His errand was in jeopardy. He would soon need all of his cunning, all his strength, to pull through. He had set for himself something more than the mere rôle of a secret messenger. He had buckled on the sword of Nemesis. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. He was letting his grief dig in too deeply. He must find some diversion shortly or he was done for.
He had had to fight Morgan bitterly to win his point. Morgan maintained that the arrival of the blue-print in Washington would be vengeance enough for any reasonable man. In the end, however, he had surrendered, reluctantly agreed not to disturb the passengers beyond careful scrutiny of their passports. But why had the taciturn Morgan chuckled, thwacked him jovially on the shoulder, and continued chuckling as he went down the gang-plank just before it was hauled aboard? Mathison was still mystified over this peculiar conduct.
Anyhow, one thing was off his mind. That long, thick manila envelope was in the purser's safe. It did not matter that the purser might still be cudgeling his brains as to the why and wherefore of the remarkable decorations on the face of that envelope for which the owner had not required a receipt of deposit.
There were twenty-one first-class passengers and eighty steerage. Mathison had applied himself intensively to the memorization of the twelve descriptions in that little red book of Hallowell's. None of the first-class passengers tallied. It was conceivable that his enemies would keep under cover until they were ready to strike; and nowhere could they keep hidden so well as in the steerage, among the Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, and Russians.
They had found Paolo in the Pasig River, a hundred gold in his pocket, conclusive evidence of two things—that the servant had betrayed his master and had known too much for the safety of the men who had bribed him.
Mathison knocked the dottle from his pipe, turned toward the smoking-room, when he saw a book coming along the deck, flopping and bumping like a gull with a broken wing. He recovered it. Probably it belonged to some passenger aft the smoke-room. The Life of the Bee: Maeterlinck. There was nothing on the fly-leaf to indicate the ownership, however. He tucked it under his arm and walked aft.
In a steamer-chair between the port and starboard projections of the deck-house was a woman. He recognized her as the old lady who occupied the cabin opposite to his on the main deck. A gray cashmere shawl was wrapped about her head and shoulders. The rest of her body was snug in the folds of a plaid rug. A wisp of gray hair, the sport of the wind, was fluttering, now across her forehead, now above the edge of the shawl. She wore a pair of mandarin spectacles with amber lenses. Mathison could not tell whether she was asleep or awake. Nevertheless he approached. The craving for companionship was not to be denied.
"I beg your pardon," he began, "but perhaps this book is yours. It came galloping around to starboard from this direction."
"Thank you. I saw it start on its journey, but I was too lazy to go after it." She held out her hand—concealed in a gray cotton glove—and he laid the book on it.
It did not occur to him then, but it did later, that the voice was singularly rich and full for one who appeared to be well along in the 'sixties. But he was not unaware of the fact that breeding and education may preserve the tonal quality of a voice through life.