Free The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie

and quite different. Yet I knew it! It was something I had smelt before. Something - Ah! I had got it. Asafoetida! I had worked in a hospital dispensary during the war for a short time and had become acquainted with various nauseous drugs.
    Asafoetida, that was it. But how -
    I sank down on the sofa, suddenly realizing the thing. Somebody had put a pinch of asafoetida in my cabin. Why? So that I should vacate it? Why were they so anxious to get me out? I thought of the scene this afternoon from a rather different point of view. What was there about Cabin 17 that made so many people anxious to get hold of it? The other two cabins were better cabins; why had both men insisted on sticking to 17?
    17. How the number persisted! It was on the 17th I had sailed from Southampton. It was a 17 -1 stopped with a sudden gasp. Quickly I unlocked my suit-case, and took my precious paper from its place of concealment in some rolled stockings.
    17 122-1 had taken that for a date, the date of departure of the Kilmorden Castle. Supposing I was wrong. When I came to think of it, would anyone, write down a date, think it necessary to put the year as well as the month? Supposing 17 meant Cabin 17? And 1? The time - one o'clock. Then 22 must be the date. I looked up my little almanac.
    Tomorrow was the 22nd!

The Man in the Brown Suit

Chapter 10
    I was violently excited. I was sure that I had hit on the right trail at last. One thing was clear, I must not move out of the cabin. The asafoetida had got to be borne. I examined my facts again.
    Tomorrow was the 22nd, and at 1 a.m. or 1 p.m. something would happen. I plumped for 1 a.m. It was now seven o'clock. In six hours I should know.
    I don't know how I got through the evening. I retired to my cabin fairly early. I had told the stewardess that I had a cold in the head and didn't mind smells. She still seemed distressed, but I was firm.
    The evening seemed interminable. I duly retired to bed, but in view of emergencies I swathed myself in a thick flannel dressing-gown, and encased my feet in slippers. Thus attired I felt that I could spring up and take an active part in anything that happened.
    What did I expect to happen? I hardly knew. Vague fancies, most of them wildly improbable, flitted through my brain. But one thing I was firmly convinced of, at one o'clock something would happen.
    At various times I heard my fellow-passengers coming to bed. Fragments of conversation, laughing good-nights, floated in through the open transom. Then silence. Most of the lights went out. There was still one in the passage outside, and there was therefore a certain amount of light in my cabin. I heard eight bells go. The hour that followed seemed the longest I had ever known. I consulted my watch surreptitiously to be sure I had not overshot the time.
    If my deductions were wrong, if nothing happened at one o'clock, I should have made a fool of myself, and spent all the money I had in the world on a mare's nest. My heart beat painfully.
    Two bells went overhead. One o'clock! And nothing. Wait - what was that? I heard the quick light patter of feet running - running along the passage.
    Then with the suddenness of a bombshell my cabin door burst open and a man almost fell inside.
    “Save me,” he said hoarsely. “They're after me.”
    It was not a moment for argument or explanation. I could hear footsteps outside. I had about forty seconds in which to act. I had sprung to my feet and was standing facing the stranger in the middle of the cabin.
    A cabin does not abound in hiding-places for a six-foot man. With one arm I pulled out my cabin trunk. He slipped down behind it under the bunk. I raised the lid. At the same time, with the other hand I pulled down the wash-basin. A deft movement and my hair was screwed into a tiny knot on the top of my head. From the point of view of appearance it was inartistic, from another standpoint it was supremely artistic. A lady, with her hair screwed into an unbecoming knob and