the other three turned
and stared at me.

"Mr. Lindsey!" said I, "look here! Those are the clothes he was wearing
when I saw the last of him. And there's the shirt he had on, too, and the
shoes. Wherever he is, and whatever happened to him, he made a complete
change of linen and clothing before he quitted the yacht! That's a plain
fact, Mr. Lindsey!"

A fact it was--and one that made me think, however it affected the
others. It disposed, for instance, of any notion or theory of suicide. A
man doesn't change his clothes if he's going to drown himself. And it
looked as if this had been part of some premeditated plan: at the very
least of it, it was a curious thing.

"You're sure of that?" inquired Mr. Lindsey, eyeing the things that had
been thrown aside.

"Dead sure of it!" said I. "I couldn't be mistaken."

"Did he bring a portmanteau or anything aboard with him, then?" asked
he.

"He didn't; but he could have kept clothes and linen and the like in
these lockers," I pointed out, beginning to lift the lids. "See
here!--here's brushes and combs and the like. I tell you before ever
he left this yacht, or fell out of it, or whatever's happened him,
he'd changed everything from his toe to his top--there's the very cap
he was wearing."

They all looked at each other, and Mr. Lindsey's gaze finally fastened
itself on Andrew Robertson.

"I suppose you don't know anything about this, my friend?" he asked.

"What should I know?" answered Robertson, a bit surlily. "The yacht's
just as I found it--not a thing's been touched."

There was the luncheon basket lying on the cabin table--just as I had
last seen it, except that Carstairs had evidently finished the provisions
which he and I had left. And I think the same thought occurred to Mr.
Lindsey and myself at the same moment--how long had he stopped on board
that yacht after his cruel abandoning of me? For forty-eight hours had
elapsed since that episode, and in forty-eight hours a man may do a great
deal in the way of making himself scarce--which now seemed to me to be
precisely what Sir Gilbert Carstairs had done, though in what particular
fashion, and exactly why, it was beyond either of us to surmise.

"I suppose no one has heard anything of this yacht having been seen
drifting about yesterday, or during last night?" asked Mr. Lindsey,
putting his question to both men. "No talk of it hereabouts?"

But neither the police nor Andrew Robertson had heard a murmur of