A Bad Combination

The quarantine officer, a dapper little man, remained on the boat,
and busied himself officiously, getting the names of the men, peering
at Singleton through his barred window, and expressing disappointment
at my lack of foresight in having the bloodstains cleared away.

"Every stain is a clue, my man, to the trained eye," he chirruped.
"With an axe, too! What a brutal method! Brutal! Where is the axe?"

"Gone," I said patiently. "It was stolen out of the captain's cabin."

He eyed me over his glasses.

"That's very strange," he commented. "No stains, no axe! You
fellows have been mighty careful to destroy the evidence, haven't
you?"

All that long day we made our deliberate progress up the river.
The luggage from the after house was carried up on deck by Adams
and Clarke, and stood waiting for the customhouse.

Turner, his hands behind him, paced the deck hour by hour, his
heavy face colorless. His wife, dark, repressed, with a look of
being always on guard, watched him furtively. Mrs. Johns, dressed
in black, talked to the doctor; and, from the notes he made, I
knew she was telling the story of the tragedy. And here, there,
and everywhere, efficient, normal, and so lovely that it hurt me
to look at her, was Elsa. Williams, the butler, had emerged from
his chrysalis of fright, and was ostentatiously looking after the
family's comfort. No clearer indication could have been given of
the new status of affairs than his changed attitude toward me. He
came up to me, early in the afternoon, and demanded that I wash
down the deck before the women came up.