“Doctored! I swear it! I have seen. Doctored! I have seen.”
Not a feature of the captain’s face moved. His was a calm to take one’s breath away. It did so to young Powell. Then for the first time Anthony made himself heard to the point.
“You did! . . . Who was it?”
And Powell gasped freely at last. “A hand,” he whispered fearfully, “a hand and the arm—only the arm—like that.”
He advanced his own, slow, stealthy, tremulous in faithful reproduction, the tips of two fingers and the thumb pressed together and hovering above the glass for an instant—then the swift jerk back, after the deed.
“Like that,” he repeated growing excited. “From behind this.” He grasped the curtain and glaring at the silent Anthony flung it back disclosing the forepart of the saloon. There was on one to be seen.
Powell had not expected to see anybody. “But,” he said to me, “I knew very well there was an ear listening and an eye glued to the crack of a cabin door. Awful thought. And that door was in that part of the saloon remaining in the shadow of the other half of the curtain. I pointed at it and I suppose that old man inside saw me pointing. The captain had a wonderful self-command. You couldn’t have guessed anything from his face. Well, it was perhaps more thoughtful than usual. And indeed this was something to think about. But I couldn’t think steadily. My brain would give a sort of jerk and then go dead again. I had lost all notion of time, and I might have been looking at the captain for days and months for all I knew before I heard him whisper to me fiercely: “Not a word!” This jerked me out of that trance I was in and I said “No! No! I didn’t mean even you.”
“I wanted to explain my conduct, my intentions, but I read in his eyes that he understood me and I was only too glad to leave off. And there we were looking at each other, dumb, brought up short by the question “What next?”
“I thought Captain Anthony was a man of iron till I saw him suddenly fling his head to the right and to the left fiercely, like a wild animal at bay not knowing which way to break out . . . ”
* * * * *