When the _Nadine_ left her moorings, at about four o'clock on a
lovely June afternoon, she sauntered easily down to the Needles at
about twelve knots. For reasons of his own her owner had never put her
to full speed in crowded waters, or, in fact, where any other craft
was near enough to see what she could do. On deck the principal actors
in the tragedy that was to come were sitting in deck-chairs or
strolling about, chatting in the most friendly fashion possible, just
as though the graceful little vessel was not practically carrying the
fate of the world as she slipped so smoothly and swiftly through the
swirling water that ran along her white sides.
Until nightfall she continued at the same speed; but when dinner was
over, and the lights were up, Hardress lit a cigar and went on to the
bridge, and said to the commander:
"Captain Burgess, I think you can let her go now. Full speed ahead,
right away to Halifax. As I have told you, it is most urgent that we
should be there in between five and six days. Of course, everything
depends on the engines, and I think it would be well to work the
engine-room staff in treble shifts, just to see that nothing goes
wrong. Any accident in the engine-room would mean a good deal to me.
So you may tell the stokers and engineers that if everything goes
smoothly, and we get to Halifax by the 15th--that's giving you five
days and a bit from now--there will be a hundred pounds extra to be
divided among them when we've coaled up again at Halifax. You
understand, I want those engines looked after as though they were a
lady's watch."
"Certainly, my lord," replied the captain. "I hope, sir, you don't
think that anything of that sort is necessary for the working of the
_Nadine_; but, of course, the engine-room staff will be very glad
to accept your lordship's generosity."
The captain blew his whistle, and the head and shoulders of a
quartermaster appeared on the ladder, looking up to the bridge.
"Quartermaster, who is on duty in the engine-room?"
"Mr Williams, sir," replied the quartermaster, touching his cap.
"Ask him to be good enough to step up here for a moment."
"Ay, ay, sir," and the head and shoulders disappeared.
A few moments later Edward Williams came up on to the bridge. Apart
from the work of his profession he was an intensely nervous man, and
his imagination had instantly construed the sudden and unwonted
summons into a suspicion of his contemplated guilt, and his close-set,
greenish-blue eyes shifted anxiously from the captain to Hardress in a
way that at once inspired Hardress with vague undefined suspicions,
which somehow brought him back to one or two interviews on the subject
of Williams's patents--which had ended in a way which would have
prompted a less generous man to have dismissed him on the spot. It was
only a suspicion. Still, in another sense, it was the intuition of a
keen and highly-trained intellect, and somehow, by some process which
Hardress himself could not have explained, Williams's manner as he
came on the bridge, and that sudden shifty glance, inspired him with
the thought that this was a man to be watched.
"Mr Williams," said the captain, "his lordship has just informed me
that it is most important we should get to Halifax in the quickest
possible time; and, as you have most of the routine work to do, under
Mr M'Niven, and are, perhaps, more in touch with the men than he is, I
wish you to tell the men that from here to Halifax the engineers and
stokers will work in treble shifts. It'll be a bit harder work, but
not for long. And his lordship has kindly promised a hundred pounds to
be divided among the engineer's staff at Halifax. Now, that's not bad
extra pay for five or six days work, and I hope you'll see that it's
earned."
"Very well, sir," replied the engineer, doing his best to keep his
voice steady, and not quite succeeding. "It is, I am sure, most
generous of his lordship, and I am quite certain that the men will do
everything in their power to deserve it."
"And," said Hardress, noting the break in his voice, "you understand,
Mr Williams, I shall expect the officers to do the same. We can take
no risks this trip, and there must be no accidents or breakdowns. Time
is too precious; you understand me, of course. I will see Mr M'Niven
later on. That will do, thank you."
Mr Williams touched the peak of his cap, and disappeared down the
ladder, feeling, in his inmost soul as though his contemplated
treachery had already been discovered. And yet, if he had seen the
matter from another point of view, he might have known that the
precautions which Hardress had taken were, under the circumstances,
just what any man carrying such enormous responsibilities as he did
would have taken, for, as he had said, everything depended on the
_Nadine's_ engines. It was, therefore, the most natural thing in
the world that everything possible should be done to ensure their
perfect working. In fact, if he had not had the burden of a
contemplated treachery on his soul, he would have considered the
orders to be not only natural, but necessary.
