"Good-night. I shall expect you in the morning."
"In the morning."
A quarter of an hour later Browne was alone in his own cabin. Having locked his door, he took the letter, the other had given him, from his pocket and opened it. A half-sheet of note-paper, upon which scarcely five hundred words were written, was all he found. But these words, he knew, meant all the world to him. He read and re-read them, and, as soon as he had got them by heart, lit a match and set fire to the paper, which was reduced to ashes. Then he returned to the deck, where Maas and Foote were still seated, and settled himself down for a chat. They had not been there many minutes before Maas found, that he had smoked the last cigar of a particular brand he affected, and rose to go to his cabin in search of another. He had not been very long absent before Browne remembered that he had left the envelope of MacAndrew's letter on his dressing-table. Accordingly he set off in search of it, intending to destroy it as he had done its contents. Having reached the companion, he was descending to the saloon below, when a sound resembling the careful, though hurried, closing of a door attracted his attention. A moment later he stepped into the saloon, to find Maas there, who, for once in his life, appeared to be flurried and put out by something.
"I have lost my cigar-case, my dear Browne," he said, as if in explanation. "Is it not annoying?"
Browne felt sure that this was not the truth. However, he did not say so, but when he had condoled with him, entered his own cabin, where a surprise was in store for him. The envelope he had come down to burn, and which he distinctly remembered having placed upon the table less than half an hour before, was missing. Some one had taken it!
CHAPTER XXIII
Taking one thing with another, Browne's night after the incident described at the end of the previous chapter was far from being a good one. He could not, try how he would, solve the mystery as to what had become of that envelope. He had hunted the cabin through and through, and searched his pockets times without number, but always with the same lack of success. As he lay turning the matter over and over in his mind, he remembered that he had heard the soft shutting of a door as he descended the companion-ladder, and also that Maas had betrayed considerable embarrassment when he entered the saloon. It was absurd, however, to suppose that he could have had any hand in its disappearance. But the fact remained that the envelope was gone. He rang for his valet, and questioned him; but the man declared that, not only did he know nothing at all about it, but that he had not entered the cabin between dinner-time and when he had prepared his master for the night. It was a singular thing altogether. At last, being unable to remain where he was any longer, he rose and dressed himself and went up to the deck. Day was just breaking. A cloudless sky was overhead, and in the gray light the Peak looked unusually picturesque; the water alongside was as smooth as a sheet of glass; the only signs of life were a few gulls wheeling with discordant cries around a patch of seaweed floating astern.
Browne had been pacing the deck for upwards of a quarter of an hour, when he noticed a sampan pull off from the shore towards the yacht. From where he stood he could plainly distinguish the tall figure of MacAndrew. He accordingly went to the gangway to receive him. Presently one of the women pulling brought her up at the foot of the accommodation-ladder, when the passenger ran up the steps, and gracefully saluted Browne.
"Good-morning," he said. "In spite of the earliness of the hour, I think I am up to time."