“I find myself,” he remarked ruminatively, “still a little troubled as to the precise amount of intelligence which our friend Mr. Crawshay might be said to possess. I wonder if I might ask; without your considering it a liberty, what he was talking to you about?”
“About you,” she answered.
“Ah!”
“Warning me against you.”
“Dear me! Aren’t you terrified?”
“I am not terrified,” she replied, “but I think it best to tell you that he also has suspicions, absurd though it may seem, of Phillips and the doctor.”
“Why not the purser and captain, while he’s about it?” Jocelyn said coolly. “Every one on this boat seems to have got the nerves. They searched my stateroom this morning.”
“Searched your stateroom?” she repeated. “Do you mean while you were out?”
“Not a bit of it,” he replied. “They dragged me up at half-past eight this morning — the captain, purser and a steward — fetched up my trunk and searched all my possessions.”
“What for?” she asked, with a sudden chill.
He smiled at her reassuringly. “Something they didn’t find! Something,” he added, after a slight pause, “which they never will find!”
Towards midday, Jocelyn Thew abandoned a game of shuffleboard, and, leaning against the side of the vessel, gazed steadily up at the wireless operating room. The lightnings had been playing around the mast for the last ten minutes without effect. He turned towards one of the ship’s officers who was passing.
“Anything gone wrong with the wireless?” he enquired.
“The operator’s ill, sir,” was the prompt reply. “We’ve only one on board, as it happens, so we are rather in a mess.”
Jocelyn strolled away aft, considering the situation. He found Crawshay seated in an elaborate deck chair and immersed in a novel.
“I hear the wireless has gone wrong,” he remarked, stopping in front of him.
Crawshay glanced up blandly.
“What’s that?” he demanded. “Wireless? Why, it’s been going all the morning.”
“There has been no one there to take the messages, though. If anything happens to us, we shall be in a nice pickle.”
Crawshay shivered.
“I wish you people wouldn’t suggest such things,” he said, a little testily. “I was just trying to get all thought of this most perilous voyage out of my mind, with the help of a novel here. From which do you seriously consider we have most to fear,” he went on, “mines, submarines, or predatory vessels of the type of the Blucher?”
“The latter, I should think,” Jocelyn replied. “They say that submarines are scarcely venturing so far out just now.”
There was a brief silence. Jocelyn Thew was apparently engaged in trying to fit a cigarette into his holder.
“Specially hard luck on you,” he remarked presently, “if anything happened when you’ve taken so much trouble to get on board.”
“It would be exceedingly annoying,” Crawshay declared, with vigour, “added to which I am not in a state of health to endure a voyage in a small boat. I have been this morning to look at our places, in case of accident. I find that I am expected to wield an oar long enough to break my back.”
Jocelyn Thew smiled. The other man’s peevishness seemed too natural to be assumed.
“I expect you’ll be glad enough to do your bit, if anything does happen to us,” he observed.
“By-the-by,” Crawshay asked, “I wonder what will become of that poor fellow downstairs — the man who is supposed to be dying, I mean — if trouble comes?”
“I heard them discussing it at breakfast time,” Jocelyn Thew replied. “I understand that he has asked specially to be allowed to remain where he is. There would of course be not the slightest chance of saving his life. The doctor who is with him — Gant, I think his name is — told us that anything in the shape of a rough sea, even, would mean the end of him. He quite understands this himself.” Crawshay assented gravely.
“It seems a little brutal but it is common sense,” he declared. “In times of great stress, too, one becomes primitive, and the primitive instinct is for the strong to save himself. I am not ashamed to confess,” he concluded, “that I have secured an extra lifebelt.”
Jocelyn glanced, for a moment scornfully down at the man who had now picked up his novel again and was busy reading. Crawshay represented so much the things that he despised in life. It was impossible to treat or consider him in any way as a rival to be feared. He passed down the deck and made his way below to the doctor’s room. He found the latter in the act of starting off to see a patient.
“I came around to ask after Robins, the young Marconi man,” Jocelyn explained. “I hear that he was taken ill last night.”
The doctor looked at his questioner keenly.
“That is so,” he admitted.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I have not thoroughly diagnosed his complaint as yet,” was the careful reply. “I can tell you for a certainty, though, that he will not be able to work for two or three days.”
“It seems very sudden,” Jocelyn Thew persisted.
“As a matter of fact, I had some slight acquaintance with him, and I always thought that he was a remarkably strong young fellow.”
The doctor, who had completed his preparations for departure, picked up his cap and politely showed his visitor out. “You wouldn’t care,” the latter suggested, “to let me go down and have a look at him? I can’t call myself a medical man, but I know something about sickness and I am quite interested in young Robins.”
“I don’t think that I shall need a second opinion at present, thank you,” the doctor rejoined, a little drily. “If you wish to see him later on, you must get permission from the captain. Good morning, Mr. Thew.”
Jocelyn Thew strolled thoughtfully away, found a retired spot upon the promenade deck behind a boat, lit a very black cigar, and, drawing his field-glasses from his pocket, searched the horizon carefully. There was no sign of any passing steamer, not even the faintest wisp of black smoke anywhere upon the horizon. It was Wednesday to-day, and they had left New York on Saturday. He drew a sheet of paper from his pocket and made a few calculations. It was the day and past the time upon which things were due to happen….
The day wore on very much as most days do on an Atlantic voyage in early summer. The little handful of passengers, who seemed for the moment to have cast all anxieties to the winds, played shuffleboard and quoits, lunched with vigorous appetites, drank tea out on deck, and indulged in strenuous before-dinner promenades. The sun shone all day, the sea remained wonderfully calm. Not a trace of any other steamer was visible from morning until early nightfall, and Jocelyn Thew walked restlessly about with a grim look upon his face. At dinner time the captain hinted at fog, and looked doubtfully out of the open porthole at the oily-looking waste of waters.
“Another night on the bridge for me, I think,” he remarked.
Jocelyn Thew leaned forward in his place.
“By-the-by, Captain,” he asked, “now that the shipping is so reduced, do you alter speed for fog?”
The captain filled his glass from the jug of lemonade which, was always before him.
“Do we alter our speed, eh?” he repeated. “You must remember,” he went on, “that we have Miss Beverley on board. We couldn’t afford to give Miss Beverley a fright.”
Jocelyn accepted the evasion with a slight bow. Katharine, who had come in to dine a little late and seemed graver than usual, smiled at the captain.
“Am I the most precious thing on this steamer?” she asked.
“Gallantry,” the captain replied, “compels me to say yes!”