“Asking her for a date,” said Helen. “He said he was going a-wolfing. What’s strange about that?”

  “He was speaking Italian,” Danforth said softly.

  “Italian?” Leroy raised his eyebrows. “You sure?”

  “Or Latin.”

  “John Rich speaking Latin?” Carol hooted.

  “Maybe his real name is Ricci,” Leroy hazarded, “in which case he might know Italian.”

  “True,” said Danforth. “But what about the girl? Would she know Italian?”

  “What makes you think she did?”

  “She understood him—at least, she answered him without a moment’s pause. In English. But the last word of Rich’s question to her—that’s all I heard—was definitely not in English. It was either Italian or Latin.”

  “What was the last word?”

  “Acuminata. That’s what he said. With a rising inflection, hence a question.”

  Leroy slapped the table and laughed. “I’ve always told you, King, if you want to be a well-rounded mystery novelist you should learn a little about everything—including botany. Only a modicum, mind you, but something about the flowers and fruits and—er—flora of our teeming planet.”

  “What are you drinking, Mart?” Helen asked sweetly. “Ambrosia? The birds and the bees will be next, no doubt.”

  “And I can’t think of a better place than Tahiti for that lecture!” Carol added.

  “Quiet, children,” said Danforth, “your elders are speaking. Why flora, Mart?”

  “And why not Cora, Dora, and Nora, if it comes to that?” Carol laughed.

  “Because,” Leroy pointed out patiently, “if you knew anything about the flora of these islands, King, you’d recognize that the Italian word you overheard John Rich using was merely a descriptive adjective, part of the botanical name for a genus of the frangipani plant.”

  “You’re kidding,” Danforth said.

  “Not at all. I believe the full term is plumeria acuminata—meaning the sharp or pointed frangipani. White. As distinguished, let us say, from plumeria rubra, which is simply red jasmine flowers to us learned botanists.” Leroy preened himself.

  His wife exclaimed in astonishment, “Why, Mart, you never told me you knew so much about flowers! Will you address our garden club when you get home?”

  “Gladly.” Leroy bowed. “You can sign me up now by buying me another drink.”

  “Wait a minute,” Danforth protested. He rubbed a hand over his crew-cut. “So Rich wasn’t speaking Italian. But I still think it was odd for Rich to ask about the pointed frangipani, or whatever you called it, by its scientific name, don’t you?”

  Leroy nodded seriously. “You wouldn’t think the average retired-type chauffeur from Detroit would know there was such a thing as frangipani, let alone what its correct botanical designation is.”

  Helen, who had been watching Rich across the saloon, spoke up. “New song title: ‘He asked for plumeria acuminata, but he got red jasmine instead.’ That lei around his neck is woven of pink flowers.”

  “If you would only let me finish,” Danforth said, “I can explain that, too. In answer to Rich’s question about acuminata, that girl over there stood up from among the flower sellers on the restaurant porch and said to Rich, ‘Good evening, Monsieur, wouldn’t you like this better?’ And she hung that red jasmine lei around his neck, and they went off together, arm in arm.”

  “Just like that?” Helen asked.

  “Just like that. So she picked him up, if you want my opinion, not the other way around.”

  “The hussy!” said Carol, waving across the room to John Rich and his companion. “How fascinating! Maybe they will join us.”

  She invited them to do so in vigorous sign language. Rich said something to the native girl in the red dress. She shook her head and turned back to the bar. Rich spread his hands in apology to Carol, then put his arm around the girl’s bare shoulders. She turned a cool, remote smile on him then. But she seemed to be looking beyond him toward the door.

  * * * *

  For the next two days King Danforth and Martin Leroy, known to millions of mystery story fans as the author, “Leroy King,” were so completely occupied with sightseeing and shopping in Tahiti that neither they nor their wives gave another thought to plumeria acuminata or Chanel Number Five bath powder.

  It wasn’t until the Valhalla was steaming out of Papeete harbor bound for Suva in the Fijis, that Carol Danforth, sipping her pre-prandial gimlet, said, “And now that we’re back to normal shipboard scandal, I’m still curious to know who was throwing away Chanel bath powder the other day.”

