“No, you may have been fortunate enough to brain an unlucky steward in the deck below.”
A small boy who had arrived unobserved a few paces to our rear blew a deafening blast on a bugle.
“Lunch,” declared Mrs. Blair ecstatically. “I’ve had nothing to eat since breakfast, except two cups of beef-tea. Lunch, Miss Beddingfeld?”
“Well,” I said waveringly. “Yes, I do feel rather hungry.”
“Splendid. You’re sitting at the purser’s table, I know. Tackle him about the cabin.”
I found my way down to the saloon, began to eat gingerly, and finished by consuming an enormous meal. My friend of yesterday congratulated me on my recovery. Every one was changing cabins to-day, he told me, and he promised that my things should be moved to an outside one without delay.
There were only four at our table, myself, a couple of elderly ladies, and a missionary who talked a lot about “our poor black brothers.”
I looked round at the other tables. Mrs. Blair was sitting at the Captain’s table, Colonel Race next to her. On the other side of the Captain was a distinguished-looking, grey-haired man. A good many people I had already noticed on deck, but there was one man who had not previously appeared. Had he done so, he could hardly have escaped my notice. He was tall and dark, and had such a peculiarly sinister type of countenance that I was quite startled. I asked the purser, with some curiosity, who he was.
“That man? Oh, that’s Sir Eustace Pedler’s secretary. Been very sea-sick, poor chap, and not appeared before. Sir Eustace has got two secretaries with him, and the sea’s been too much for both of them. The other fellow hasn’t turned up yet. This man’s name is Pagett.”
So Sir Eustace Pedler, the owner of the Mill House, was on board. Probably only a coincidence, and yet——