The cabin steward pushed open the door and came in without knocking. He was young and looked tough, with a meaty face, green eyes in which there was no expression whatever, and shoulders that strained at the white jacket. Brutal hands with a number of broken knuckles held a tray containing ice and a pitcher. ‘Where you want it?’ he asked.

‘On the desk,’ Goddard said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Rafferty.’

‘And where are you from, Rafferty?’

‘Oakland. Or maybe it was Pittsburgh.’

It’s done to death, Goddard thought. If he were trying out for the young storm trooper or the motorcycle hoodlum I’d turn him down as a cliché. Rafferty put down the tray and asked, with just the right shade of insolence, ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know,’ Goddard said. ‘But in Oakland or maybe it was Pittsburgh, somebody probably told you about pushing open doors without knocking.’

‘I’ll try to remember that, Mr. Goddard, sir. I’ll try real hard.’

‘I would, Rafferty,’ Goddard said pleasantly. ‘Inevitably in this vale of tears you’ll run across some mean son of a bitch who’ll dump you on your stupid ass the second time you do it.’

There was the merest flicker of surprise at this unusual reaction from the square world; then the turntable started again and the needle dropped back into the groove. ‘How about that?’ Rafferty said. He went out.

Goddard mixed a pitcher of martinis, for the second time today a little disgusted with himself. But maybe he was simply becoming aware of people again and had a tendency to overreact, the way sensation is exaggerated in a part of the body that has been numb for a long time. He poured a drink over ice and went out into the passageway. He remembered the dining saloon was aft, next to Barset’s quarters, so the lounge should be forward. There was a thwartships passageway here with doors opening onto the deck, port and starboard, and a wide double door into the lounge. He looked in.

There was a long settee across the forward end with portholes above it looking out over the forward well-deck, several armchairs, a couple of anchored bridge tables, and some bookshelves and a sideboard. A blonde woman in a sleeveless print dress was standing with her back to him, one knee on the settee as she looked out an open porthole. She was bare-legged and wore gilt sandals, and her arms and legs were tanned. ‘Mrs. Brooke?’ he asked.

She turned. He was conscious of a slender, composed face with high cheekbones and just faintly slanted blue eyes. The sailors were right, of course; she was pretty, but it was the impression of poise that interested him more. She smiled at him, the eyes cool and supremely self-possessed. ‘Yes. How do you do, Mr. Goddard.’

‘Nobody ever saved my life before,’ he said, ‘except possibly a few people with iron self-control who didn’t kill me, so I’m not sure of the protocol.’

‘Well, I didn’t really save your life. I just happened—’

‘Mrs. Brooke, there were witnesses, so there’s no way you can weasel out of it. Cop out, and throw yourself on the mercy of the court.’ He indicated the glass. ‘Do you drink?’

‘We-e-ell, not to excess,’ she said gravely. ‘But I do have a small one now and then with motion-picture producers I meet floating around on rafts.’

‘I’d say you still had it under control. So if that includes ex-motion-picture producers, how about a martini?’

‘Thank you,’ she said. He went back to his cabin and brought out the pitcher and another glass.

He poured her drink, and they sat down at one of the bridge tables. ‘There are certain biographical data,’ he said, ‘that we require here in the Central Bureau of Heroine Identification.’

‘It’s confidential, of course?’

‘Oh, absolutely. It’s processed by our computer complex buried under Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and purely benevolent in aim because it protects you from annoyances like privacy or forgetting to report all your income. Now, all I know about you is that you’re blonde, very attractive, probably of Scandinavian descent, you hate airplanes, and you have insomnia and twenty/ twenty vision. What kind of file is that?’

‘Flattering,’ she said. ‘And largely inaccurate. For one thing, I don’t hate airplanes.’

Oh, don’t be frightened, Mrs. Brooke,’ he assured her. ‘You can hate airplanes all you like, as long as you don’t start questioning the divinity of the automobile.’

She smiled. ‘But I really don’t. It’s just that I like ships better. Also, I work for a steamship company that is agent for the Hayworth Line in Lima. And