Every sound startled and alarmed him; every pedestrian looked like a pursuer in plain clothes or blue.  A couple of policemen eyed him sharply and he trembled in his boots.  The sudden, overpowering recollection that he had the passage tickets in his pockets with the reservations and the luggage checks almost sent him flying through the air, so swift was his pace.  He lost his way twice, but was set straight by unsuspecting bluecoats.

At last he zigzagged his way through devious channels and into the presence of a company’s official, who informed him that Miss Ridge had not gone aboard nor had she presented herself at the dock during the evening.  Hugh’s jaw dropped and a sick, damp perspiration started on his forehead.  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.