  “I’m astonished at your ladylike patience,” Leroy commented. “I thought you’d have found out who she was long since.”

  Danforth lit a cigarette. “One thing is fairly obvious,” he said idly, but with a challenging glance at his partner. “She isn’t just an amateur powder-dumper, this gal. She’s a professional.”

  “How do you reach that obscure conclusion?” Leroy asked.

  “It leaps to the eye. The lady didn’t throw away just one boxful of powder. She threw away at least two. That makes her a pro, doesn’t it?”

  Carol said, “What do you mean, she threw away two boxes of powder?”

  “Remember you smelled the powder while we were watching the sunset? And saw some of it blowing over the rail? And sneezed because of it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that means she had already dumped one box of powder before the one we saw her dump. Because we didn’t look down till afterward.”

  “Elementary,” Leroy murmured. His expressive face lit up with the pleasure he always felt when engaging in this kind of deductive play with his partner. “But something else about the incident seemed of even more significance to me, if I may say so.”

  Danforth grinned. “Please say so.”

  “Cut it out, you two,” Carol said plaintively. “You can’t make a mystery out of this, not even in fun. I forbid it. We’re on vacation. All I want to know is who the silly woman is who throws away Chanel Number Five powder.”

  “Please,” Leroy said with an air of injured dignity, “doesn’t anyone want to know what I deduced?”

  “Of course, darling.” Helen patted his hand. “Because I’m going to hear it anyway. But please make it short.”

  “Very well. I deduced that whoever was throwing away the powder wanted the empty box for another purpose. She didn’t throw the whole package into the sea—just the powder.”

  “A sobering thought,” Danforth acknowledged. “What could she want with two empty powder boxes?”

  Helen laughed. “Maybe she wanted something to keep her old buttons and pins in. Or her false teeth at night.”

  “A distinct possibility,” her husband said approvingly.

  Abruptly, Carol said, “Pardon me a moment.”

  She went over and spoke to the bartender who smiled and handed her something from under the bar. She came back with what proved to be a deck plan of the Valhalla, showing all staterooms, portholes, showers, closets, bars, and other features of the ship.

  “Now, then,” Carol went on in a businesslike tone, “the porthole from which the powder-dumper was operating was the eighth from the stern.” She carefully counted eight portholes from the rear of the ship’s sundeck. “She lives in cabin S-34,” Carol announced triumphantly.

  “I’ll run down to the Purser’s Office and look at the list of cabins,” Helen offered eagerly. “Then we’ll know who she is.”

  Within five minutes Helen returned, obviously bursting with news. “It isn’t a woman at all!”’ she said. “How do you like that?”

  “You mean there’s no woman listed in Stateroom S-34?”

  “Not one. It’s a single cabin occupied exclusively by...” She paused dramatically. “By our bachelor friend, Mr. John Rich.”

  Leroy slowly put his drink down and straightened in his chair. His eyes met Danforth’s. “A visiting lady, then?” he asked. “One of those widows he calls his ‘harem’? Could that be the one who was dumping bath powder from his porthole?”

  Danforth shook his head, frowning. “Not likely. But John Rich is small-boned, slender, and he has small hands. That bare arm from the porthole could have been his.”

  Leroy rubbed his jaw. “Well, well, well,” he said softly, almost to himself. “If that’s true, we have two incidents in which Mr. John Rich acted quite out of character—dumping powder into the ocean from his stateroom porthole, and using familiarly the scientific name of a tropical flower he shouldn’t even know exists.”

  “Lots of people have flowers for a hobby, possibly ex-chauffeurs...” Helen began, but both men ignored her. They were suddenly as hot on the scent of this little mystery as though it were one of their own fictional plots.

  “Suppose,” said Leroy, “it was John Rich dumping bath powder, where would he have got it?”

  “Right here on the ship,” Carol said. “The shop sells French perfume, soap, and powder at very low prices.”

  “Say he bought the powder on the ship, then. Why?”

