Harry Rames fell again to tapping with his paper-knife upon the blotting-pad. He tapped aimlessly, the silver handle flashing in the light, the ivory blade striking and resounding. But gradually an intention seemed to become audible in his tapping. The taps came quickly, three or four together, then were spaced, then streamed swiftly again like sparks from an anvil. The noise began to jar on Cynthia's nerves.
"Don't do that, Harry, please," she said.
"I won't," said he, throwing down the paper-knife.
"You might have been sending a telegram."
"By wireless, eh?" he said with a smile, and then a curious look came into his face. "I was," he said slowly. Cynthia drew back in her chair with a queer feeling of uneasiness.
"Not to--?" she began, and stopped short of the name. She glanced furtively around the room. She was suddenly chilled.
"To Challoner? No," he answered. He had hardly been aware of what he was doing, and he wondered now why the idea to do it had thus irrelevantly entered his head. No doubt an instinctive desire to get relief from the obsession of the sordid tragedy of Challoner's death had prompted him. But, whatever the cause, he had been tapping out, in accordance with the Morse code, a message to the little, black, full-rigged ship far away upon Southern seas.
He sprang up from his chair.
"There's a letter you wanted me to post, Cynthia. I had forgotten it. Give it to me."
"It dropped into the fire," said Cynthia.