“How do you get to them?” I asked.
“By a staircase at the end of the upper deck.”
“Thank you, and can you tell me which cabin Mr. Harry Drake occupies?”
“I do not know, sir,” replied the steward.
Again I went on deck, and following the steward’s direction at last came to the door at the top of the stairs. This staircase did not lead to any large saloons, but simply to a dimly-lighted landing, round which was arranged a double row of cabins. Harry Drake could hardly have found a more favourable place in which to hide Ellen.
The greater part of the cabins were unoccupied. I went along the landing, a few names were written on the doors, but only two or three at the most. Harry Drake’s name was not among them, and as I had made a very minute inspection of this compartment, I was very much disappointed at my ill success. I was going away when suddenly a vague, almost inaudible murmur caught my ear, it proceeded from the left side of the passage. I went towards the place; the sounds, at first faint, grew louder, and I distinguished a kind of plaintive song, or rather melopœia, the words of which did not reach me.
I listened; it was a woman singing, but in this unconscious voice one could recognize a mournful wail. Might not this voice belong to the mad woman? My presentiments could not deceive me. I went quietly nearer to the cabin, which was numbered 775. It was the last in this dim passage, and must have been lighted by the lowest light-ports in the hull of the “Great Eastern;” there was no name on the door, and Harry Drake had no desire that any one should know the place where he confined Ellen.
I could not distinctly hear the voice of the unfortunate woman; her song was only a string of unconnected sentences like one speaking in sleep, but at the same time it was sweet and plaintive.
Although I had no means of recognizing her identity, I had no doubt but that it was Ellen singing.
I listened for some minutes, and was just going away, when I heard a step on the landing. Could it be Harry Drake? I did not wish him to find me here, for Fabian and Ellen’s sake; fortunately I could get on deck, without being seen, by a passage leading round the cabins. However, I stopped to know who it really was that I had heard. The darkness partially hid me, and standing behind an angle of the passage I could see without being myself in sight.