Page:Guy Boothby - The Beautiful White Devil.djvu/194

 him up and threw him outside into the saloon. I then locked my cabin door and went to bed.

I don't suppose, however, I had been asleep more than an hour before I was awakened by a loud hammering at my door. Thinking that the ship must be in danger, I sprang from my bunk and unlocked it as quickly as possible. On looking out I discovered Walworth and the officers' steward standing before me.

"What on earth is the matter?" I asked, I'm afraid a trifle irritably "What on earth are you making all this row about?"

"Something's very much the matter," Walworth answered, taking my arm and drawing me along the saloon. "Ebbington's taken poison."

"The deuce he has!" I cried. "Let me see him at once."

I was thereupon conducted to his cabin, which was on the port side of the vessel, at the further end of the saloon. I found the patient stretched on his back in his bunk, holding an empty laudanum bottle in his hand.

One moment's examination showed me that life was extinct; he had been dead nearly an hour. In this fashion had Alie's difficulty been solved for her, and, perhaps, all things considered, though it seems rather a cruel thing to say, in the best possible manner for all parties.

"Is there no chance at all of saving him?" asked Walworth, who had been watching me intently during my examination.

"Not one!" I answered. "Ebbington's gone where even the Beautiful White Devil's vengeance won't reach