“C. Q.”; or, In the Wireless House
cabin deck and as luck would have it they had no sooner reached the bottom of the companionway than they met Cosmo Graeme face to face. He was crossing from the deck-house to the windbreak and coming straight towards them, and so unexpected was the encounter that instinctively he raised his hand to his hat and bowed to Lily, who gasped, flushed and drew back.
Captain Ponsonby grasped her arm tight, if tenderly, as Cosmo hurried by them without speaking.
“That ’s our man!” he whispered tensely. “The very man! You saw how he recognized you. Fits the description to a T.”
But in the single moment required for the Captain to formulate this very obvious judgment Lily Trevelyan had recovered herself.
“I ’m sorry to upset your theory. Captain Ponsonby,” she replied in her usual bantering tone, “but I never saw that mournful-looking person before in my life. I ’m sure if I had, I should remember him—such a ‘lean and hungry’ Cassius as that! (No, my friend,—he may be a criminal but you can’t prove it by me!)” This last sentence was added as a sort162
