Apart from his really sincere regard for her, he had the gambler’s idea that she would bring him luck. She was to be one means to an end, as the precious metal in his bag was to be another.
But the more he thought of her, the more he pictured a happy home in which she reigned as a sort of good fairy and guardian angel, the more he felt a strange, undefined sense of fear in connexion with this evening’s adventure.
It was such a daring and gigantic deed that it was bound to cause a sensation. It would be in every man’s mouth by-and-by. He would hear of it everywhere. The efforts made to discover the perpetrators would be superhuman. Would he not, as the days went on, and he settled down into the happy life he pictured for himself with Ruth, be constantly reminded of the perils which he ran? He flung his half-smoked cigar away pettishly. He was annoyed with himself for worrying about the future at all.
‘Only let me get safe out of this,’ he thought to himself, and I’ll make a fresh start. This is the last little business Smith and Co. will transact so far as I am concerned. Preene and Brooks and Heckett can take their share and do as they like; Turvey is squared, and daren’t speak for his own sake; and the old Ned Marston will disappear for ever. The phoenix that will rise from his ashes will be a very different person indeed.’
Standing at the pier-head, Edward Marston looked far away over the waves into his future life.
His dreams were interrupted by a voice at his elbow.
‘Stand aside there!’
Marston looked up with a start.
The harbour officials were busy with ropes and landing-stages. The Ostend packet had crept up and he had not even seen it.
In a moment it was alongside. A stream of passengers flowed up the gangways on to the pier, and trickled gently towards the station.