"I was beginning to wonder whether you were an absentee," Katharine remarked.
"I have been making friends with the captain," Jocelyn Thew replied.
"Please arrange my chair," she begged. "I should like to sit down."
He did as he was asked, arranging her rugs with the care of an old traveler. All his movements were very deliberate, even the searching way in which his eyes swept the long row of empty chairs on either side of them, and the care with which he fastened two open portholes above their heads. Finally he accepted her invitation and sat by her side.
"I have seen you once before," she observed, "just before we started."
"You were standing on the upper deck," she continued, "a little away from the others. You had your glasses glued to your eyes and you watched the dock. You had the air of one looking for a late arrival. Do you know of any one who has missed the boat?"
She turned her head a little. It was obvious that he was speaking the truth.
"A great many," he acknowledged, "one in particular just now. Perhaps," he went on, "I should say an opponent."
"If that is so," she remarked, after a moment's pause, "you should be glad that he missed the boat."
"I am," he admitted. "It was part of my plan that he should miss it."
"So you haven't finished with adventures yet?"
There was a brief silence. Then she turned her head a little, leaning it still on the back of the chair but watching him as she spoke.
"I have seen my patient," she told him. "I have also had some conversation with the doctor."
"I am beginning to think," she continued, "that you must be a philanthropist."
"You hinted," she went on, "that your friend was in poor circumstances. You did not tell me, though, that you were paying the whole expenses of this trip, just so that the man should see his home and his family before he died."
"I told you that the care of him was a charge upon me," Jocelyn Thew reminded her. "That amounts to the same thing, doesn't it? I was clever enough, anyhow, to get a good nurse at a small fee."
"I am not at all sure," she replied, "that I shall not charge you something outrageous. You are probably a millionaire."
"Whatever you charge me," he promised, "I shall try to pay."
The two journalists, refreshed and encouraged by their libation, strolled past arm in arm.