"And consider. For all you know I might have planned that meeting in the Chinese quarter for a—a dreadful purpose. Even now I may be spinning a web around you!" Then, with a laugh, she switched the topic. "It will be pleasant to have an acquaintance aboard. Voyages are rather monotonous when one is alone, don't you think?"
Conversation was not at its best during the remainder of the ride, and at the hotel they parted with a few words, rather stilted words. He'd surely see her on the boat. Yes, he must look her up. She had enjoyed the evening tremendously. A last glimpse of her eyes, of their luring mystery; then she was gone.
Trent did not go to sleep immediately. He lay in darkness and smoked a cheroot, puzzling over what Dana Charteris had said.
"... For all you know I might have planned that meeting.... Even now I may be spinning a web around you!"
Those words lodged in his brain, baffled him. There was something he could not understand, but none the less intriguing, in the still, obscure depths below the surface ripples.
6
Trent did not see Dana Charteris the next day. It was raining and Calcutta was gray and dismal. Tambusami appeared early and saw to it that his luggage was transferred to the ship. Trent felt that his very spirits were moist as he rode to the boat. Even his cabin was damp, cheerless.
Shortly before five o'clock the Manchester warped out from the jetty, her twin screws churning the brown water. Trent, looking out of his cabin window, saw Calcutta draw robes of rain about her and fade. The smoke-stacks of Howrah's mills were blurred fingers appealing to a stark sky; leaves, wind-whirled from toddy-palms on the mud banks, spun across the Hoogly; only when lightning scribbled a line of vivid lavender across the heavens was the gray monotony relieved.
The world was an old, old woman, and the sound of the steamer's whistle was her hoarse, stricken voice.