Chapter XLVI: The Blue Bottle

What did he mean? The mystery of his disappearance was more intensified than ever.

His first act was to carry the note to the captain’s cabin. That officer was awake and was standing at the door of his handsome quarters in pyjamas and slippers, a big pipe clenched between his teeth. He took the letter from Bill’s hand and read it.

“I’m very much relieved,” he said, “but I wish your Scotland Yard men would choose some other place for their disappearing tricks than my ship!”

“Not _my_ Scotland Yard men,” corrected Bill.

When he took the news to Betty, which he did as soon as she was up on deck, she was undisguisedly delighted.

“I only now realise how much I’ve worried about poor Mr. Bullott,” she said. “But where is he, Billy?”

Now, if there was one word in the language which Bill Holbrook hated worse than any other, it was Billy. To him it meant goats and tin cans and French railway tickets, but now there flashed upon him the realisation that that despised word was one of the sweetest in the English language, and, but for the girl’s obvious embarrassment, he would have mentioned his conversion.

Looking past her, he saw Clive Lowbridge reclining in a deck chair, his hands clasped together under his chin, his grave eyes fixed upon them, and his conscience smote him--but not very hard.

Later, Bill thought it was typical of the young man that he should come so straight to a question which others might have gone about with greater circumspection. It happened after lunch (how definitely are shipboard days divided by the meal hours!) and he was in the library, changing a book for Betty, when Clive lounged lazily across to him, dropped his hand on his shoulder.

“Come and have a drink,” he said, “a soft drink,” he added unnecessarily, and when they were seated and the steward had taken the order: “Holbrook, you are very keen on Miss Stone, aren’t you?”

Bill flushed. Even then he did not know whether it was not sacrilege to admit his affection.

“I like her very much,” he said awkwardly. “I don’t know whether----”

“You’re keen on her, and she’s keen on you. I hope so, at any rate. I’ll tell you something--” he bit off the end of a cigar and lit it before he continued--“you are going to get a prize which I should consider the highest any man could take from the hands of fortune.”

“_I’m_ going to get a prize! Why, Lord Lowbridge, I think you’re going rather fast, aren’t you? There is no question about Miss Carew--Stone--being fond of me. She likes me, I hope, but that is all.”

The grave eyes were surveying him steadily.

“It is a hateful thing to say, but I hope you’re right. She’s wonderful--you don’t know how wonderful! I’ve known her so many years longer than you. I knew her when she was a little girl, so high! And if things are as I--am afraid, then indeed you are a lucky man.”

Bill looked round guiltily, as though expecting to find the girl at his elbow, ready to deny with every manifestation of anger that she could have so far forgotten what was due to her beauty, her grace and all the holy femininity of her (femininity being particularly holy to Bill at that moment) that she had any thought of him except as she perhaps might think of the steward or some other insignificant person.

“I guess I can’t even listen to a provisional congratulation,” he said, laughing. “Has this discovery about Laffin made any difference to your position, Lord Lowbridge? I mean, the transference of properties which he effected by his forgeries?”

Lowbridge shook his head.

“I knew I hadn’t got them,” he said tersely. “That they were stolen from me by friend Laffin doesn’t make the case any worse than if they had been gambled from me by my poor uncle. Even now I cannot believe that he was poisoned. Bullott must have made a colossal blunder.”

“I hardly think so,” said Bill quietly; “Bullott isn’t that kind.”

Clive Lowbridge shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know what kind he is,” he said shortly. “I confess I’m not very much impressed by this theatrical disappearance of his.”

For the life of him Bill could not defend his friend, for Bullott’s action had struck him in very much the same way as Clive Lowbridge was now describing.

“Have you handed in your gun?” asked Lowbridge with a smile. “I have an antiquated revolver, which is now in the purser’s care. It is surprising the number of pistols that were on board; almost everybody seems to have come on the ship prepared to repel invaders!”

Bill explained that he had not been troubled by the order. The purser had shown him his new armoury in glee that morning. Row after row of automatics, revolvers and strange German pistols which had come to him. Each had a label with the owner’s name and contemplated address in the United States.

He slept that Monday afternoon, and awoke to find that the weather had changed. Heavy rain was falling, and a moderate sea was running, without greatly affecting the comfort of the _Escorial’s_ passengers.

He went down to dinner with a lighter heart than he had gone on the previous night. If, somewhere on the ship, was Dr. Laffin, somewhere else was the mysterious Bullott, watching and waiting.

When he went below that night to change, his steward waylaid him.

“I’m not much of a detective myself,” said the man, a little self-consciously, “but I’m what you might describe as an observer, sir; and I want to ask you whether you took out the stopper of your water-bottle before you went down to dinner?”

The water-bottles in the cabins were held in a bracket and protected from dust by a small wooden stopper attached to a chain which was fastened to the washstand.

“No, I’m sure I didn’t,” said Bill.

“And _I’m_ sure you didn’t,” said the steward. “Before I left your cabin to-night and put everything tidy, I distinctly remember putting in the stopper. When I came back late to-night, the stopper was out.”

“I haven’t been to the cabin between dinner and now,” Bill assured him, and went back with him to view the mysterious carafe.

Undoubtedly the cork was out. Bill lifted the bottle to the light. He had a quality, which is well known to oculists, the gift of colour distinction. To most people, white and something which is nearly white are indistinguishable. To Bill the difference was very distinct. As he held the bottle to the light, he saw that it was no longer colourless. There was the faintest blue tint to it--so faint that the steward failed to see it, and practically suggested that Bill was imagining things.

“Take that to the doctor as it is. I don’t suppose you’ve got a rat on board, but if there is anything living that you can try this dope on, do so.”

It was the colour he had seen in the glass of water from which the cat had drunk.