Running, he went along the gallery out of sight.
Clement stared after him in bewilderment.
“Holy romance!” he murmured to himself. “Here’s a thing with which to begin a sea voyage.”
He turned to go back to his cabin. Away along the gallery, by the staircase that led up to the smoking room, he saw two men standing. They were standing watching him. They stood there for but a second, and then, with furtive quickness, they stepped back out of his sight.
It had been a matter of an instant. But Clement had recognized both of them.
One was the steward with the evil face who had tried to get the little lawyer off the ship, and had, so Clement felt, tried to get him off the ship, too, by sending his luggage astray.
The other was a tall, huge, almost excessive man. A man with little, sinister eyes ... the man who had all but prevented his getting into the train. The man whom he had seen close to his baggage before it went astray. He was there watching Clement, talking to the evil steward in an intimate way.
“Ah,” reflected Clement. “So you are in this. You are one of them.... And now that I come to think things out, there was never any doubt of it.”
He sat down on his bunk to face the problem of saving the girl Heloise from a gang of rogues, of whom the companion, Méduse, this huge man, and the steward at least were members.