Leslie thought he understood. His dimly-seen companion at the stern-rail had been "shipped," as she called it, while the ship was lying in the London docks weeks before, when the original plot for the abduction of Violet Maynard held good. She had been informed of half the vile plot in which he had then been an accomplice—that the yacht belonged to him, and that it was being used for an elopement. She was still in that belief, the darker side of the story having been kept from her, and she was under the delusion that she would have a lady to wait on during the voyage.
But why, Leslie asked himself, had the delusion been fostered so long after Nugent, and through him, of course, Brant, had been aware of the breakdown of the conspiracy? Why, for the matter of that, was the woman on board at all, since there would be no unhappy captive for whom her services would be required? The obvious thing to have done would have been to put her ashore at Weymouth directly the wicked project was abandoned.
"There must be some mistake," he said. "I am sorry to spoil your romantic anticipations, but I am certainly not eloping with anybody. So far as I know, I am to be the only passenger."
"Then what's that old liar's game?" blurted Miss Jimpson. "Only this morning, when he had the cheek to keep me aboard, he said——"
"Only this morning," Leslie interrupted in dull amazement. "Do you mean that only to-day for the first time you made the acquaintance of Brant?"
"That is precisely what I do mean. I never saw him or his ship till this morning at eleven o'clock in the harbour at Weymouth. The yarn he pitched me then was that he was going to pick up a lady down along the coast, and that he wanted one of her own sex to keep her company. 'Tis true he did not say anything about an elopement. It was me who figured that out after you came aboard alone and the launch went back for the lady."
"Went back for the lady!" gasped Leslie, a lurid light beginning to dawn upon his dazed senses.
"Well, I expect it's one of my own sex; I don't suppose all the pretty frilly things Brant ordered and paid for, and which I brought on board, were for you or any other gentleman," was Miss Nettle Jimpson's pert rejoinder. "That's what gave me the elopement notion, don't you see—a girl running away on the quiet, and in too much of a pucker to bring her own trunks. And I'm right, after all! Here's the launch back again, and just listen to that!"
Leslie had been conscious of the clack of the electric motor for the last thirty seconds, but now, as it sounded close under the side of the steamer, slowing down at the foot of the accommodation ladder, it was supplemented by the clear tones of a woman's voice—the well-loved tones which he had never thought to hear again, and which rather than hear in that place he would gladly have died a hundred deaths.
For it was the voice of Violet Maynard, self-possessed and confident, assuring the crew of the launch that she was quite accustomed to climbing up the side of a yacht in the dark, and that she would need no help but that of her own hands to scale the dangling rope-ladder.