the lane supplied the only practicable means of egress. Some gaunt
sheds blocked one end of the wharf and piles of dressed stone cumbered
the other. The tiny wavelets of the river murmured and gurgled amid
the heavy piles which shored up the landing-place, and Devar's sharp
eyes soon detected a corner of the gray-colored limousine round which a
ripple had formed. In all probability the heated cylinders had burst
when the water rushed in, and the explosion had tilted the chassis,
else the river, necessarily deep by the side of the quay, would have
concealed the wreckage completely.

From out of the mist came a white glare. Brodie had set the lamps
going, and now the square section of the submerged car became
distinctly visible. A little to one side a barge was moored, and the
policeman, who had produced a serviceable looking revolver, determined
to search it.

A plank spanned the foot or so of interstice between the quay and the
rough deck, and, in the flurry of the moment, the three men crossed
without warning the chauffeur as to their movements. The squat craft
had an open well amidships, but there were two covered-in ends, and
McCulloch, taking one of the lamps, peered down into the nearest
hatchway.

"If anyone is below there, speak," he said, "or I give you warning that
I shall shoot at sight."

There was no answer; he knelt down, lowered the lamp, and peered inside.

"Empty!" he announced. "Now for the other one."

He repeated the same tactics, but the cavity revealed no lurking form
within. Naturally, his companions were absorbed in McCulloch's
actions, because they knew that any instant a blinding sheet of flame
might leap out of the darkness and a bullet send him prostrate and
writhing. Of the three, Curtis was most inured to an environment that
was unusual and weird, and he it was who first noticed that the barge
was altering its position with regard to the white discs of light which
the lamps of the automobile formed in the mist, and a splash caused by
the falling plank confirmed his frenzied doubt.

One glance showed what had happened. Already they were ten or twelve
feet from the quay, which stood fully two feet above the deck of the
barge. Even while the fantastic notion flashed through his mind, a
shoreward jump barely achievable by a first-rate athlete became a sheer
impossibility.

"Good Lord!" he cried, almost laughing with vexation. "The barge has
been cast off from her moorings!