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LOCK, hands and brain very full, practically lived on the yacht for the next week, and felt as though he were playing with a new and very expensive toy. She was beautifully modelled, perfectly equipped, and had cabin accommodation for seven. His own quarters were immediately aft the charthouse and adjoining the bridge. He was stowing away his own kit when he got a hail from Lowther’s slip, and saw the yacht agent waiting with the owner and her daughter. Lowther brought them on board at once.

“We’ve been shopping in town,” said Mrs. Tarrant, “and came back this way to see if everything is ready. Is it? The Cygnet looks awfully clean.”

“It will be in two days, and—well—she’s getting cleaner.”

“Goodness! I could eat off the decks now.” She peered into the main saloon, and gave an appreciative nod. “You seem to be a regular housekeeper. Do you like her?”

He explained how much he liked her, while she, staring about, let her eyes wander to the gigantic hull of the Berengaria that towered over low-lying freight sheds a mile away. Cygnet and Berengaria, they shared the freedom of the seas.

“It’s odd to think that this little midget can take us anywhere that that great liner could,” she said presently.

“And a good many other places where she couldn’t,” nodded Lock.

“It sounds rather exciting, doesn’t it, Eva?”

The girl nodded. As usual when with her mother, she had been rather silent, also, it struck Lock, rather anticipatory. This time she did not seem to have anything to say to him, but stood apart, and almost motionless, examining the wide expanse of Southampton Water in a sort of daydream. A Royal Mail Steam Packet boat was coming slowly in from the Solent like a huge bird gliding to its roost, and one could perceive the whitish grey line of faces at her distant rail. She made hardly a ripple, looming massively over fussing tugboats that busied themselves, gnat-like, at bows and stern.

“Mother, have you told Mr. Lock about Mr. Jackson?” said the girl parenthetically.

“No, I haven’t. There’ve been so many other things to remember. Mr. Lock, we’re to have a guest after all. Mr. Jackson is coming with us.”

It sounded very casual, and not at all important, but to Lock nothing could have been more astonishing, not even if Tarrant himself had climbed over the rail. Jackson!

“Oh!” he said, unable to say anything else.

“I thought you’d be more surprised,” she went on easily, “because I’d told you there’d be no one else. But we’ve seen a good deal of him since last week, and it seems he knew my husband very well indeed, and was quite lost without him. He really came to England to find him.”

It was all very pat. Too much so, thought Lock; too much like something that one had rehearsed, critically, till there was eliminated every slightest word or tone that might strike the wrong note. Yes, she did it almost too well, and the confidence in her large eyes did nothing to displace Lock’s instantaneous impression that she was bluffing. Jackson had not been a welcome arrival at Uplands when Lock saw him last. Now he had become an intimate—no other word for it—and a guest. What had happened? Had he learned what he wanted to know about Hope Tarrant?

“Well,” said the young man vaguely, “there’s plenty of room.”

She laughed. “And for four more—but not this time. You’ll find Mr. Jackson very interesting: he’s been everywhere and done most things. So you’ll be ready the day after to-morrow?”

“Yes, Mrs. Tarrant, quite.”

“Then we’ll be here in time for lunch, and get away at once. And it is just possible we may want to stop at St. Malo, but not for more than an hour. Will that be all right?”

Lock, diverting his thoughts, explained to the owner of Cygnet that she could stop when and where she pleased, and for as long as suited her fancy, provided that weather permitted and there was water enough under the keel. It seemed a little difficult for her to grasp this, but the idea was evidently a pleasant one, and she looked contentedly at her daughter.

“You heard that, Eva? It’s like having a private train, except that we needn’t keep on the track. One doesn’t realize it at once. And, Mr. Lock, you won’t mind if we change our plans quite suddenly sometimes?”

“Your plans are mine,” he assured her, still trying to fit Jackson into the riddle.

“Thanks so much. Now I must have a talk with Mr. Lowther and the steward.”

The three disappeared below decks. Eva, who seemed entirely uninterested in anything on board, had mounted the bridge, and was again watching the Royal Mail boat, now quite close. She turned, and, seeing Lock, beckoned imperiously.

“Well,” she said in her husky tone, “I told you, didn’t I?”

“About what?”

“That my mother’s always making experiments.” She waited a moment, regarding him with an expression he could in no way interpret. “You’ve just heard about the last one!”

