The little black man responded with a cautious negative, "Asa. Raven should have had a bunch of papers with him. He ever mention them?"

Asa looked puzzled. He shook his head.

"He have a trunk or something that he wouldn't let anybody near?"

Asa seemed baffled by the direction my questions had taken. The others did too. Only Silent knew about those papers. Silent, and maybe Whisper, who had possessed them once herself.

"Asa? Anything he treated unusually?"

A light dawned in the little man's mind. "There was a crate. About the size of a coffin. I remember making a joke about it. He said something cryptic about it being somebody's ticket to the grave."

I grinned. The papers still existed. "What did he do with that crate down there?"

"I don't know."

"Asa…"

"Honest. I only saw it a couple times on the ship. I never thought anything about it."

"What are you getting at, Croaker?" the Captain asked.

"I have a theory. Just based on what I know about Raven and Asa."

Everyone frowned.

"Generally, what we know about Asa suggests he's a character Raven wouldn't take up with on a bet. He's chicken. Unreliable. Too talkative. But Raven did take up with him. Took him south and made him part of the team. Why? Maybe that don't bother you guys, but it does me."

"I don't follow you," the Captain said. "Suppose Raven wanted to disappear so people wouldn't even bother looking for him? He tried to vanish once, by coming to Juniper. But we turned up. Looking for him, he thought. So what next? How about he dies? In front of a witness. People don't hunt for dead men."

Elmo interrupted. "You saying he staged his death and used Asa to report it so nobody would come looking?" "I'm saying we ought to consider the possibility." The Captain's sole response was a thoughtful, "Uhm." Goblin said, "But Asa did see him die." "Maybe. And maybe he only thinks he did." We all looked at Asa. He cowered. The Captain said, "Take him through his story again, One-Eye. Step-by-step." For two hours One-Eye dragged the little man through again and again. And we could not spot one flaw. Asa insisted he had seen Raven die, devoured from within by something snake-like. And the more my theory sprung leaks, the more I was sure it was valid.