"
She had recovered much of her composure, enough to enable her to shrug
her disdain of such stupidity.
"I tell you only what my two eyes saw."
"To be sure," Monk agreed with a specious air of being wide open to
conviction. "What became of him, then?"
"You ask me that, knowing that in stress of terror I fainted!"
The eyebrows achieved an effect of studied weariness. "And you saw
nobody, monsieur? And Collison didn't, either?"
Lanyard shook his head to each question. "Still, it is possible----."
Monk cut him short impatiently. "All gammon--all in her eye! No man
bigger than a cockroach could have smuggled himself aboard this yacht
without my being told. I know my ship, I know my men, I know what I'm
talking about."
"Presently," Liane prophesied darkly, "you may be talking about
nothing."
At a loss, Monk muttered: "Don't get you...."
"When you find yourself, some fine morning, with your throat cut in
your sleep, like poor de Lorgnes--or garroted, as I might have been."
"I'm not going to lose any sleep....." Monk began.
"Lose none before you have the vessel searched," Liane pleaded, with a
change of tone.
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