Did she suspect? There was nothing for suspicion to lay hold of. Donahue was one of the acutest villains under the Southern Cross, and he did not make clumsy mistakes. The story of the derelict, of the valuables abandoned on board, of the necessity for finding the ship soon and secretly, might have sounded far-fetched to city-dwelling folk, but out in the wild South Seas stranger things may happen any day. The plan was neat and plausible from every point of view, and Vaiti had taken the bait readily enough that afternoon. Yet Donahue felt—as the two walked silently down the dim, perfumed beach street, all ablow with vagrant sea winds and wandering wafts of song—that he would have given a good deal for just one peep into his handsome companion's mind.
Vaiti walked beside him, looking straight ahead. Had Donahue's wish been granted, he would have thought somewhat less of his own acuteness. She did suspect. A man, in her case, would have been convinced by the reasonable aspect of the whole affair. Vaiti, being a woman, with sea-anemone tentacles of instinct floating and tingling all about the steady centres of reason in her mind, was convinced, and vet not convinced. She thought it was all right, yet she knew it was not—after a woman's way.
In any case, however, it was an adventure, and there was a mystery to fathom. So she put on a more substantial dress than the gauzy draperies she had been wearing, hung the neatest possible little pearl-handled Smith and Wesson round her neck, under the swelling folds of her frock, by means of an innocent-looking thin gold neck-chain that would snap with a tug; put her long-bladed knife in her pocket, with the sheath sewn to the dress, so that a pull would bring out the blade, and joined Donahue an hour after dinner, on the verandah steps, confident of her ability to see the thing through, whatever it might be.
She looked sharply about her, as she stepped over the low bulwarks of the Ikurangi and dropped down on to the encumbered, untidy deck. No one about. Nothing to be seen but a dirty little main deck, with rusty pumps and a yawning hatch, and a poop that even in the pallid light just beginning to tremble up from the rising moon showed neglect of the sacred ceremony of daily deck-washing.
Now, any decent ship's captain will attend to his deck-washing, even if he doesn't shave or wash himself from port to port. Vaiti did not like that unscrupulous, dirty poop. But she was already up on it, and Donahue was bowing her down the cabin companion, with a jarring smile and a good deal of over-fluent blarney. The cabin was small and smelly; it had an oblong table in the middle, surrounded by cushioned lockers, and an open door at the end facing the companion. This door evidently opened into Donahue's own cabin, for a rough wash-stand and a looking-glass, the latter hung high on the bulkhead, were plainly visible. There was a lamp nailed above the glass, and the two together shone brightly out into the rather ill-lit main cabin.
"What'll you take?" asked Donahue, with his unpleasant smile. "I've got some sweet sherry wine, just the thing for ladies—or wouldn't ye put your lips to a taste of peach brandy?"
Vaiti shook her head.
"No good drink, suppose talk business," she said. She would not have swallowed a glass of water on the Ikurangi for a dozen Virot hats.
Donahue had not expected to catch her so easily; still, he cast a thought of regret to his nicely-doctored liquors. She evidently meant what she said—and the other way Was harder.
"Well, thin, darlin', we'll have a look at the cha-art," he observed, producing a roll of paper. "It's yourself that can help us t'rough this business—you and the ould man—better than any one from Calloa to Sydney if only yez are raisonable about terms."