  “Not for gifts to take home,” Danforth said, “because he threw the stuff away. Therefore, he must have wanted empty powder boxes.”

  “Exactly. Again, why?”

  “To hold something else, as you brilliantly deduced.”

  “But why buy expensive Chanel and waste it, just to get empty boxes? Why not the cheapest possible brand?”

  “Ah,” said Danforth, smiling, “one can but guess as to that. My guess is that Rich wants somebody—perhaps the customs officials in New York at the end of this cruise—to think he’s bringing home a few gift boxes of Chanel powder, when he’s really bringing home something else.”

  “Now that,” Leroy grinned, “is a truly brilliant hypothesis to which I subscribe whole-heartedly. Respectable Chanel powder containers would be smuggling camouflage of the highest order for whatever John Rich fills them with.”

  Helen said in a resigned tone, “The next question before the house, therefore, is this: What does John Rich intend to fill the powder boxes with?”

  “I withdraw my suggestion about buttons and pins,” Helen volunteered.

  “Thank you.” Danforth swung one leg over the arm of his chair. “Since he was emptying the boxes at Papeete, one might reasonably assume that he meant to fill them with something he intended to get in Tahiti.”

  “Any ideas?” Leroy asked.

  “Dancing girls,” said Carol. “Think how the boys would go for Tahitian bunnies in our key clubs at home!”

  “Be serious, child,” Leroy rebuked her. “Great minds are at work here. And your frivolity impedes smooth cerebration. Well, King?”

  Danforth shrugged. “Whatever it was, I’ll wager the flower girl who picked him up at Les Tropiques had something to do with it.”

  Leroy started visibly. He said with a trace of excitement, “That’s it, by Jove!”

  “What’s it?” Helen demanded.

  “I’ll bet John Rich was using a prearranged recognition signal when he went through that plumeria acuminata bit—to identify himself to the flower girl.”

  “Of course!” Danforth tapped his fingers nervously on the table. “And the flower girl gives him a prearranged response and the red jasmine lei as the other half of the signal. That’s why they became old buddies immediately and were in Quinn’s together. They had some kind of deal cooking.”

  “Sex appeal alone drew them together, if you want to know what I think,” Carol said. “I could tell by the way Rich looked at her!”

  “But not,” Leroy said thoughtfully, “by the way she looked at him. She kept brushing off Rich’s passes at the bar and watching Quinn’s door as though she were expecting someone.”

  “Her principal, you mean?” said Danforth. “The boss smuggler, maybe? You think she was assigned to pick Rich out of our tourist group and take him to her leader at Quinn’s?”

  “Something like that makes sense.” Leroy absent-mindedly reached over and finished his wife’s gimlet.

  “Now that you’ve had your cocktail, darling,” his wife said with deceptive sweetness, “it’s well past dinner time. Come on. Forget John Rich, please. There’s roast reindeer tonight.”

  Danforth and Leroy docilely followed their wives to the dining room.

  * * * *

  With the last bite of dessert, however—something their Norwegian table steward referred to as “peaches pie”—the two mystery writers returned to their speculations.

  “Tahiti,” Leroy ruminated aloud, “produces nothing much but breadfruit, mangoes, taro root, copra, girls, climate, and leisure, not necessarily in that order. And none of these would fit comfortably into a Chanel powder box.”

  “It occurred to me during the reindeer steak,” said Danforth, “that Tahiti may be merely a way station, a pickup point, for whatever it is that Rich is smuggling.”

  “It’s isolated enough, all right. In the middle of the Pacific, halfway between Asia and everywhere else. Let’s see. Asia. From Asia, one smuggles embroideries and jade originating in Red China, oriental workmen who will work elsewhere for peanuts—”

  Danforth snapped his fingers. “Why not the obvious answer?”

  Politely Leroy inquired, “And what is the obvious answer, Professor? As if we didn’t know.”

  “Think of boxes full of white powder. Think of Red China. Think of—”

  “Heroin?”

  “What else?”

  “From the beginning,” Leroy murmured, “it seemed clearly indicated.”

