The prince did not refer again to the affairs that had called him away.  The talk naturally turned to the house where they had first met, and Wanda mentioned that her father and she were going to the reception given by the Orlays that evening.

“You’re going, of course?” said the prince.

“Yes, I am going.”

“You go to many such entertainments?”

“No, I go to very few,” replied Cartoner, looking at Wanda in his speculative way.

Then he suddenly rose and took his leave, with a characteristic omission of the usual “Well, I must be off,” or any such catch-word.  He certainly left a great deal unsaid which this babbling world expects.

He walked along the crowded streets, absorbed in his own thoughts, for some distance.  Then he suddenly emerged from that quiet shelter, and accepted the urgent invitation of a hansom-cab driver to get into his vehicle.

“Westminster Bridge,” he said.

He quitted the cab at the corner of the bridge, and walked quickly down to the steamboat-landing.

“Where do you want to go to?” inquired the gruff, seafaring ticket-clerk.

“As far as I can,” was the reply.

A steamer came almost at once, and Cartoner selected a quiet seat over the rudder.  He must have known that the Minnie was so constructed that she could pass under the bridges, for he began to look for her at once.  It was six o’clock, and a spring tide was running out.  All the passenger traffic was turned to the westward, and a friendly deck-hand, having leisure, came and gave Cartoner his views upon cricket, in which, as was natural in one whose life was passed on running water, his whole heart seemed to be absorbed.  Cartoner was friendly, but did not take advantage of this affability to make inquiries about the Minnie.  He knew, perhaps, that there is no more suspicious man on earth than a river-side worker.

The steamer raced under the bridges, and at last shot out into the Pool, where a few belated barges were drifting down stream.  A number of steamers lay at anchor, some working cargo, others idle.  The majority were foreigners, odd-shaped vessels, with funnels like a steam threshing-machine, and gayly painted deck-houses.

In one quiet corner, behind a laid-up excursion-boat and a file of North Sea fish-carriers, lay the Minnie, painted black, with nothing brighter than a deep brown on her deck-house, her boats painted a shabby green.  She might have been an overgrown tug or a superannuated fish-carrier.

Cartoner landed at the Cherry Orchard Pier, and soon found a boatman to take him to the Minnie.

“Just took the skipper on board a few minutes ago, sir,” he said.  “He must have come down by the boat before yours.”

A few minutes later Cartoner stood on the deck of the Minnie, and banged with his fist on the cover of the cabin gangway, which was tantamount to ringing at Captain Cable’s front door.