Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 5, No. 19, November 1944

Cliff crossed the sitting-room and pushed the door wide, disclosing a bedroom containing two expensive wardrobe trunks.

“We can look around in there later,” he told Elsa. “Right now I want to see about that powder. I don’t imagine the opened sample boxes will show much. Let’s have a look at this stack of unopened ones first.”

Feverishly they set to work opening boxes and emptying powder. At one end of the gold cloth a small pile of uncut diamonds began to grow.

There were thirty diamonds in the pile, and nearly a hundred empty boxes on the floor, when Elsa said: “I think that’s all.”

She straightened up from the table. As she did so Cliff caught the expression on her face. Forewarned by her dawning look of terror he cautiously turned around.

Jean Martone, slender as a girl, in striped silk pajamas, was leaning against the side of the bedroom door. He was smiling, but the smile stopped short of his eyes. In his right hand, resting nonchalantly against his hip, was an automatic pistol.

There was a quality about the effeminate Frenchman which was implacable as death itself. His utter lack of excitement, the skillful ease with which he nursed the automatic, were forcible proofs that Jean Martone was a killer. Cliff decided without hesitation that any rash move was out of the question. Martone would shoot, accurately and fast.

“Ah! The so charming mademoiselle who so persistently uses the wrong shade of powder!” Martone’s gaze moved languidly from Elsa to Cliff. “I am force’ to ask your help, Mademoiselle. You will take the cords from the window curtains and tie this impetuous monsieur, who has wasted ten thousand francs’ worth of my powder.”

“It’s a good bluff, Martone, but I already know you.” Cliff measured his chances. “I know that you and Dorette Maupin were working together. I know you quarreled with her — and that she pushed you overboard tonight. I know how you sneaked out of the infirmary and killed her less than two hours ago.”

“Your imagination, Monsieur, it is sublime!” Martone’s slim body was erect in the doorway. “You will hurry Mademoiselle.” Moving slowly, as though in a daze, Elsa began to remove the cords from the heavy silk portieres at the windows.

“You took the plate-glass top from a table in the infirmary,” Cliff went on flatly. “Then, when the orderly went to his supper, you sneaked out onto the deserted promenade deck. Leaning over the rail you lowered something attached to a string, and let it tap against the porthole of 115. When Dorette Maupin, wakeful and upset, reached for it, you pulled it away. Then she did what you hoped for — stuck her head out of the porthole to see what was going on. It wasn’t hard, Martone, to drop that heavy glass table-top down on the back of her neck!”

Elsa was coming toward him, the heavy cords dangling from her hand. “Hold out your wrists, Monsieur,” said Martone, without a change of voice.

Cliff stood rigid, his back toward the Frenchman. Elsa’s slim hand was creeping under his coat. Slowly he extended his wrists, and at the same moment Martone guessed what the girl was up to.

Martone’s automatic cracked, but its sound was lost in the blast of Cliff’s own .38 which Elsa snatched from under Cliff’s arm and fired twice. When he swung around M. Martone was dead on the floor with a bullet between his eyes.

“You know,” said Elsa, “it’s a crying shame to waste all that beautiful powder. I think I’ll collect it and take it home with me. I’ll never have to buy any more.”

Cliff divided his time the following day between phoning the New York and Paris police, messing about with test tubes in Dr. Knott’s private laboratory, and arranging a place on the top deck where he and Elsa could spend a quiet evening.

They were stretched out in deck chairs in a sheltered spot between two lifeboats when Cliff reached out through the darkness and secured her slim hand. “This is one of the privileges of a ship’s detective,” he said with a note of affection.

“Holding the passengers’ hands?”

“No.” He gave a quick laugh. “Using the top deck, forbidden to passengers.”

She offered no resistance. “You’re a handsome devil, Cliff Chandler — and a smart one. I still don’t see how you solved the way Dorette was killed.”

“That was easy,” he assured her, “compared to some of the things I’ve had to work out today.”

“Today?”

“Listen, Elsa. The purser appraised those diamonds we found last night. The duty on the entire lot is only $2,500.”

For a moment he was silent, then he said, “Don’t you think $2,500 is a small amount to force Martone into a murder?”

“I thought they quarreled — and he killed her because she pushed him overboard.”

“I changed my mind today. Mar-tone fell overboard, Elsa — fell overboard in an attempt he made to push Dorette into the sea. She was a strong girl, on guard, and too quick for him. His stake was high — a quarter of a million dollars—”

“You found more gems?”