  Carol lifted her eyes to the ceiling and said, “You poor, mystery-happy idiots!”

  Danforth ignored her. “There’s more than a chance, Mart,” he said, “that John Rich is not a retired chauffeur, but a member of some dope-peddling organization in the United States. He takes this round-the-world cruise solely for the purpose of picking up a shipment of heroin in Tahiti, where—by equally devious means—it has arrived from Hong Kong or Red China. Rich is seemingly above suspicion—an innocent tourist on a cruise.”

  Leroy took it up. “Right. Rich identifies himself to his Tahitian colleagues as the courier sent from America to pick up the heroin, by an exchange of prearranged code phrases with the flower girl, of which plumeria acuminata is undoubtedly one. After he has identified himself, the heroin is passed to him—perhaps in Quinn’s—where the confusion would cover up any monkey business. Rich then conceals the heroin in the Chanel powder boxes he has prepared in his cabin.

  “At the end of the cruise he calmly carries the heroin through customs, having dutifully entered several gift boxes of Chanel Number Five powder on his customs declaration, all according to regulations. The heroin powder in genuine Chanel boxes would almost certainly go undetected, even by a careful inspection which, incidentally, returning cruise passengers arc seldom subjected to. Is that it?”

  “That’s exactly it,” Danforth said. “So let’s go ask the Captain to have Rich’s cabin searched for the heroin. If it’s there, the Captain can tip the Narcotics and Customs Bureaus by radio-telephone and have them catch Rich red-handed as he comes ashore in New York.”

  Leroy turned to Carol and Helen. “Will you excuse us?” he asked. “We’ll meet you in the toward lounge later.” He and Danforth stood up.

  Helen said, “Are you really going to Captain Hansen with that crazy story?”

  “Certainly,” her husband answered. “As conscientious American citizens...”

  “But it’s completely fantastic!” Carol broke in. “From an empty powder box and the name of a tropical flower, you deduce an international dope ring operating on this ship! Now really!”

  “We didn’t make a mystery out of this thing,” Leroy defended himself. “We’ve merely made logical deductions from observed facts, that’s all.”

  Carol and Helen looked at each other and suddenly dissolved in laughter.

  “What’s so funny?” Leroy asked.

  “You!” his wife managed to gasp through her laughter. “You and your ‘observed facts’! That’s what’s funny!” She and Helen struggled to contain their mirth. “But you’re perfectly right when you say that you and King didn’t make a mystery out of this.”

  “He did,” Helen crowed.

  Slowly Danforth and Leroy resumed their seats. They watched their wives like wary baby-sitters observing unfamiliar and obstreperous charges.

  “Don’t be cross with us, darlings,” Carol said, “but one of the facts on which you based your deductions was slightly wrong. And it’s our fault.”

  “What fact?” Leroy King spoke sharply.

  “The number of the cabin from which the arm dumped the powder out the porthole.”

  “It wasn’t S-34?”

  “No. It was S-36.”

  “You said it was the eighth porthole from the stern,” Leroy reminded her.

  “I know. But it really wasn’t. I fibbed. It was the ninth.”

  Danforth said to Helen, “And you looked it up and told us it was occupied, that cabin, by John Rich!” He looked at her accusingly. “What for?”

  “Just for laughs,” Helen chortled. “To see what you master-plotters would make of it. And you haven’t disappointed us one bit, have they, Carol?”

  Danforth summoned a rueful grin. “These women we call our wives,” he said to his partner, “call powerfully to mind a single old-fashioned word: perfidious.”

  Leroy nodded. “At the very least,” he agreed. Then he asked his wife curiously, “Who does occupy cabin S-36 if John Rich doesn’t?”

  “Two of the widows in John Rich’s ‘harem’ occupy it—the cabin is a double.”

  “And it was one of them who threw away the powder?”

  “They had each,” Carol explained, “bought a box of Chanel Number Five powder for use on this trip from the shop. But Mrs. Piggott, the older of the two, proved allergic to Chanel powder. It made her sneeze dreadfully. So she threw the powder out the porthole.”