"Only that I went into the saloon just now and found Elaine there." The three looked at one another.
"Think she heard?" the doctor asked.
"I can't say, but I heard every word you uttered ... distinctly."
"How did she look?"
"Much as usual," said Madame Lorraine, and left them.
Dixon had regained his self-control as if he had never tasted a drop of whisky; he took up the two wooden dolls and made his way to the stairs. At the first step he stopped, turned and gazed at them earnestly.
"Bah!" he said again. "If she had heard anything she would have screamed." Then he went down and the other two followed him. Tom breathed again; it was only now he remembered that he had been kneeling in the boat, with his head well over the edge, and that any one who chanced to look that way might easily have seen him. It was a miracle, indeed, that he had not been seen; but he had no time even to send a grateful thought to his guardian angel, for his mind was fully taken up with what he had just heard. Moreover, his attention was rivetted upon Dixon's overcoat, which had been left lying cm a chair, carelessly flung over the back of it, half-open, so that Tom could see a packet done up in oilcloth protruding from an inner pocket. He remembered what Wallion had told him about the scene at the asylum, and he realized that within five yards of him lay those precious papers of William Robertson's. His fingers itched, an irresistible desire seized him; he must have those papers and read them.
The sun had set, and twilight was beginning to melt into night; there was no one to be seen either on the bridge or on the upper deck ... nor was there any sound from the gangway. He got out of the boat noiselessly and walked warily towards the coat.
At the same instant a hand from the back of the cabin deck abstracted the roll from the coat pocket and disappeared.
CHAPTER XVIII