"Past the Sugar-Loaf
"You'll see the Lorelei"
obviously referred to those "peaks" of which the "Sailing Directions" had spoken.
"If you desire the sweetheart."
Schätzchen was the German word. But, ye gods, Schatz of which Schätzchen is the diminutive, properly speaking, means "treasure"! By what form of physical and mental blindness had I been smitten to have failed to see this direct reference to treasure in the cipher?
The four bars of music brought me up with a jerk. I hummed the tune which I had strummed out on John Bard's piano. It seemed, as I said, vaguely familiar as a German ditty of the popular sort but what or where.... I....
On this I must have fallen asleep. I awoke with a start, as one does from an afternoon nap, and stared round blankly, trying to recollect where I was. There was a little sidelong motion in the cabin as the yacht rose and fell at anchor to the swell and the electric fan purred gently as it revolved. Someone was tapping at the door.
"Come in!" I cried and Carstairs put his face in.
"Sir Alexander begs pardon for disturbing you, sir," the man said, "but could you make it convenient to go to him at once in his cabin? He said as how it was urgent...."
"Of course. Tell Sir Alexander I'll be with him immediately."
Garth had a little suite at the far end of the saloon consisting of a small state-room, very handsomely furnished, with sleeping apartment and bath off it. I found him seated in a swivel-chair at his desk in conversation with a dark young man, his face yellowed from the tropics, in a creased white duck suit.