“I am glad it is so,” thought Nick Carter. “By the morning I shall have my plans ready to work. I don’t want to be disturbed any more now.”
He switched off the two electric lights in his cabin, and resumed his seat by the window in the dark. He was not ready to go to bed yet.
It was getting to the still hour for the morning when everything seems dead, preparatory to bursting into life a little later by another day of activity.
A few lights twinkled here and there on the water or along the shores. But, aside from them, there was nothing to suggest that many thousands of people were within sound of his voice if he should shout aloud, while a few miles down the river a metropolis of four or five millions lay slumbering.
He got up and went to the door to examine the lock.
“Easy!” he murmured. “I know the locks on boats of this kind. They are supposed to be so safe that they are more vulnerable than those which have not such a reputation. I’ll get out of this room when the time comes. But that is not just yet.”
He went back to the window and again looked out.
It was more than an hour later when he fixed his gaze on something that looked like the shadow of a wave a little way off.
“A boat, and hanging about, looking at what there is here,” was his inward comment. “If I hadn’t good eyes, I doubt whether I could have seen that. It’s coming nearer to the yacht. I wonder—— There will be no harm in trying. I don’t suppose any one will notice it. If they do, what matters?”
He put his face close to the window and whistled part of the refrain of the popular melody, “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary!”