Obediently Lanyard ran hot and cold water into the hand-basin in equal
proportions.
"Would it not be well now to call the ship's surgeon?" he suggested
diffidently.
"Is that necessary? I am something of a nurse. This is simply a bad
contusion--no worse, I believe. He was struck down from behind, a cowardly
blow in the dark, as he started to go up on deck. I had been waiting for
him. When he didn't come I suspected something was wrong. I came down,
found him lying there, that brute kneeling over him."
She spoke coolly enough, in contrast with the high excitement that inflamed
her eyes as she turned away from the berth.
"Monsieur Duchemin, are you armed?"
"I have this," he said, exhibiting the knife thrown by the would-be
murderer--a simple trench dagger, without distinguishing marks of any sort.
"Then take this, please." Extracting an automatic pistol from a holster
belted beneath Thackeray's coat, she proffered it. "You won't mind staying
here a moment, standing guard, while I fetch a dressing from my room?"
Before he could utter a word of protest she had slipped out into the
alleyway, shutting the door behind her.
When several minutes had passed the adventurer found himself beset by
increasing concern. This long delay seemed not only inconsistent with her
solicitude, but indicated a possibility that the girl had braved unwisely
the chance of a resumption of hostilities on the part of her late and as
yet anonymous assailant.
Darkening the room as a matter of common-sense precaution, Lanyard, pistol
in hand, stepped out into the alleyway in time to see the girl in the act
of rising from her knees on the landing, near the spot where Thackeray had
fallen. The light of her flash-lamp was blotted out as she came hurriedly
aft.
Perplexed, he turned back and switched on the light as she entered.
Her eyes challenged his almost defiantly.
"Was I long?" she asked, breathless. "I dropped something...."
Lanyard bowed without speaking. Instinctively he knew that she was lying;
and divining this in his attitude, she coloured and, disconcerted, turned
away. For a moment, while she busied herself arranging on a convenient
chair an assortment of first-aid accessories, he fancied that her
half-averted face wore a look of sullen chagrin, with its compressed lips,
downcast eyes, and faintly gathered brows.
But directly she needed assistance, and requested it of him in a subdued
and impersonal manner, showing a countenance devoid of any incongruous
emotion.
Lanyard, lifting the lieutenant's head and heavy torso, helped turn him
face downward on the berth, then stood aside, thoughtfully watching the
girl's deft fingers sop absorbent cotton in an antiseptic wash and apply it
to the injury.
After a little, he said: "If mademoiselle has no more immediate use for
me--"
"Thank you, monsieur. You have already done so very much!"
"Then, if mademoiselle will supply the name of this assassin--"
"I know it no more than you, monsieur!" She glanced up at him, startled.
"What do you mean to do?"
"Why, naturally, lodge an information with the captain concerning this
outrage--"
"Oh, please, no!"
At a loss, Lanyard shrugged eloquently.
"Not yet, at all events," she hastened to amend. "Let Lionel judge what is
best to be done when he comes to."
"But, mademoiselle, who can say when that will be?" He pointed out the
ugly, ragged abrasion in the young Englishman's scalp exposed by the
cleansing away of the clotted blood. "No ordinary blow," he commented;
"something very like a slung-shot or a loaded cane did that work. If I may
venture again to advise--unless mademoiselle is herself a surgeon--"
Her colour faded and she caught her breath sharply. "You think it as
serious as all that?"
"I do not know. Such a blow might easily fracture the skull, possibly bring
about a concussion of the brain. Regard, likewise, his laborious breathing.
I most assuredly advise consulting competent authority."
She did not immediately answer, turning back undivided attention to her
task; but he noticed that her hands were tremulous, however, dextrously
they finished dressing and bandaging the hurt; and deep distress troubled
the handsome eyes she turned to his when she rose.
"You are right," she murmured--"unquestionably right, monsieur. We must
have the surgeon in...."
But when Lanyard advanced a hand toward the bell-push, to call the steward,
she interposed in quick alarm:
"No--if you please, a moment; I must have time to think!" Her slender
fingers writhed together in her agony of doubt and irresolution. "If only I
knew what to do...."
Lanyard was dumb. There was, indeed, nothing helpful he could offer, who
was without a solitary tangible or trustworthy clue to the nature of this
strange business.
He owned himself sadly mystified. In the light--or, rather, the shadow--of
this latest development, his revised suspicions seemed unwarranted to the
point of impertinence; unless, of course, one assumed the unknown assailant
to be a rejected lover or wronged husband. And somehow one did not, in
the presence of this clear-eyed, straight-limbed, courageous young
Englishwoman, so wanting in self-consciousness.
And yet ... what the deuce was she to this man whom, indisputably, she
followed against his wish?
And what conceivable chain of circumstances linked their fortunes with his,
and that double burglary of the first night out with this murderous assault
of to-night?
Nor was to-night's work, considered by itself, lacking in questionable
features.
Why had Thackeray carried that sound arm in a sling? How had its bandages
come to be unwrapped? Not in struggles before being placed hors de combat,
for he had never had a chance to resist. Had his assailant, then, unwrapped
it subsequently? If so, with what end in view?
Why had this Miss Cecelia Brooke, surprising the thug at his work, joined
battle with him so bravely and so madly without calling for help?
What hidden motive excused this singular hesitation to summon the surgeon,
this reluctance to inform the officers of the ship?
What duplicity was that which the girl had paraded concerning her
procrastination when Lanyard had surprised her on her knees out there on
the landing?
If this were what Lanyard had first inclined to think it, Secret Service
intrigue, surely it was weirdly intricate when an English girl hesitated
to safeguard an Englishman by taking into her confidence the officers of a
British ship, British manned!
Nevertheless, and however much he might wonder and doubt, Lanyard would
never question her. Never of his own volition would he probe more deeply
into this mystery, take one farther step into the intricacies of its maze.
So, in silence, he waited, passively courteous, at her further service if
she had need of him, content if she had not, tolerant of her tacit prayer
for time in which to think a way out of her difficulties.
After some few moments he grew uncomfortably aware that he had become the
object of a speculative regard not at all unfavourable.
He indulged in a mental gesture of resignation.
Then what he had feared befell, not altogether as he had apprehended, but
in the girl's own fashion, if without material difference in the upshot.
"I am afraid," said she in an even voice, so quietly pitched as to be
inaudible to any eavesdropper. "This becomes a task greater than I had
dreamed, more than my wits can cope with. Monsieur Duchemin...."
She hesitated. He bowed slightly. "If mademoiselle can make any use of my
poor abilities, she has but to command me."
"We--I have much to thank you for already, monsieur, much more than I can
ever hope to reward adequately--"
"Reward?" he echoed. "But, mademoiselle--!"
"Please don't misunderstand." She flushed a little, very prettily. "I am
simply trying to express my sense of obligation, not only for what you have
already done, but for what I mean to ask you to do."
Again he bowed, without comment, amiably receptive.