"But one moment more. You have been extraordinarily frank, but you have forgotten one element, to me of some importance: you have not told me what my part is in this insane adventure."
"That's not my business to tell you," Phinuit replied promptly. "When anything as important as that comes out, it won't be through my babbling. Anyhow, Liane may have changed her mind since last reports. And so, as far as I'm concerned, your present status is simply that of her pet protégé. What it is to be hereafter you'll learn from her, I suppose, soon enough.... Le's go!"
[XXII]
OUT OF SOUNDINGS
When finally Lanyard did consent to seek his stateroom--with the pilot dropped and the Sybarite footing it featly over Channel waters to airs piped by a freshening breeze--it was to sleep once round the clock and something more; for it was nearly six in the afternoon when he came on deck again.
The quarterdeck, a place of Epicurean ease for idle passengers, was deserted but for a couple of deckhands engaged in furling the awning. Lanyard lounged on the rail, revelling in a sense of perfect physical refreshment intensified by the gracious motion of the vessel, the friendly, rhythmic chant of her engines, the sweeping ocean air and the song it sang in the rigging, the vision of blue seas snow-plumed and mirroring in a myriad facets the red gold of the westering sun, and the lift and dip of a far horizon whose banks of violet mist were the fading shores of France.
In these circumstances of the sea he loved so well there was certain anodyne for those twinges of chagrin which he must suffer when reminded of the sorry figure he had cut overnight.
Still there were compensations--of a more material nature, too, than this delight which he had of being once again at sea. To have cheapened himself in the estimation of Liane Delorme and Phinuit and Monk was really to his advantage; for to persuade an adversary to under-estimate one is to make him almost an ally. Also, Lanyard now had no more need to question the fate of the Montalais jewels, no more blank spaces remained to be filled in his hypothetical explanation of the intrigues which had enmeshed the Château de Montalais, its lady and his honour.
He knew now all he needed to know, he could put his hand on the jewels when he would; and he had a fair fortnight (the probable duration of their voyage, according to Monk) in which to revolve plans for making away with them at minimum cost to himself in exertion and exposure to reprisals.
Plans? He had none as yet, he would begin to formulate and ponder them only when he had better acquaintance with the ship and her company and had learned more about that ambiguous landfall which she was to make (as Phinuit had put it) "in the dark of the moon."