Why, he pondered, should she unburden herself in this fashion? It was difficult for him to say anything whatever. Then, as though not expecting any answer, and not sure how far one could go on such slight acquaintance, she went on like one impelled to talk about something.

“Wasn’t it queer, his turning up like that, and at that particular moment, and from South Africa? We were three then, with everything settled, and I didn’t dream that so soon we’d be four. He doesn’t talk much, at least not to me, but I’m always conscious that he’s there. Were you awfully puzzled when you left Uplands last week?”

“I was, a bit; but, it not being my affair, I thought best to go.”

“You did just right; mother liked you for that. I wonder,” here she sent him an oblique glance, “how you’ll take to Mr. Jackson?”

“I expect we’ll get on perfectly well. In any case, it doesn’t much matter, does it? I’m merely the captain.”

She smiled, not at what he said, but as though enjoying some private thought concerning it.

“Do you ever have premonitions?”

“I haven’t had time so far.”

“Not even when—when you went into action?”

“Rather not! I was much too uncomfortable, to put it mildly.”

“You’re awfully honest about things,” she said, with a certain unconscious respect. Then, suddenly, “Women aren’t often like that, though men of your kind assume they are.” She put this as though it had been forced out of her, and knew that it might be taken, possibly, as a warning against herself. And in that moment Lock thought he perceived two personalities in this dark-eyed, unexpected girl. One had phases of candour, simplicity, directness, when she talked without subterfuge or second meaning. The other was veiled, elusive, ungetatable, swayed by secret passions, capable of hate and jealousy, a lovely danger, a perilous invitation to men.

“Speaking of Mr. Jackson, you’d have been interested in my stepfather,” she continued musingly. “I never understood him myself. And Hope—you’ll probably hear about her before long. It’s a queer story.”

Into Lock’s brain swam the vision of a red-faced man in a third-class carriage describing how he had lost the thing he loved most, thanks to two women, one a man-eater, the other a cat. But his story was told without Tarrant being aware that Jackson had appeared on the scene. To what extent, if any, would that arrival have altered it? And if Jackson, also, was looking for Hope, why not let Tarrant know at least this much? No disloyalty to one’s employer in that.

“I’d like to hear about it—some time,” he said.

That was as far as they got. Mrs. Tarrant emerged from below in great good-humour, paid further compliments on Lock’s housekeeping, cast a questioning glance at Eva, as though asking what she had been talking about, and presently the two went off with Lowther.

Later that afternoon Lock took train for London. Reviewing the situation as it now stood, he had decided to help Tarrant to the extent of telling him that Jackson had been inquiring about Hope.

There began to be something droll about this double pursuit. Which man, he wondered, would find the girl first? And how would Tarrant take the idea of his wife cruising the Mediterranean with his old friend?

Dean Street has a cosmogony of its own. With Greek, Frith, Old Compton, and as far north as Soho Square, it forms a little Europe in London. Here the Levant rediscovers itself amongst olive skins, dark eyes, rapid voices, swift gestures and a medley of languages. Succulent odours drift from small white-curtained windows. Grocery shops are entered between hedges of macaroni, casks of black olives and tunny fish. There are tiny “ristoranti” whose padroni are friends and intimates of their patrons. A volcanic shout down a speaking-tube produces from the cellar fritto misto and zabaione. The wine shops are stacked with round-bellied, straw-sheath flasks of Capri Biano, Orvieto Abbocato and the blissful Asti Spumanti. Blasé Londoners come here for a change from Piccadilly restaurants, and, if they know where to look, find better fare at a third the price. Art students bring their ivory-skinned models by bus from the King’s Road when the studio exchequer permits. Professional men with strained faces find here an hour’s surcease from the professional manner. The stage contributes its quota, because this is just beside the theatre district and service is swift. All in all, Soho invites exploration and discovery. Once discovered it clings to the perception and refuses to be forgotten. And it has recesses where a man may live within a third of a mile of Piccadilly Circus yet more screened from publicity than on the banks of the Congo.

Thither went Lock, not over-sure of the wisdom of his intentions.

“Who is it?” rumbled a deep voice on the second floor of 127, Dean Street. “Oh, you! Come in.” There sounded a heavy tread, and the door opened with a jerk. “Hullo there! I wasn’t looking for you yet. Got anything?”

