He started forward as he spoke, and, pushing aside a hanging drapery, found himself in a narrow gangway, or passage, with an open door of a stateroom on either side of him. But a glance told him that these were the rooms occupied by the two people he most wished to avoid until he had heard enough of what they might have to say to each other to determine him how to act.
Beyond these, however, there were other doors—two of them—and, as before, one on either side. These were closed, and he decided at once that they were not in constant use. He opened one of them at the same time that he pointed toward the other.
“Go in there,” he directed, and so it happened that Chick and Kane went together into one of the rooms, while Nick found himself alone in the remaining one.
And then, just as he pulled the door shut behind him—that is, he closed it all but the merest crack—the noise of the opening and closing of the door of the outer cabin apprised him of the fact that the woman had returned.
He supposed that she would return to the table and seat herself there, while she awaited the return of the pirate chief from his expedition aboard the Aurora; but in that he was mistaken. He was peering through the crack left him by not quite closing his own door, and he could see past an aperture at the side of the portière at the end of the passage that the woman was coming straight toward it.
He watched her without moving.
He hoped that she would not come to his door, or visit that of the room in which his companions had taken refuge, but he was thoroughly prepared to receive her if she should do either the one thing or the other.
The detective had seen enough already to make him wish to see and hear much more. The mere capture of the pirate vessel and those who were aboard of her was now not sufficient to satisfy him, for he realized that he would then have only a part of the explanation of the unheard-of circumstance of a pirate roaming the waters of Long Island Sound.
On the other hand, he figured that if he could remain where he was a sufficient length of time without discovery there might be an opportunity for a complete investigation—or, at least, that he would hear enough of conversation between the pirate chief and the woman to inform him.