It was not until dinner that evening that I had the opportunity of meeting Dr. Custrin. The Naomi was steaming along amid the gorgeous pageantry of sunset and the warm glow of the dying day was warring with the soft lights of the electric candles on the dinner-table when I came in to the saloon. Garth introduced me to the doctor. He was a sleek, smooth young man with hair like black satin and a beautifully trained small black moustache. His hands and feet were small and well-made and there would have been a touch of effeminacy about him but for his otherwise manly bearing, his bold black eyes and pleasant voice. A certain narrowness of the eyes and a curl of the nostrils told me, who have an eye for such things, that, probably, as his name indicated, he was of Jewish extraction. In conversation I elicited that he had been born in Mauritius, educated at Cape Town, and had taken his degree at King's College Hospital in London. Garth's New York office it appeared, had picked him up at Colon where he was studying Colonel Goethals' wonderful arrangements for the extermination of yellow fever and malaria.
 
Lawless and Mackay, the chief engineer, a sententious Scot, who opened his mouth only to utter a platitude or to put food or drink into it, dined with us. Garth made me sit next to Marjorie who looked ravishing in a white lace evening frock.
 
"Put the two war veterans together!" the baronet commanded. "My little girl here," he explained to me, "drove a car at the front. She has the Military Medal."
 
"Daddy!" expostulated Marjorie and a warm flush coloured her cheeks.
 
"I would never have given my consent," Garth added, "but she just didn't ask me for it!"
 
"My dear old thing," said the girl. "You make me look ridiculous by bragging about my silly little trips around the bases when I'm sure Dr. Custrin or Major Okewood saw a hundred times more of the war than I ever did!"
 
"I never got out of the base at the Cape," said the doctor. "The East African campaign kept us too busy for anybody to be spared."
 
"And I," was my retort, "never went back to France after the Somme!"
 
"Were you wounded?" asked Garth.
 
"Badly?" questioned Marjorie in reply to my nod.
 
"Nothing to write home about," I answered. "When I came out of hospital I went into the Intelligence."
 
"How fearfully thrilling!" exclaimed the girl. "Wasn't it frightfully exciting?"
 
"It wasn't the front," I replied.
 
After dinner on the deck under a vast span of velvet sky spangled with stars I found myself alone with Marjorie Garth. A broad band of yellow light shone out from the smoke-room where the others sat and talked over their coffee. Above us on the bridge the form of the man at the wheel bulked black.
 
We strolled up and down in silence. For myself I was quite overcome by the majesty of the tropical night at sea.
 
"The Intelligence," asked Marjorie suddenly, "that's the Secret Service, isn't it?"
 
"Yes," I agreed.
 
"You were very modest about it at dinner," she remarked.
 
I shrugged my shoulders.
 
"I only stated the plain truth," I returned. "In the fighting troops, remember, every fifth man became a casualty and three months was the average run of the platoon officer!"
 
"Yet," commented the girl, "you seem like a man who has been in tight places. I shouldn't say to look at you that you've had a placid or easy existence. Like mine, for instance. Sometimes I think it's only men of action like you who know how to grapple with life. Can you imagine me in an emergency for instance?"
 
"Yes," I said. "I believe I can. You've got a brave eye, Miss Garth. I think one can judge people's temperaments, as one judges horses, by the eye."
 
She shook her head and laughed.
 
"What does this sort of life teach anybody? This beautiful ship, these well-trained sailors, the splendid service that Daddy's money can buy? My dear man, it's no good flattering me about my brave eye. Money makes a solid barrier between my life and any really thrilling crisis! I shall be kept in cotton-wool till the end of the chapter."
 
"What a strange person you are!" I exclaimed. "Girls of your age with your position and your.... your.... attractions don't find time for philosophising as a rule. You ought to be enjoying your youth instead of meditating about life. I don't mean to be inquisitive; but.... are you unhappy?"
 
We had halted near the rail. We were standing very close together and I felt the touch of her warm young body against my arm.
 
She turned and looked at me. Again I told myself that this girl was the most beautiful, the most unspoiled creature I had ever met.
 
"I've only once been thoroughly happy," she answered rather wistfully, "and that was when I was with the army in France. I loved the romance, the adventure of it all, the good comradeship not only between the women but also between the men and the women. Money wasn't everything then. I was an individual with my own personality, my own friends. But what am I now? The daughter of Garth, the millionaire. And they print my picture in the weekly papers because one day I shall have a great deal of money which Daddy has worked all his life to make. I've never had any brothers and sisters and my mother has been dead for years. I've had to live my whole life with money as my companion. And money's not a bit companionable!"
 
She smiled whimsically at me, then gazed down abstractedly at the phosphorescent water thumping against the side of the ship.
 
"This yacht!——" she went on. "I have everything a girl could possibly require here—everything except my freedom!"
 
"Good Lord!" I observed, "you'll have that too, when you marry! You've plenty of time for that!"
 
Marjorie Garth laughed.
 
"My dear man," she protested, "don't you know it's easier to marry off a girl with no money than one who will have as much as I shall? To Daddy every young man I meet is a fortune-hunter. If I run a boy home from the golf-club in my car I am cross-que............