He seemed expectant rather than pleased, motioned to a chair, and took a bottle and siphon from a cupboard.

“It’s maté—South American dope—but you’ll like it. Well, anything to tell me—haven’t found my girl yet, eh?”

“No,” said Lock, “but I think I will soon.”

“Eh—how?”

“Apparently it’s no secret. Your stepdaughter, Miss Hewson, is going to talk about her after we sail.”

“After you sail!”

“So she said to-day. It was the way she said it that—well—made me feel at liberty to tell you.”

Tarrant poured himself a drink, twisted his glass without lifting it and shook his big head.

“Pulling your leg—that’s all. Where did this happen?”

“On board, this afternoon; she came with her mother. We were together on the bridge and she volunteered that much.”

Tarrant, staring at his visitor, knitting his brows, looked undisguisedly puzzled.

“What started her on that—what brought in Hope?”

“She was speaking about Jackson when——”

“Jackson!”

There was an odd, crunching sound. Tarrant’s thick fingers, closing over his glass, had crushed it so that the maté trickled across the deal table and his flesh was full of small, glistening splinters. He regarded these with a sort of dull apathy, showing no sign of pain. A flush, mottled purple, was creeping to his temples. Fear, stark naked and unquenchable, had taken him by the throat.

“Jackson! What Jackson?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

Lock, crowding back his own astonishment, tried to speak calmly, but all in a second this secret confidant of his had changed character. Formerly a man, big, helpless, groping in self-created darkness for the daughter he had lost, a man likely to arouse sympathy and assistance, he had now become suspect and perhaps a fugitive. Everything he had said, all the sequence of his story, fell away, so that he sat there in another guise, stripped and utterly shaken.

“Jackson, or so he calls himself, arrived at Uplands a week ago, on the afternoon I was there. I haven’t seen him since. I didn’t speak of him to you because you hadn’t mentioned him. And it wasn’t my affair.”

Tarrant, steadying his nerves, began picking little glass diamonds from his thick skin, laying them in a tiny, blood-specked line on the table, as though counting the number he recovered. He did not look up, but appeared to be sorting things out in his secret mind, and discarding one possible response after another.

“No,” he said, after a long, brooding silence, “it wasn’t your affair. But this Jackson—well—I was upset for a minute, not expecting anything of that kind. I suppose,” he added with a sidelong glance, “he didn’t say anything about my girl?”

Lock, more than ever dubious, told him that inquiry had been made, but that was all.

“And then?”

“I felt that I was in the way, and left.”

“H’m—yes—I suppose you had to leave. Sort of awkward pause till you did, probably.” Tarrant frowned deeply, and busied himself over his punctured fingers. “Y’see,” he continued, “I hadn’t intended to mention Jackson because I thought he was a washout. Now it rather mixes things up. He was after Hope, and wanted to marry her. But I wouldn’t stand for it.”

“Oh!”

“Too old,” he went on with a curious mixture of antipathy and rising anger, “and a sight too tricky. All right as a partner in a rough country—we were in S.A. together—but when it came to handing over your own flesh and blood I wasn’t having any. Then he cleared out for a while. I thought that was the end of it. So while your news isn’t exactly welcome, it’s better I had it. Happen to know when he reached England?”

“He landed at Plymouth last week and came straight to Uplands.”

“And met my wife, and she told him I was drowned?”

“Yes.”

That situation, as Tarrant evidently visualized it, was altogether too much for him. He opened his mouth, the fear deserted his features, giving place to a coarse and prodigious amusement, his lips widened into an enormous grin. It was clear that he would have given anything to have been a spectator of that meeting.

“She told him that I had been drowned, fishing, and what did he say then? Didn’t swallow it whole, I’ll bet.”

“Look here, you can’t expect me to retail——”

“No—no—you’re right. I’m asking too much. I admit that. Up against your stipulations, aren’t you? Well, you go on respecting ’em. But Jackson at Uplands! Lord, who’d have thought it? What I’d like to know, only I’ll never find out, is how he took it when he heard that those two were starting off on a cruise without a word about Hope. That would set him back a bit.”

“Well,” said Lock coolly, “you’ll be interested to know that he’s going with them.”

“Oh, my God!”

