The bridge was built over a couple of big cabins. Certainly the Tiger would occupy one of those, and she marked them down for investigation later. But the first thing to do was to attack the bridge.
The bridge companion faced her. She gained it in half a dozen paces and went up.
There was a man leaning over the starboard rail. The moonlight revealed the dingy braid on his uniform and the peaked cap tilted back from his forehead. He was gazing out to sea, chewing his pipe and wrapped up in his thoughts. If details are to be insisted upon, he was speculating about the riotous time he would have in Cape Town when he was paid off for the voyage. There was, for instance, Mulatto Harry’s place down by the docks—an unsavoury-looking joint enough from the outside, but provided with a room furnished in Oriental magnificence, to which only the favoured ones who were well provided with hard cash were admitted. In that room were delights for which the soul of Mr. Maggs hungered—better liquor than was served to the proletariat in the filthy bar beyond which the proletariat never penetrated, and decorative little pipes from which curled up thin wisps of seductive smoke, and houris of a more subtle loveliness than that of the painted half-caste women who frequented the better-known dives. Mr. Maggs visioned the orgy which the Tiger’s money would purchase him; and, in his heavy and animal fashion, Mr. Maggs was a contented man, for he possessed the unlimited patience of the third-rate beast. And Mr. Maggs was solidly champing over his dream for the umpteenth time since the Tiger had found him in a dockside bar in Bristol, and made the offer of a princely salary plus bonus, when something hard and round prodded Mr. Maggs in the spine and he heard a command which was not quite unfamiliar.
“Hands up!”
The order hissed out very softly, but there was a sibilant menace permeating its quietness which made the experienced Mr. Maggs obey without question.
A hand dipped into his jacket pocket, and he felt his gun being deftly extracted.
“Now you can turn round.”
Mr. Maggs pivoted slowly, and his jaw dropped when he saw the girl.
“You she-devil!” snarled Maggs, taking courage from the sight. “Sticking me up! Well, honey——”
He started to lower his arms. Two revolver muzzles jerked up and held their aim at his chest. The hands that held them were as steady as the hands of a stone image, and his keen stare could detect no trace of nervousness in the face of their owner. Mr. Maggs, wise in his generation, read the threat of sudden death in the girl’s cold eyes, and stopped.