you think of the yacht?”

“We forced the door of your room, and I found the note. Has he told you what makes those infernal beads so precious?”

“No. I can’t figure that out.”

“No more can I. Did he threaten you?”

“Yes. Would I enter the launch peacefully, or would he have to carry me? I didn’t want my gown spoiled—it’s the only decent one I have. I’m not afraid. It isn’t as though he were a stranger. Being your father, he would never 94 stoop to any indignity. But he’ll find he has caught a tartar. I had an idea you’d find me.”

94

“Well, I have. But you won’t get to Hong-Kong. The minute he liberates me I’ll sneak into the wireless room and bring the destroyers. I didn’t notify the police from a bit of foolish sentiment. I didn’t quite want you mixed up in the story. I had your things conveyed to the consulate.”

“My story—which few men would believe. I’ve thought of that. Are you smoking?”

“Smoking, with my hands tied behind my back? Not so you’d notice it.”

“I smell tobacco smoke—a good cigar, too.”

“Then someone is in the passage listening.”

Silence. Anthony Cleigh eyed his perfecto rather ruefully and tiptoed back to the salon. Hoist by his own petard. He was beginning to wonder. Cleigh was a man who rarely regretted an act, but in the clear light of day he was beginning to have his doubts regarding this one. A mere feather on the wrong side of the scale, and the British destroyers would be atop of him like a flock of kites. Abduction! Cut down to bedrock, he had laid himself open to that. He ran his fingers through his cowlicks. But drat the woman! why had she accepted the situation so docilely? Since midnight not a sound out of her, not a wail, 95 not a sob. Now he had her, he couldn’t let her go. She was right there.

95

There was one man in the crew Cleigh had begun to dislike intensely, and he had been manœuvring ever since Honolulu to find a legitimate excuse to give the man his papers. Something about the fellow suggested covert insolence; he had the air of a beachcomber who had unexpectedly fallen into a soft berth, and it had gone to his head. He had been standing watch at the ladder head, and against positive orders he had 

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