“Three of them behind the hood,” said Davies: “what are we to do?”
“Follow,” I answered, and essayed a feeble stroke, but the blade scuttered over the surface.
“Let’s wait about for a bit,” said Davies. “We’re late anyhow. If they go to the yacht they’ll think we’re ashore.”
“No; but we must. The least suspicion’ll do for us now.”
“Give me your scull, old chap, and put on your coat.”
He extinguished the lantern, lit a pipe, and then rowed slowly on, while I sat on a slack heap in the stern and devoted my last resources of will to the emancipation of the spirit from the tired flesh.
In ten minutes or so we were rounding the pier, and there was the yacht’s top-mast against the sky. I saw, too, that the launch was alongside of her, and told Davies so. Then I lit a cigarette, and made a lamentable effort to whistle. Davies followed suit, and emitted a strange melody which I took to be “Home, Sweet Home,” but he has not the slightest ear for music.
“Why, they’re on board, I believe,” said I; “the cabin’s lighted. Ahoy there!” I shouted as we came up. “Who’s that?”
“Good evening, sir,” said a sailor, who was fending off the yacht with a boathook. “It’s Commander von Brüning’s launch. I think the gentlemen want to see you.”
Before we could answer, an exclamation of: “Why, here they are!” came from the deck of the _Dulcibella_, and the dim form of von Brüning himself emerged from the companionway. There was something of a scuffle down below, which the Commander nearly succeeded in drowning by the breeziness of his greeting. Meanwhile, the ladder creaked under fresh weight, and Dollmann appeared.
“Hullo! Herr Dollmann,” said Davies; “how are you?”
I must explain that we had floated up between the yacht and the launch, whose sailors had passed her a little aside in order to give us room. Her starboard side-light was just behind and above us, pouring its green rays obliquely over the deck of the _Dulcibella_, while we and the dinghy were in deep shadow between. The most studied calculation could not have secured us more favourable conditions for a moment which I had always dreaded—the meeting of Davies and Dollmann. The former, having shortened his sculls, just sat where he was, half turned towards the yacht and looking up at his enemy. No lineament of his own face could have been visible to the latter, while those pitiless green rays—you know their ravaging effect on the human physiognomy—struck full on Dollmann’s face. It was my first fair view of it at close quarters, and, secure in my background of gloom, I feasted with a luxury of superstitious abhorrence on the livid smiling mask that for a few moments stooped peering down towards Davies. One of the caprices of the crude light was to obliterate, or at any rate so penetrate, beard and moustache, as to reveal in outline lips and chin, the features in which defects of character are most surely betrayed, especially when your victim smiles. Accuse me, if you will, of stooping to melodramatic embroidery; object that my own prejudiced fancy contributed to the result; but I can, nevertheless, never efface the impression of malignant perfidy and base passion, exaggerated to caricature, that I received in those few instants. Another caprice of the light was to identify the man with the portrait of him when younger and clean-shaven, in the frontispiece of his own book; and another still, the most repulsively whimsical of all, was to call forth a strong resemblance to the sweet young girl who had been with us yesterday.