Paganini or Joachim might have envied, he was silently easing back the sliding door at this side of the saloon. There was no sound of our adversary, no derisive voice. Moran might be six feet away—or sixty. Had he come and gone? No. I felt sure he was still behind us. Keeping our heads down, we crossed the curtained saloon in darkness, its curtains still closed, and came out on the starboard side. Holmes was evidently making a circuit in order to follow our route again and then take him in the rear.
Coming out through that opposite door into the enveloping mist once more, we felt our way forward, our backs to the wall of the saloon again. We were coming to the point at which he had seemed to be standing when we first heard his voice. With luck, he was still following us towards the stern and we might track him unseen. Once in view, a single bullet would do the job. That, of course, was the moment when we might dive from the rails and save ourselves from the rest of his crew. But as I calculated our chances, my foot caught some object in the darkness and I almost overbalanced. It felt like a fallen log. I put my hand down and felt a human leg, then a jacket, and then the features of a face. The Ruytingen light touched the surface of the sea for an instant. In its brief reflection I saw the dead man’s face. It was Lieutenant Cabell.
If I felt fear of any kind, it was not for a dead body. I had seen far too many for that. Rather, it came from the knowledge that something had gone wrong with all our plans. We were in the trap. Holmes had counted on our adversaries watching us every minute, reading our messages, decoding our cipher. He had counted on them believing that he would be on board the ship, no matter what he said. Had his judgment failed him now in the matter of the young lieutenant?
A whisper came at my ear, so quiet that it might have been Holmes. It was amiable, intimate, and soothing, coming from behind me:
“You would have it so, doctor, would you not? And, you see, it has come to this. You stand between Mr. Holmes and myself. He cannot shoot me unless he shoots you first, which I think he will not do. And he knows that if he does not lay his weapon down upon the deck this minute, then I—with more regret than I can ever describe—must shoot you here and now. And then, with more reluctance than I have felt in killing the noblest beast, I must shoot him.”
I cried out at once, “Do as you must, Holmes!”
The moment the words were out of my mouth, I knew what a fool I had been. I meant him to understand that he must ignore me and take Moran to the land of shadows at all costs. Had I said, “Shoot him!” that would have done it. But it seemed as if “Do as you must” meant “Do as he tells you.” To my dismay, Holmes laid my revolver on the deck and addressed our adversary.
“My congratulations, colonel. Your reputation as a hunter goes before you. It was remiss of me not to foresee that you might use Lieutenant Cabell’s body as a bait to catch your prey. Sooner or later, even in this fog, we should stumble upon the poor fellow quite literally. The snare at which you waited would spring and you would have us.”
Moran ignored the compliment. He came into view now, almost bear-like in his heavy military coat. He motioned us on with the pistol in his hand.
“A little further forward, if you please, gentlemen. Under the light.”
In a situation so desperate and with the mind racing, there was nothing for it but to obey, moving an inch at a time and keeping one’s nerve. With the heavy-looking weapon of Von Herder in his hand, Moran followed us, scooping up my revolver from the deck before I could prevent him.
Someone had now drawn back the curtains of the after-saloon, where the broken windows faced the ship’s funnels, and a lamp had been lit. The space where we had first stood was hazily lit by the light from the interior. Holmes turned to face our enemy so that we stood with our backs to this illumination. Moran laughed, as if to assure