Soon he had it on the runway, ready to shoot down into the water when released.
He opened one of the doors, took his place in the skiff, and let slip the catch.
The boat slid easily down, struck the water with the slightest sound of a splash, and lay gently rocking while Nick Carter got out the light oars to take him out to where the yacht lay at anchor.
It was too dark for him to see the launch. But there was no sound from that direction, and he was satisfied that Claudia Solado was sitting where he had left her, obeying his instructions to make absolutely no noise while he was gone.
He muffled his oars with a handkerchief and one of his kid gloves, so that there was no sound as he stole up to the yacht and paused in the shadow of her rather broad stern.
He was so close that he could steady himself by one of the rudder chains as he listened.
Nothing seemed to be going on in the yacht, and if he had not seen the man on the cabin roof, still enjoying his cigar, he might have thought everybody on board was asleep, watch and all.
“What the dickens they want to stay on the yacht at all for if they belong to that house is more than I can explain,” muttered Nick. “At least, until I have looked into the matter a little more.”
He deliberately threw his painter rope around the rudder chain, and secured the skiff in that way.
So long as the yacht was at anchor—as he had seen she was, swinging to the tide with her bow pointing upstream—there was no danger of harm to the skiff.