As he reached the deck, it happened that the marquise was strolling
forward towards the bridge. Williams raised his cap, and by the light
of one of the electric deck-lamps, Hardress saw from the bridge that
she looked hard at him for a moment, and that he replied with an
almost imperceptible shake of the head. His brows came together for a
moment, and he shut his teeth. His keen intellect saw what his
half-intoxicated senses would not have seen. Under any normal
circumstances, it was impossible that his guest, Adelaide de Conde,
could have even the remotest relations with his second engineer, and
yet there was no mistaking what he had seen as she passed under the
electric light.
"Captain Burgess," he said, suddenly, in a low voice, "I don't quite
like the look of Mr Williams. I have nothing against him, but I know
he has a bit of a grudge against me about those patents of his,
and----"
"Surely you don't think, my lord, that he would do anything?"
"No," interrupted Hardress; "I say nothing, except that we're taking
no risks this voyage; but I shall ask Mr M'Niven to have a very sharp
watch kept on the engines."
"May I come up on to the sacred territory?" said a sweet, pleading
voice from half-way up the bridge stairs.
"And may we too?" said the voice of Miss Chrysie just behind.
"By all means, marquise," said Hardress; "and you too, Olive, and Miss
Chrysie, certainly; only I hope you've got your caps pinned on
securely, because we're going to quicken up."
"Ah," said Adelaide, coming up on to the bridge with her head
half-enveloped in a fleecy shawl, "quicken up. Does that mean what you
call full speed?"
"Something like it, I reckon," said Miss Chrysie, coming up close
behind her, followed by Lady Olive, both with white yachting caps
pinned more or less securely on to their abundant tresses.
"Yes," said Hardress, with a note in his voice that Adelaide had not
heard before; "it is full speed. Now, hold on to your headgear and
you'll see."
As he spoke he put his hand on the handle of the engine telegraph and
pulled it over from half to full speed. They heard a tinkle in the
engine-room, and presently the bridge began to throb and thump under
their feet. The sharp prow of the _Nadine_ had so far been cleaving
the water with scarcely a ripple. Now it seemed to leap forward into
it, and raised a long creased swirl to left and right. A sudden blast
of wind struck their faces, hands instinctively went up to heads, and
Lady Olive exclaimed:
"What is that, Shafto? It hasn't suddenly come on to blow, has it?"
"Oh no," he laughed. "We're making it blow. That's only the difference
between about ten or eleven knots and twenty--and there's a bit of a
breeze against us, about five miles an hour--so that makes it
twenty-five miles an hour--in fact, even thirty--for knots are longer
than miles."
"Now isn't that just gorgeous!" said Miss Chrysie, and she opened her
mouth and filled her lungs with the strong salt breath of the
sea--"and there goes my cap," she said, when she got her breath again.
The breeze had got under the peak of her yachting cap, and sent it
flying aft. The pin dislocated the arrangement of her hair, and the
next moment she was standing with the loosened shining coils streaming
out behind her, unravelling into a shower of golden glory. Adelaide,
with the instinct of a Frenchwoman, had drawn her shawl tight round
her head. Hardress looked round at the moment, and, if his heart had
ever wavered, in that moment the old allegiance was confirmed. There
was no more comparison between the tall, deep-chested American girl,
with her cheeks glowing, her eyes shining in the sheer joy of physical
life, and her long gold-brown hair streaming away behind her, and the
slight, shrinking figure of the daughter of the Bourbons, cowering
behind the canvas of the bridge and gripping the shawl that covered
her head, than there might have been between a sea-nymph of the old
Grecian legends and a fine lady of to-day caught in an unexpected gust
of wind.
Miss Chrysie looked natural and magnificent, breasting the gale and
breathing it in as though she loved it. Adelaide de Conde, the exotic
of the drawing-room, cowered before it, and looked pinched, and
shivered. Lady Olive, with one hand on the top of her cap and the
other holding the wrap she had thrown round her shoulders, gasped for
a moment, and said:
"Yes, Chrysie; this is glorious. Twenty knots!--that's about
twenty-four miles an hour, isn't it, a little bit faster than a
South-Eastern express train?"
"I hope so," laughed Hardress; "if it wasn't we should be some time in
getting to Halifax. And now, I suppose, you've got some coffee ready
for us down in the saloon?"
"Oh yes, it will be quite ready now," said Lady Olive. "Mr Vandel and
papa have started their chess already; Madame de Bourbon is still
making lace with those wonderful eyes and fingers of hers; and so, if
you want to exchange the storm for the calm, come along."
