Hardly knowing what he did, he went aboard and plied his
questions right and left, hoping that she might have come through
unobserved. But she was not there, and it was half past ten o'clock.

Out into the drizzle he sallied once more, racked by a hundred doubts
and misgivings. Reproaching himself fiercely for a fool, a dolt, he
posted himself at the approach to the dock and strained his eyes and
ears for the first sight of Grace Vernon. Other people went aboard, but
an hour passed before he gave up all hope and distractedly made up his
mind to institute a search for the missing girl. He conjectured all
manner of mishaps, even to the most dreadful of catastrophes. Runaway
accident, robbery, abduction, even murder harassed his imagination until
it became unbearable. The only cheerful alternative that he could hope
for was that she might not have escaped the authorities after all and
was still in custody, crushed and despairing. Reviling himself with a
bitterness that was explicit but impotent, he started off resolutely to
seek the aid of the police--the last extremity.

A quick little shriek came to his ears, and then the door of a cab that
had been standing at the opposite corner flew open.

"Hugh! Hugh!" called a shrill voice. His heart gave a wild leap and then
his long legs did the same--repeatedly. As he brought up beside the cab,
Grace Vernon tumbled out, sobbing and laughing almost hysterically.

"Good Heavens!" shouted he, regardless of the driver, who grinned
scornfully from his private box above, the only witness to this most
unconventional comedy of circumstances.

"I've been--been here an hour--in this cab!" she cried plaintively. "Oh,
oh, oh! You'll never know how I felt all that time. It seemed a year.
Where did you get those awful-looking clothes, and--"

"What--aw--oh, the coat? Great Jehoshaphat! You don't mean to say
that--"

"I thought you were a detective!" she sobbed. "Oh, how wretched I've
been. Pay the man, dear, and take me--take me any place where there is
light. I'm dying from the sight and sound of this awful night."

Mr. Ridgeway lost no time in paying the driver and getting her on board
the _Saint Cloud_. She tried to explain as they hurried along, but he
told her there was time enough for that.

"We may be watched, after all," he said, looking anxiously in all
directions, a habit that had grown upon him to such an extent that he
feared it would cling to him through life. "Go to you