d-night. I shall expect you in the morning."

"In the morning."

A quarter of an hour later Browne was alone in his own cabin. Having
locked his door, he took the letter, the other had given him, from his
pocket and opened it. A half-sheet of note-paper, upon which scarcely
five hundred words were written, was all he found. But these words, he
knew, meant all the world to him. He read and re-read them, and, as
soon as he had got them by heart, lit a match and set fire to the
paper, which was reduced to ashes. Then he returned to the deck, where
Maas and Foote were still seated, and settled himself down for a chat.
They had not been there many minutes before Maas found, that he had
smoked the last cigar of a particular brand he affected, and rose to go
to his cabin in search of another. He had not been very long absent
before Browne remembered that he had left the envelope of MacAndrew's
letter on his dressing-table. Accordingly he set off in search of it,
intending to destroy it as he had done its contents. Having reached
the companion, he was descending to the saloon below, when a sound
resembling the careful, though hurried, closing of a door attracted his
attention. A moment later he stepped into the saloon, to find Maas
there, who, for once in his life, appeared to be flurried and put out
by something.

"I have lost my cigar-case, my dear Browne," he said, as if in
explanation. "Is it not annoying?"

Browne felt sure that this was not the truth. However, he did not say
so, but when he had condoled with him, entered his own cabin, where a
surprise was in store for him. The envelope he had come down to burn,
and which he distinctly remembered having placed upon the table less
than half an hour before, was missing. Some one had taken it!

CHAPTER XXIII

Taking one thing with another, Browne's night after the incident
described at the end of the previous chapter was far from being a good
one. He could not, try how he would, solve the mystery as to what had
become of that envelope. He had hunted the cabin through and through,
and searched his pockets times without number, but always with the same
lack of success. As he lay turning the matter over and over in his
mind, he remembered that he had heard the soft shutting of a door as he
descended the companion-ladder, and also that Maas had betrayed
considerable embarrassment when he entered the saloon. It was absurd,
however, to suppose that h