He led the way down a companion to a diminutive saloon. “It’s in the sleeping part, still forward,” he pointed, and the two men squeezed through a door in the bulkhead into a tiny cabin, lit by electric light and with a table in the center and two berths on either side. On the table was a frame on the top of which was stretched a chart, and a light rod ran out from one side to a pointer fixed over the middle of the chart.
“You can see that it’s very roughly made,” Lamson went on, “but if you look closely I think you’ll find that it works all right.”
Cheyne bent forward and examined the machine, and as he did so mystification grew in his mind. The chart was not of the estuary of the Dart, nor, stranger still, was it connected to rollers. It was simply tacked on what he now saw was merely the lid of a box. How it was moved he couldn’t see.
“I don’t follow this,” he said. “How do you get your chart to move if it’s nailed down?”
There was no answer, but as he swung round with a sudden misgiving there was a sharp click. Lamson had disappeared and the door was shut!
Cheyne seized the handle and turned it violently, only to find that the bolt of the lock had been shot, but before he could attempt further researches the light went off, leaving him in almost pitch darkness. At the same moment a significant lurch showed that they were passing from the shelter of the estuary into the open sea.
He twisted and tugged at the handle. “Here you, Lamson!” he shouted angrily. “What do you mean by this? Open the door at once. Confound you! Will you open the door!” He began to kick savagely at the woodwork.
A small panel in the partition between the cabins shot aside and a beam of light flowed into Cheyne’s. Lamson’s face appeared at the opening. He spoke in an old-fashioned, stilted way, aping extreme politeness, but his mocking smile gave the lie to his protestations.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cheyne, for this incivility,” he declared, “and hope that when you have heard my explanation you will pardon me. I must admit I have played a trick on you for which I offer the fullest apologies. The story of my invention was a fabrication. So far as I am aware no apparatus such as I have described exists: certainly I have not made one. The truth is that you can do me a service, and I took the liberty of inveigling you here in the hope of securing your good offices in the matter.”
“You’ve taken a bad way of getting my help,” Cheyne shouted wrathfully. “Open the door at once, damn you, or I’ll smash it to splinters!”