A little after eleven that night, when the _Nadine_, thrilling in
every plate and plank, was tearing through the smooth water of the
Atlantic at nearly twenty-one knots an hour, a council of three was
being held in the smoking-room on deck. The doors and windows were
closed, and a quarter-master was patrolling the deck on each side.
Below in the saloon, Miss Chrysie, with a dainty little revolver in
the pocket of her yachting skirt, was playing poker for beans with
Madame de Bourbon, Lady Olive, and the marquise. In short, as Miss
Chrysie herself would have expressed it, things were rapidly coming to
a head on board the _Nadine_.
"It seems to me," said the president, "that, all things
considered--thank you, viscount, I think I will take just one more
peg--we have just got to take every possible precaution. I don't say
that I am suspecting or accusing anybody; but, considering that we've
got about the biggest thing on earth right here aboard this yacht, I
don't think we should calculate on taking any risks. Take that
telegram to start with. There can't be any doubt about that; and it
doesn't matter whether the marquise or Ma'm'selle Felice sent it,
there it is. Get it down to plain figures. This boat does twenty
knots, and she started fifteen hours before her time. A telegram goes
from Southampton to Cherbourg, as Chrysie's duplicate showed, clearly
telling Count Valdemar, on the _Vlodoya_ at Cherbourg, where he had no
business to be, according to his programme, that we were sailing in
the afternoon instead of the next morning, and it ended by telling him
to make haste. Now, what does haste mean? We steam twenty knots, and
the _Vlodoya_, we know, steams about sixteen. She started from
Cherbourg, and we started from Southampton. The French and Russian
Polar expeditions are perhaps under weigh now, and, from what we know,
I reckon that they have a fairly good idea of what we're going across
the Atlantic for. Now, how's a sixteen-knot boat going to catch a
twenty-knot yacht anywhere between Southampton and Halifax?"
"And why should Count Valdemar receive that telegram at Cherbourg, as
I suppose he did," said Lord Orrel, "instead of going on to the
Baltic, when he said he was in such a hurry to get to Petersburg?"
"That, I think," said Hardress, "is the most suspicious fact in the
whole business. Of course, I don't like to suspect our late or our
present guests, but I must confess that I feel there's something
wrong. What it is I can't exactly say; but still I do feel that
everything is not as it ought to be."
"And that," said the president, "I think I can explain in a few
words--not my own ideas altogether, because Chrysie has given me a
good many points. You know, gentlemen, there are some things that a
woman's eyes can see through a lot farther than a man's can, and
Chrysie doesn't always keep her eyes down."
He lit a fresh cigar, took a sip of his whisky and soda, and went on:
"Why should a telegram be sent to the owner of a sixteen-knot boat,
informing him of a change of sailing a twenty-knot boat, when the
sixteen-knotter is supposed to be going up the Baltic, and the
twenty-knotter is going across the Atlantic? It seems ridiculous,
doesn't it? It would, even if they were both going across the
Atlantic, as they might be. Now, those are hard facts; and there's a
dead contradiction between them, just as you might say there is
between positive and negative in electricity. Now, where's the spark
that's going to connect them?"
There was silence at the table for a few moments, while the president
blew two or three long whiffs of blue smoke from his lips; and then
Hardress, remembering his thoughts on the bridge, and what he had seen
from it, blurted out, almost involuntarily:
"Something wrong with the engines, I suppose?"
"You've got it in once, viscount," said the president, flicking the
ash off his cigar. "Is there any other way that a sixteen-knotter
could overtake a twenty-knotter? I don't want to say anything against
anyone, but, you know, accidents to engines are easily managed, and we
just can't afford to have any right here."
"I've seen to that already," said Hardress. "I don't think there's any
fear of a mishap, accidental or otherwise."
"But," said the president, lighting another cigar, "if it should
happen that the sixteen-knotter did overhaul the twenty-knotter,
wouldn't it be just as well to get that gun mounted? They may have
guns on that Russian boat, and they probably have; but I don't think
they'll have anything that's a circumstance to our twelve-pounder
Vandelite gun."
"Well, in case of accidents," said Lord Orrel, "I think, Shafto, that
it wouldn't be a bad idea to get the gun mounted at once. If, in spite
of any precautions, there is going to be an accident in the
engine-room, it might as well be mounted as soon as possible."
"I quite agree with you, sir," said Hardress. "We will have it out of
the hold, and mount it first thing to-morrow morning."