CHAPTER XXXII.
A BRANCH CUT OFF.
At ten o'clock that night, there was not in all the State an uglier and sorer man than H. Robinson.
He impatiently thumped Miss Gastonguay's binocular on his fat knee. All the afternoon he had been searching the glittering surface of Merry Meeting Bay. There was no steam yacht in sight carrying a blue flag with a pine-tree on its fluttering folds. No brace of blue lights appeared now that soft darkness had enveloped the Bay, although various yachts and boats bearing lights of every other colour of the rainbow had come slipping in from the sea to their resting-places beside the wharves.
He had been tricked. The treacherous young woman and the slippery sailor had thrown dust in his eyes. Well, he would make them pay for their trickery before the dance was over, and he ground his teeth and glowered at his two companions.
The chief of police, soothed by the calm beauty of the moonless night and happy from the elaborate dinner that had been served to them here on the roof of the boat-house, was peacefully snoring in a hammock. He only partly understood the affair. There was some humbuggery about it, and he could not rid himself of the conviction that H. Robinson was slightly cracked, and that the volatile Captain White for some hidden reason was aiding and abetting him in his delusion. Anyway, he didn't like being sworn at, and although he would by no means defeat the ends of justice, he earnestly hoped that Miss Gastonguay would land her mysterious old woman and girl at some port down the coast, and let this Boston fellow go home with his tail between his legs.
Captain White was not asleep. H. Robinson knew that he was only pretending to nap in his big wicker chair, and that he heard every one of the occasional sentences growled at him.
The detective fumed and fretted. He would wait one hour longer. He would wait half an hour. He would only wait ten minutes. He would announce his secret and receive city aid to go in search of the criminal. But suppose he had lost him? At station one, station two, and three, up to the last number of stations, he would be jeered at in the city of Boston. Why had he not called in the help of some of his former colleagues? Served him right for playing dog in the manger. No one would ever trust him again. And he mused on miserably, his wrath burning higher and higher. At last it reached a point where it began to flicker. Self-pity and deadly weariness were overcoming him. His throbbing head sank lower and lower, his aching limbs grew less remindful. He thought drowsily of his subservient wife, his quiet home, his comfortable bed. He would give five dollars for an hour's rest, and with a gradual blending of all his emotions into peaceful oblivion he fell sound asleep.
He slept he knew not how long, but he waked up with a jerk, and turned his rubicund face up to Captain White's strangely pale one.