With a sidelong glance (borrowed from the murder scene in Richard III), Cassius de Mornay entered the wheelhouse, where Captain Catspaugh was delightedly surveying the morning air, the Maid of Orleans pressing, and the ominous shuddering sounds of his own powerful boat hurtling along. "I hesitate to interpose myself at such a time, old friend, but there are some truths that will not wait." Captain Catspaugh turned from his task. An astonished look came over him. "Yes, CP, it is I. Charles Fountain, you remember, now of course the crumpled Cassius de Mornay." Captain Catspaugh smiled, but said not a word. "I repeat, I would not trespass upon your task, if I did not have information of surpassing importance. The Captain looked somewhat sceptical, and said: "Is this some more of your usual bombasisms, Charlie?"
Cassius de Mornay (we revert to his favoured sobriquet) went to the window. "Tangled web, CP, tangled web. The period, or shall I say the dissolution of all hangs in the balance. Imprimis, there is a plot afoot to blow us all to kingdom come. While Robert E. Leej is a thespian of life, it requires the eye of one who has drowned innumerable figures in butts of malmsey wine to note that some of the barrels you smuggled abord last night were not whiskey at all, but a somewhat less generically explosive but more specifically explosive substance when concentrated. And what is this all in aid of?" His face darkened.

"Let me be as brief as I can. It is a story of terrible national deception and international intrigue. You will recall that night where our paths crossed the first time, and where I first became aware that graver forces were at work."

Captain Catspaugh shuddered at the terrible memory.

"Yes, CP, which of us can forget. You, the young stagehand, and I the understudy in that ridiculous comedy, minor figures indeed, but nevertheless witnesses to that darkest of all theatrical moments, that night in Ford's Theatre!"

The sun glowed on the burnished river. Noise everywhere. Silence between the two men.

"What says Shakespeare: 'Oh, what a fall was there, my countrymen: when I, and you and all of us fell down, Whilst bloody treason flourished over us.' And what you and I saw that night, which you took your way, and I took mine. When in the confusion, that terrible scene, the actor whose name has forever sullied our profession, took to the stage in his damned theatricality, thus always with actors, sic semper....; AND MEANTIME, as others raced forward, and I stood paralysed backstage, and I saw that shadowy figure that you and I wrestled to the ground, and then we in turn were beaten about the heads by his confederates, and then they fled. And how we ran after them through a city beginning to convulse in grief. And how you and I have for so many years cursed our lack of strength in that vain attempt."

Again, sunshine everywhere, the river beautiful, the Maid of Orleans speeding nearby, shuddering noise everywhere.

"But what I did not show you then, Captain (he moved unconsciously into more formal speech), was something I was able to wrestle free from that fiend and his co-conspirators that horrific night of darkness, in the heat of the struggle. Evidence, evidence, my oldest friend, evidence that all the forces of doom crowding upon this ship are determined to eradicate from human memory, evidence of a cabal of destruction, fomentor of murder, rapine, under cover of war and peace. The killers of Matthew Fontaine, Robert E. Leej's brother, and many another. The vowed death of all those who had begun to suspect. The vow taken and sealed with one symbol, one mark, one seal of membership, one......." and here he paused, to good effect, and pulled out from his waistcoat a bloodstained "medallion!!!!!!!!!"