He breathed this is so large a whisper that it filled the room, and remained quite motionless, eyes half-closed, a slack mountain, vacillating of purpose, fumbling for some stable thing to lay hold on. There was no anger in this attitude, no resentment at the idea of another man cruising with his wife, but it appeared as though something infinitely more important and threatening had been suddenly held over him. He sat in this drab room, a helpless hulk, wrestling with whatever moved through the darkness of his mind.

“The point about Jackson,” he said in a strangely plaintive tone, “is that you can’t trust him round a corner. I spotted that in S.A., and before. Just like him to learn that I was—well—out of the way, then start in again after Hope.”

There were a lot of things that Lock felt prompted to suggest but did not. Tarrant’s manner was too obviously influenced by facts deliberately passed over, facts that he was omitting from his story. That there was bad blood between him and Jackson seemed now firmly established. But whose action had caused it? Their types, admitted Lock, were such as might clash over anything.

“He was your partner?”

“Ye-es. It started here—in England. That’s when he met Hope, and fell for her. She hated him from the first, so I put my foot down on that part of it. Then we fixed it up to go to S.A. He’d been there before, and knew some useful things. I hadn’t. I suppose he thought that if we struck it rich I’d weaken about Hope. In S.A.—well—a lot of things happened, and we broke, finally. Then I came back and married again. Told you that already, haven’t I?”

“Some of it.”

“No reason you shouldn’t know it all. But this cruise! Remember what I said about my wife and that flaming attraction of hers?”

Lock nodded.

“Here’s a sample: but that don’t worry me.”

His voice thinned, ceasing on a note pregnant with undisclosed meaning. Something was worrying him exceedingly. Not Hope—not his wife and Jackson cruising the Mediterranean—but something else. But whatever discomfort it caused, he proposed to keep it to himself, and glanced about the room as though seeking that which would fortify him in Lock’s thoughts. Then, all in a moment, he looked very shrewd.

“There’s this. You know about Jackson and my girl, but he needn’t learn that. He wants to use my wife to get hold of Hope. You’ll see. It’s that, not the other thing. She won’t realize it for a while, but there’ll be a flare-up when she does. I’d like to watch it. That is, of course, unless Julia takes his mind off Hope, which is quite possible if she goes at it. That money of hers will help. Gad, what a mix up it is! Anyway, I reckon you’ll tumble on to something to tell me much sooner than if this hadn’t happened. Bob and Julia! Phew!”

Lock felt ill at ease. He had no desire to become an intimate observer of a liaison in order to gain five hundred pounds; to listen to what was said, and sift out the right grain of information to be transmitted to this man with the bloodstained hands; and he began to ask himself, whether here and now he ought not to retire from a position that was growing daily more embarrassing.

“Look here,” he said curtly, “you seem to be taking me for a spy, but I don’t intend to tangle myself up in other people’s affairs. You told me a certain story, and on the strength of that, and your assurance that it was true, I promised, with certain provisions, to let you know about one definite thing. Further than that I don’t go. These other matters mean nothing to me.”

“Ha!” Tarrant, infinitely occupied with his own problem, could not but show amusement. “You’re young! You go cruising about the world with these three, or any other three as far as that’s concerned, and see if it doesn’t make a mark on you. Can’t be dodged. But,” he hurried on, “that’s your affair. I’m warning you to watch Bob Jackson. You say you’re able to look out for yourself—or it amounts to that—well, good enough. I tell you the same thing about two women. Same answer, eh? Good enough again. Now we’ll bury it. And I don’t want any more than I asked for in the first place. Is that clear?”

Lock nodded, but only partially assured.

“I’m going to add this. In the train I told you what would happen if you split on me to my wife. That stands. Now what do you suppose would happen if you told Bob Jackson I was here in Soho?”

“I’d rather like to know.”

“Much the same thing: you’d be fired. Now I’m not going to say any more, but you can take it I know what I’m talking about. You’ve heard all that’s—well—necessary. You may never see me again; but you’ll hear from me, or of me. You can bank on that. If it’s of me, I guess ’twill be from Bob Jackson.

“You’ve shaken me up a bit to-day, I’ll admit, but”—here his face took on a cryptic smile—“I begin to see my way. Now that I’ve swallowed the news, I feel safer. Thanks for coming in. No, I won’t go down with you, but keep your eye on our mutual friend. He’ll stand watching. Good-bye.”

