"Quite so. My Company's prepared to buy your interest up."
"I'll put it as definitely as you like. I'll give you £20 to keep your eye on these men, and say nothing about what I've told you, but just watch. If you catch Cranze so clearly trying it on that the Courts give a conviction, the Company will pay you £200."
"My Company will find it a lot cheaper than paying out £20,000, and that's what Hamilton's insured for."
"Phew! I didn't know we were dealing with such big figures. Well, Mr. Cranze has got his inducements to murder the man, anyway."
"I told you that from the first. Now, Captain, are you going to take my check for that preliminary £20?"
"Hand it over," said Kettle. "I see no objections. And you may as well give me a bit of a letter about the balance."
"I'll do both," said Lupton, and took out his stylograph, and called a waiter to bring him hotel writing paper.
Now Captain Owen Kettle, once he had taken up this piece of employment, entered into it with a kind of chastened joy. The Life Insurance Company's agent had rather sneered at ship-captains as a class (so he considered), and though the man did his best to be outwardly civil, it was plain that he considered a mob of passengers the intellectual superiors of any master mariner. So Kettle intended to prove himself the "complete detective" out of sheer _esprit de corps_.
As he had surmised, Messrs. Hamilton and Cranze remained the _Flamingo's_ only two passengers, and so he considered he might devote full attention to them without being remarkable. If he had been a steward making sure of his tips he could not have been more solicitous for their welfare; and to say he watched them like a cat is putting the thing feebly. Any man with an uneasy conscience must have grasped from the very first that the plot had been guessed at, and that this awkward little skipper, with his oppressive civilities, was merely waiting his chance to act as Nemesis.
But either Mr. Cranze had an easy mind, and Lupton had unjustly maligned him, or he was a fellow of the most brazen assurance. He refused to take the least vestige of a warning. He came on board with a dozen cases of champagne and four of liqueur brandy as a part of his personal luggage, and his first question to every official he came across was how much he would have to pay per bottle for corkage.