“A Well-Wisher.”
His first impulse was to destroy the letter as a venomous thing, but the doubt in his mind, once aroused by Ruby and Florrie, came to him again. He did not doubt Bertha—no! Ten thousand times no! But it would be so easy to put this slander to the test.
Bertha out at half-past eleven on Circular Quay! Bertha, who never went out after dark! It was absurd! Yet men, smarter men perhaps than himself, had been made fools of before to-day.
Did this explain the reason for Bertha’s hanging back when he asked her to name the marriage day? Was she only making a convenience of him in case the other man refused to toe the mark? It was damnable! But it was a lie—a wicked, cursed lie, and he would pay no attention to it.
But his mind could not leave the subject all that day, and eleven o’clock at night found him walking nervously and excitedly towards the meeting-place mentioned in the letter.
The last boat moored to the Quay was a sailing vessel, whose decks appeared deserted. Perhaps the crew were on shore or asleep in their bunks. Not even a watchman was visible.
On the wharf a few feet from the edge a pile of casks were stacked. Across the roadway rose the high façade of prison-like wool warehouses. The electric light that now makes this quarter of Sydney one of the best illuminated had not been installed at this date, and the yellow gas-jets visible here and there did little to lighten the darkness of the night.
Alec for a time looked about curiously, then paced up and down, assuring himself the while that he was a fool for his pains, and would have been far better off at that time of night seated at his club playing nap. Then he remembered the directions he had received, “to keep hidden.” Now, the only place convenient for concealment was to stand behind the heap of casks, close to the edge of the Quay. The simplest observation gave this assurance, and no doubt the writer of the letter had this place in her mind.
This thought did not occur to Alec. He was told to hide, and he hid, quite unsuspicious that by doing so he was standing in an appointed place.
There were no immediate passers-by; a few forms could be heard and seen at a distance moving about, but that part of the Quay was for the time deserted.