The crowd parted to admit Miss Lillian Cartwright, then closed in behind her. Excitement flushed the young lady's cheeks becomingly. The first officer bowed to her: "Pardon me, miss, but would you mind telling us what you know?" "Why, I've known for two days--no, three days, I think--who they were," stated Miss Cartwright. "Mr. Brown--the detective, you know--loaned me his ulster the other morning; and when I put it on I felt something--something heavy that jingled in the pocket. Mr. Brown didn't seem to want me to take it out or speak about it. But at the very first chance I peeped in the pocket, and it was a pair of handcuffs. I'd never seen any handcuffs before--closely, I mean--so I peeped at them several times. They are the same handcuffs that are on that man now." "That was my overcoat he loaned you!" yelled Keller, waving his coupled hands up and down in his desperate yearning to be heard in his own defence. "Those handcuffs were in my overcoat pocket, I tell you, not in his." "Oh, no," contradicted Miss Cartwright, most positively. "Yours is a brown ulster. I've seen you wearing it evenings on the deck. And this was a dark-grey ulster, the same one that Mr. Brown is wearing this very minute. "And I remember, too, that on that very same morning you came up and asked Mr. Brown to take you to lunch, or rather you asked him to go to lunch so that you could go, too. You spoke to him twice about it--quite humbly, I thought." There were murmurs of applause at this. Another voice, unheard until now, spoke out, rising above the confused babbling. It was the voice of a sophisticated New Yorker addressing an equally sophisticated friend: "There's nothing to it, Herman! Look at those feet on Brown. Nobody but a bull would be wearing shoes like that. And pipe the plaid lid--a regulation plain-clothes man's get-up, the whole thing is." "But those are my shoes he's wearing," wailed Keller, feeling the trap closing in upon him from every side. "Those are my shoes--I loaned 'em to him." "Lawrence," said Bronston, "you've been giving our shoes to Boots and getting them back from him, haven't you?" "Yes, sir." "Are these shoes which I have on now the same shoes I've been wearing right along?" "Oh, yes, sir, the same boots!" "When you helped me pack my luggage to-day, did you notice any other shoes?" "No, sir." "I wasn't in my stocking feet when I came aboard, was I?" "Oh, no, indeed, sir." This with a respectful smile. "Then these must be the only shoes I have or have had, mustn't they?" Before Lawrence could make answer to this question the ship's barber appeared at the first officer's elbow, touching his cap. "You wanted me, sir?" he asked. "I wanted you," put in Bronston. "Look at me closely, please. How long would you say that it has been since I wore a moustache?" With the air of a scientist examining a rare and interesting specimen, the barber considered the speaker's upper lip.