Juan chuckled, imagining Maurice wearing anything secondhand. “He’s actually richer than Croesus but is — how would the English put it — dotty. He’s the black sheep of an old-money family who has been knocking around the globe since he turned eighteen and got his inheritance. He approached me last year when we were in Mombassa, asked to be our steward, and said we wouldn’t have to pay him. Who was I to turn him down?”

“Right,” Sloane said drawing out the word.

“It’s true, honest.”

“I’ll leave that for now. But what about you and Mr. Lincoln? There aren’t a whole lot of Americans working aboard ships because Asians are willing to do the jobs at a fraction of the wage. If the company who owns this vessel is as tight as you claim, the crew would be Pakistanis or Indonesians.” Juan made to reply but she cut him off. “Let me guess, you work for a pittance, too?”

“My mattress isn’t exactly stuffed with cash, Ms. Macintyre.”

“I bet.” She raked her hand through her hair. “Those are the little things I figured you would explain away. How about this? When I first saw your ship there wasn’t any smoke coming from the funnel.”

Uh-oh, Juan thought, recalling how the engineer had forgotten to turn on the smoke generator until after the Pinguin was in visible range. At the time Juan hadn’t thought it a big deal, but that oversight was coming back to haunt them.

“I first thought that the ship had been abandoned but then I saw you were making headway. A few minutes later, smoke starts pouring from the stack, a good amount of it, in fact. Interestingly, the exact same amount when you were charging toward us at twenty knots as when I was on the bridge and noticed the telegraph was set to all stop. And speaking of your charge, there is no way a vessel this size could turn that fast unless you have isopod directional thrusters, which is a technology developed long after this ship was built. Care to explain that away?”

“I’m just curious why you even care,” Juan hedged.

“Because someone tried to kill me today and I want to know why and I think you can help.”

“I’m sorry, Sloane, but I’m just the captain of a rust bucket not long for the breakers yard. I can’t help you.”

“So you’re not denying what I saw.”

“I don’t know what you saw but there’s nothing special about the Oregon or her crew.”

She stood up and walked unerringly to where the tiny camera had been mounted in the frame of an old picture of an Indian actress who’d been famous fifteen years ago. She pulled the picture from the wall and the camera popped free to dangle by its wire. “Oh, really?”

This time blood did drain from Juan’s face.