As instantly as in the morning he stopped. The skiff sped past and in a moment was twenty astern.
“If he asked my advice I should say a liver-pill,” said the boatman. “Did you see his face, sir?”
Gilead nodded. How could he have failed to—or that other, the face of last night? It had not looked at him; its eyes, he had seen, were fixed unwinkingly on the livid mask before them. But there had been the same expression of startled resentment, the same suggestion of obstinate importunateness, the same frowning vertical line between the brows, the same full lower lip, so full and so scarlet that it might have stood for a vampire’s gorged with blood.
“Hullo!” said the boatman; “he’s turning, by his looks, to come after us!”
He put his back into his work; but sure enough, sturdily as he pulled, the skiff overhauled them. More than half way up the withy-bed it passed, hugging the shore, so that the faces were sunk in shadow.
“Keep it up,” said Gilead. “I want you to take me to the Dragonfly.”
He had made up his mind in that moment. After all, Cicely Fleming had sought the help of the Agency, and was entitled to its advice and, if necessary, its protection. He could not altogether ignore that shadowy appeal. It must have portended something, and it would be base to turn away, leaving it unquestioned.
The boatman bending to his task, the skiff gained so little on them that at the last reach, coming out into the open to avoid the rushes, it was a bare fifty yards ahead as it made straight for the pale-green houseboat lying solitary on the water. But it had kept, and even increased its lead a little as it ran home and the man leapt on board and disappeared into the saloon.
Gilead could not guess why he thus, and so obviously, fled to escape him. He felt his own task to be a gentle and propitiatory one, and he had no intention of imperilling its object by assuming any impertinently censorious attitude. Moreover, how was his intention foreseen—unless, indeed, the girl herself had recognised and explained him? He saw her, just an instant, standing at the door; and then she too vanished.
A score of strokes now, and they were across the intervening space, when, at the moment the boatman unshipped his left scull, to run under the Dragonfly’s counter, sudden and startling a shot slammed out from within. The man, gripping at the gunwale, slipped his hand in the shock, then caught on again and held.