As though surmising that Lock was in no mood for a handshake, he busied himself over his punctured palm, and it was thus that the young man left him, a pricked bear, nursing his fear and suspicion in a dingy hole in Soho. Somehow, this seemed quite suitable. Everything he had said, and his manner of saying it, made it seem more and more foreign to the personality he had created for himself that he should come into the open and pursue the speech and life of ordinary men. He was exactly qualified to live as he now lived, to move in the mysterious half-way territory he now occupied, and from the realm of the supposed dead put out a groping hand toward what he had deliberately sacrificed. Lock, in short, absolutely failed to picture him ever reunited to Hope, whatever turn this affair might take. And, he questioned, did the girl really desire such an event? He shook his head and walked slowly towards Shaftesbury Avenue.

It was then that he saw across the narrow pavement of Dean Street a tall, sloping-shouldered figure that seemed familiar. The man’s back was turned, and he stood apparently interested in the display of flasks in the window of an Italian wine-shop. Simultaneously the street lights were switched on, and Lock caught the reflection of a face. Jackson’s face!

He did not stir, nor was his glance reflected so as to indicate whether he was observing Lock or the contents of the shop window. He was only a man who had stopped, as any man would be likely to stop, before this inviting display. Presently he would stroll on. That was what Lock wanted to think—but could not. It was desperately hard to know what to do, if anything. Hating any kind of evasion, and in that moment hating Tarrant also, the young man revolted. For the first time in his life he did not want to be recognized. Thinking very hard about his job, it seemed imprudent to cross the road and bluff out a meeting. After all, he was a free man. Dean Street was not forbidden ground. So, steeped in doubt, he walked on. At the corner he did not look back and disappeared towards Piccadilly, carrying an enormous question with him.

S.Y. Cygnet lay at her moorings, anchor tripped, a feather of steam trailing from her escape pipe. The day previously Lock had taken her for a sea run of some hours, and was well satisfied. She knotted better than the promised sixteen, and the note of her turbine was low, smooth and assuring. Hillyard, the engineer, seemed content so far as any mechanically minded man is ever content with the apparatus he controls. Webster, the steward, had the saloon panelling glistening, flowers in the gimbal vases, and the stores requisition he had submitted to Lowther showed him to be no tyro in the art of provisioning. For the rest of it, Lowther had waved a magic wand at Lock’s slightest suggestion, and the thing desired appeared as though sprung from a trap.

It was all so different compared with the past, and money was so unimportant compared with comfort, that Lock found himself formulating quizzical questions about the inequalities of life. They were absurd and unanswerable, but out of them he began to get a better understanding of Mrs. Tarrant. She was a sybarite. She had a great capacity for the enjoyment of physical things. Till a short time ago that appetite had never been satisfied. Now that the time had come she was going about it with prodigality.

She arrived on board with high spirits, expressed herself delighted with everything, and would like to sail at once. Eva had but few words, and Jackson, nodding to Lock with a touch of patronage, took the affair very coolly.

There is a fascination about putting to sea.

It instils a sense of liberation from things static, of merging oneself in the flux of a great unknown. Lock always felt this, even when Active stole with darkened lights out of a mine-guarded harbour. Now he felt it more than ever.

Cygnet gathered her dainty way across Southampton Water. From his post on the bridge the yacht’s proportions looked fairy-like. She was schooner-rigged, which pleased him, and he proposed to do all the sailing possible. The slow sweep of her deck carried his eye back to her counter, where Mrs. Tarrant had established herself in a wicker chair. Jackson was not visible. Eva was standing by the port rail, watching a motor-boat race off Ryde. Further down the Solent were hulls, big and little, working in from the seven seas. To the north lay the great green carpet of the New Forest. Overhead the sky was infiltered with pale, clear sunlight, a gentle autumnal glory of the summer’s last caress, and the air had a sweet quality gathered from stacked hay and ripened orchards. Ahead lay the wide, wide world.

It was impossible for Lock to merge himself in all this, as he thankfully did, without feeling that he had exaggerated the complications of the past few days. The broad figure of Tarrant assumed another perspective. It dwindled at every turn of the propeller. It moved automatically into the background. At the same time, it seemed that his place was more than filled by another. Without his dramatic appearance and confidence the remaining three would have lacked their peculiar significance. It was Tarrant who brought them into the limelight, and his future was linked with theirs.

As though presenting herself in confirmation of this, Eva came slowly forward, halting with her hand on the bridge companion rail.

