“Yes, I told the fool he’d blinking well torn it. He didn’t understand of course. His whole mind was set on whether I’d recognized him . It never occurred to him to wonder what I was doing down there. A piece of sheer bad luck that was. I arranged it all so carefully too, sending him off to Florence, telling the hotel I was going over to Nice for one night or possibly two. Then, by the time the murder was discovered, I was back again in Cannes, with nobody dreaming that I’d ever left the Riviera.”

He still spoke quite naturally and unaffectedly. I had to pinch myself to understand that this was all real⁠—that the man in front of me was really that deep-dyed criminal, the Colonel. I followed things out in my mind.

“Then it was you who tried to throw me overboard on the Kilmorden ,” I said slowly. “It was you that Pagett followed up on deck that night?”