veil dropped upon a scene that Rembrandt would have fancied. Fay turned away and started toward his cabin. They were reaching port. The passage from Dover had been made without accident. It had been through a sea that had been stained red by the blood of British seamen.
Sounds of commerce were on every hand as the Flushing bulled the air with her Mersey-built siren. She glided over oily backwater and came to a scant headway before the outlines of a high quay which was half-revealed in the yellow light of lowland dawn.
Fay opened his door, stepped into the midship-cabin and sat down on his unused bunk. He closed his eyes and reviewed the events of the passage. He made note of a number of things which might have bearing on the cipher quest. The commercial traveler had rounded out the importance of the information Scotland Yard had sent him to obtain. This man from Brixton was a forerunner in the great commercial war which was girding the world. He was a scout and an outpost. After him would come a horde of others. Devastated Belgium, Northern France and depleted Holland and Germany were open markets. They had been glutted by the Great Struggle. They were like stores from the shelves of which all staple goods had been swept.
The second event of the voyage, in meeting with the deep-sea Greek, had a different bearing on the quest. Fay realized, as he dropped his head in his hands, that a pull had come which was strong as desire, and sweet with freedom. Stavanger, where the sharper was going
with his cockney foil, was a port out of which many ships sailed and steamed. From Stavanger it would be possible to shake the Yard and the runners of New Victoria Street. Liberty in every action was possible if he would hasten to the northern port before the Yard was aware of his dereliction. And liberty was a tempting morsel to hold before a prisoner on parole.
Fay lifted his eyes and stared at the sheathing of his narrow cabin. The ship had reached the quay. The passengers were crowded forward where they expected the gangway to be thrust aboard. Their voices, cosmopolitan mingled, broke through the silence of the mid-ship stateroom.
A grating sounded along the boat’s planks. A shudder passed from fore to aft. The siren blared three short signals. A call came across the water. Light, from a mist-hidden sun, illumined the port-hole over Fay’s bunk. He glanced at this evidence of day.
Bending suddenly, he reached and lifted the little black bag. The tools clinked slightly. He inserted a key and glanced at them. They were such as any doctor of surgery might have carried. There was not a particle of incriminating evidence in the bag. Fay rose, lifted a towel from a rack, glanced at its corners to assure himself that there was no marking to show from whence it came, then swiftly bound and wrapped the instruments so that they gave forth no sound as he dropped the bag to the stateroom’s deck.
He searched through his pockets. The money in
his right-hand pocket, the cigarette case, the automatic revolver on his hip, all were inspected. Replacing these, he drew out the two envelopes MacKeenon had passed to him at London Bridge Station.