“Are visitors allowed?”

“Of course: at any time.”

“I thought perhaps it was sacred ground. One can’t do it on a liner.”

“Cygnet’s different, and you’re the owner’s daughter.”

“I suppose you’re very much at home here. Did you come into Portsmouth often?”

“My base for the last two years. Before that—in the war—the way to Portsmouth was like—well—walking down the Strand.”

“Would you care to tell something about that part of it, and here—where we are now? You’ll find me a nuisance later on. Always when we reach a place I’ll be asking when you were there last, and what happened. Do you mind?”

“Not at all, but I’m afraid it will sound rather flat. One does not carry away very sharp impressions. You do your job and forget about it.”

“Try, once. What was it like here in wartime?”

“Rather crowded and messy,” he grinned. “That’s Bournemouth over there, but we didn’t see much Bournemouth those nights. They weren’t allowed to light up. If we went out and came into our own base at night our lights were dowsed. We followed a wire.”

“You’re joking.”

“Too useful to be a joke. The wire was laid on the bottom of our proper channel and electrified. Under the destroyer’s hull was a sort of detector. It picked up the wire’s current and told us if we got to one side or the other. Simple enough.”

“You steered by that!”

“Rather.”

“Didn’t you just creep along?”

“I’ve come in at thirty-knots.”

She was silent for a moment, her face hardening a little, her eyes very keen. Her expression was not that of surprise or wonder. It seemed that she would have liked to have been a part of all that, and showed a touch of envy.

“And what did you do here—in the Channel?”

“Convoy and patrol work, mine sweeping and sinking, which is a sort of marine housemaid’s job, and occasional duty in the North Sea.”

“Mines must be horrid!”

“A bit objectionable till you get acquainted. Floating ones we used to explode with rifle or gunfire, but the submerged ones were twisters. Some of ’em would go off if you merely passed within a certain distance. Sensitive beggars. Others had horns, like a snail. If you touched a horn, up you went. Most of the sweeping was done by trawlers. Corking good work, too. We couldn’t have got along without ’em.”

She thought this over while the Isle of Wight slid sleepily by. The brief picture he had drawn, the more forcible by reason of its curtness, must have suggested something to her. She looked at him suddenly, then shook her head with a puzzled expression.

“Mr. Lock?”

“Yes?”

“Going through all that when you were really only a big boy, has it affected you since? Has it made any difference in the way you feel about people—and things? I don’t want to be inquisitive, but hasn’t it—well—altered you?”

“Perhaps—no—I don’t see why it should,” he said, rather amused. “You grow away from it: you throw it off.”

“I should think it would make one awfully hard,” she ventured. “It would me.”

“Well, if I’m a bit crude sometimes, I’ve an idea”—here he made a gesture at the glistening yacht—“that these surroundings ought to counteract it in time.”

Crude! She, more interested in him than in any man she had ever met, did not think him crude. That was in her eyes. She was finding a new experience, a new sensation. He was more of a man than any of the others. He had no affectation, seemingly very few wants, and too much modesty to see that he was making himself increasingly attractive. He had reserve. And his very coolness gave her an unaccustomed thrill.

“When will we be at St. Malo, do you think?”

“St. Malo—it’s about a hundred and fifty miles from here—say nine hours. We’ll go between Jersey and Guernsey.”

“It’ll be dark when we get there?”

“Yes, quite.”

“You won’t mind that?”

“There are such things as lighthouses,” he laughed. “And you evidently don’t know how clever I am at finding my way in the dark.”

The girl stared at him, stiffened, and lost all trace of friendliness. Her features became a sort of mask behind which stirred a suggestion of disillusionment, as though her mind, being favourably made up, had all at once been shocked and shaken. It was clear that he had said something to which she was attaching a double meaning he had not intended. She gave her head a quick shake as though getting rid of an unpleasant impression, and went down from the bridge in baffling silence.

Lock frowned at the Needles. He was still knitting his brows when perception seemed to rush on him. Tarrant—Jackson—Soho! Had he been seen by Jackson after all? More—had Jackson found Tarrant? This possibility, so lately and thankfully pushed aside, now came back at him. Going over his own words about the dark, linking one thing with another, he felt forced to consider the worst. Jackson might know about Tarrant; might have told Eva and her mother; might have some private reason for concealing the fact from Lock. This was imaginable, but, he argued doggedly, it should not warrant such marked ill-favour towards himself.

