“What time does the first train leave for London in the morning?”
“Round about seven o’clock,” he said.
“You ain’t thinkin’ of chuckin’ the cruise, I hope, sir,” he went on, and the dejection in his voice showed that he was prepared for the worst.
“For a few hours, perhaps a night—that is all.”
“So you b’lieve they mean mischief?” growled Peter, jerking a thumb toward the yacht.
This direct and forcible reasoning was unexpected. Yet any level–headed man might have reached practically the same conclusions from the night’s happenings. They were clear enough to one versed in most of the intricacies and pitfalls of West African politics, nor did Warden endeavor to evade the point.
“I believe that there are people in London who should know what you and I know,” he said slowly. “Anyhow, let us turn in. Miss Evelyn Dane evidently sleeps on board. Perhaps the morning’s light may dispel some of the vapors that cloud our brains to–night.”
The early train from Cowes did not, however, carry Arthur Warden among the London–bound passengers.
A glimpse of Evelyn on the deck of the Sans Souci altered that portion of his plans. She waved a pleasant greeting, held up both hands with the fingers spread widely apart, and nodded her head in the direction of the town. He took the gesture to mean that she was going ashore at ten o’clock, and he signaled back the information that he would precede her at nine. Not until he found himself dawdling on the quay, killing time as lazily as possible, did the thought obtrude that he was extraordinarily anxious to meet her again. Of course, it irritated him. A smart soldier, with small means beyond his pay—with a foot just planted on the first rung of the administrator’s ladder in a land where life itself is too often the price asked for higher climbing—he had no business to show any undue desire to cultivate the acquaintance of young ladies so peculiarly eligible as Evelyn Dane. He knew this so well that he scoffed at the notion, put two knuckles between his lips, and emitted a peculiarly shrill and compelling whistle.