled for a few seconds and managed to get Dexter more or less turned over, half on his shoulders and half on his back. I didn’t waste time checking his breathing or his pulse; when you’ve been shot three times through the middle of the body the breathing and pulse are things of the past. And Dexter’s white uniform shirt, with the three small powder-blackened blood-tinged holes just beneath the breastbone, showed indeed that he had been shot three times: the area covering those holes could have been blotted out by a playing card.

Somebody had made very sure indeed. I rose to my feet, looked from the captain to the bo’sun, then said to Bullen, “We can’t pass this off as a heart attack, sir.”

“They shot him three times,” Bullen said matter-of-factly. “We’re up against someone in the maniac class, sir.” I stared down at Dexter, unable to look away from the face, racked and twisted by his last conscious moment of life, that fleeting moment of tearing agony that had opened the door to death. “Any one of those bullets would have killed him. But whoever killed him killed him three times, someone who likes pressing a trigger, someone who likes seeing bullets thud into a human being, even although that human being is dead already.”

“You seem very cool about this, mister.” Bullen was looking at me with a strange look in his eyes.

“Sure I’m cool.” I showed Bullen my gun. “Show me the man who did this and I’ll give him what he gave Dexter. Exactly the same and to hell with Captain Bullen and the laws of the land. That’s how cool I am.”

“I’m sorry, Johnny.” Then his voice hardened again. “Nobody heard anything. How did nobody hear anything?”

“He had his gun close up to Dexter, maybe jammed right against him. You can see the marks of burnt powder. That would help to deaden the sound. Besides, everything points to this person — those persons — as being professionals. They would have silencers on their guns.”

“I see.” Bullen turned to Macdonald. “Could you get Peters here, bo’sun? At once.”