Sabatini smiled.
"Do you seriously think that I asked you to bring me on the river for the pleasure of watching your prowess with that pole, my friend?" he asked. "Not at all. I am going to ask you to do me a service."
Arnold was suddenly conscious that Sabatini, for the first time since he had known him, was in earnest. The lines of his marble-white face seemed to have grown tenser and firmer, his manner was the manner of a man who meets a crisis.
"Turn your head and look inland," he said. "You follow the lane there?"
"Quite well," he admitted.
"At the corner," Sabatini continued, "just out of sight behind that tall hedge, is my motor car. I want you to land and make your way there. My chauffeur has his instructions. He will take you to a village some eight miles up the river, a village called Heslop Wood. There is a boat-builder's yard at the end of the main street. You will hire a boat and row up the river. About three hundred yards up, on the left hand side, is an old, dismantled-looking house-boat. I want you to board it and search it thoroughly."
Sabatini paused, and Arnold looked at him, perplexed.
"Search it!" he exclaimed. "But for whom? For what?"
"It is my belief," Sabatini went on, "that Starling is hiding there. If he is, I want you to bring him to me by any means which occur to you. I had sooner he were dead, but that is too much to ask of you. I want him brought in the motor car to that point in the lane there. Then, if you succeed, you will bring him down here and your mission is ended. Will you undertake it?"