Captain Delmar Rose paced nervously back and forth, puffed nervously on his pipe, exhaled thick clouds of blue-gray smoke. He stopped pacing at the rap on his door, locked his hands behind him.
“Come in.”
The door opened, Emil, his personal steward, ushered Johnny Liddell into the room, stepped out and closed the door after him. The captain favored Liddell with a jaundiced look, stalked over to his desk chair, dropped into it.
“Seems like you’ve been a real busy fellow,” he complained. “I suppose you know that two of our passengers, the Keens, quit the cruise bag and baggage in Grenada?”
Liddell sauntered over to a chair, sat down. He dredged his pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “How would I know that?”
“It was because of you that they left.”
Liddell stuck a cigarette in the corne