The entrance to St. Malo harbour is tricky. The River Rance comes down between steep and wooded banks from Dinant and the plains of Brittany, debouching at the ancient town, whence, yearly, duly blessed and anointed by mitred Bishops, there set forth the Breton fisher craft for the cold seas of Iceland and Nova Scotia. Approaching St. Malo, skirting shoals and low-lying reefs, one may best lie off Dinard. With a casino and wide curve of yellow sands, Dinard is the haunt of retirement for British admirals and field officers who object to paying British taxes. Established here in growing numbers, they live in the mutually conceded distinction of their past, and turn eyes not altogether of contentment toward the country of their birth.

Lock, feeling his cautious way, had forced himself to stop worrying about the Tarrant affair. Nothing to be gained by that. On the way across, the owner’s party had been busy settling themselves, and perhaps discussing what attitude should be adopted toward the young man who had not left the bridge. When anchor had dropped Mrs. Tarrant, who had concluded a long conversation with Jackson, asked that the launch should set her ashore at the stone steps of St. Malo quay, also that the launch should wait.

“And when can we go on?” she added.

“Whenever you wish. I’ll hand over to the first officer at midnight. I take it that we don’t stop this side of Gibraltar if all’s well?”

She glanced at Jackson standing at her elbow, and seemed to find the answer.

“No, please: straight on. And I’d like to start immediately I get back. I won’t be long.”

She said nothing more, and five minutes later the launch shot shoreward. There had been no suggestion that either of the others accompany her, nor did they seem to expect it, though the lights of the two towns glistened invitingly across the smooth water and close at hand. Mrs. Tarrant, to Lock’s eye full of suppressed excitement, did not glance back. The others stood for some time watching. Under an electriclight swung from the main boom, Eva appeared tense and nervous. Jackson had stepped to the rail, and stood, hands in pockets, the tip of his cigar making a small fiery spot that brightened and dimmed in the half-light.

From the engine-room rose the rhythmical hum of a dynamo, and Cygnet waited like a great glowing, palpitating bird poised for flight. Lock found himself asking what she was flying from—or to. He established himself in the charthouse, made the first entry in Cygnet’s log, and talked shop with Maclay, his first officer. Maclay had been third on a Clan liner when he came into a small inheritance. On the strength of this he deserted salt water for a time, bought a cottage on the banks of the Clyde, and watched the big ships passing to and fro till the sea beckoned a vast finger and called him back. But all he could find for the time being was with Lowther. Lock had liked him on sight, a small, taciturn, mahogany-skinned man with cold grey eyes and a body built of whipcord. And if this job was a comedown from a fifteen thousand tonner, he never mentioned it.

Less than an hour later, the launch could be seen speeding back. In a little pool of light she swung alongside, and Lock to his intense surprise made out two passengers instead of one. Also there were two trunks. Mrs. Tarrant seemed very satisfied. Jackson, he noted, was in the saloon companion, not visible from the launch, and wore an expression of furtive triumph. Eva was at the rail.

The second passenger, a girl, glanced up and made an indefinite gesture. It conveyed recognition, but not that which is signalled from friend to friend. Mrs. Tarrant, ascending first, reached the deck with a little nod, followed by the stranger.

“Well, well,” said Eva, putting out her hand, “isn’t it strange that we should meet like this?”

The girl did not answer. Her eyes had rounded, and she was gazing at Jackson as though robbed of all power. He might have been a ghost. Her lips were parted, but she could not speak. Jackson, half-way between saloon and main deck, made a little bow into which he put a world of ironical pleasure.

“What a fortunate meeting! How are you?”

His cigar brightened and paled, but he stood, immobile as wax, the smirk of satisfaction frozen on his narrow features. Eva, more uncertain of herself, and perhaps of the part she was allotted to play in this affair, scrutinized the new-comer as though to determine whether between them it was to be peace or war. But Mrs. Tarrant exhibited no doubt, no self-searching. Hers was the attitude of one who, being committed to a given act, has performed it, and maintains a complete assurance as to its outcome. Thus she stood for a fraction of time, till in her bold eyes dawned an indescribable smile.

“Mr. Lock,” she said, coming forward, “I would like to introduce you to Miss Tarrant. And may we please start at once?”