It passed into Mortimer Lightwood’s mind that a change of some sort, best expressed perhaps as an intensification of all that was wildest and most negligent and reckless in his friend, had come upon him in the last half-hour or so. Thoroughly used to him as he was, he found something new and strained in him that was for the moment perplexing. This passed into his mind, and passed out again; but he remembered it afterwards.
‘There’s where she sits, you see,’ said Eugene, when they were standing under the bank, roared and riven at by the wind. ‘There’s the light of her fire.’
‘I’ll take a peep through the window,’ said Mortimer.
‘No, don’t!’ Eugene caught him by the arm. ‘Best, not make a show of her. Come to our honest friend.’
He led him to the post of watch, and they both dropped down and crept under the lee of the boat; a better shelter than it had seemed before, being directly contrasted with the blowing wind and the bare night.
‘Mr Inspector at home?’ whispered Eugene.
‘Here I am, sir.’
‘And our friend of the perspiring brow is at the far corner there? Good. Anything happened?’
‘His daughter has been out, thinking she heard him calling, unless it was a sign to him to keep out of the way. It might have been.’
‘It might have been Rule Britannia,’ muttered Eugene, ‘but it wasn’t. Mortimer!’