I was violently excited. I was sure that I had hit on the right trail at last. One thing was clear, I must not move out of the cabin. The asafoetida had got to be borne. I examined my facts again.
Tomorrow was the 22nd, and at 1 a.m. or 1 p.m. something would happen. I plumped for 1 a.m. It was now seven o’clock. In six hours I should know.
I don’t know how I got through the evening. I retired to my cabin fairly early. I had told the stewardess that I had a cold in the head and didn’t mind smells. She still seemed distressed, but I was firm.
The evening seemed interminable. I duly retired to bed, but in view of emergencies I swathed myself in a thick flannel dressing gown, and encased my feet in slippers. Thus attired I felt that I could spring up and take an active part in anything that happened.
What did I expect to happen? I hardly knew. Vague fancies, most of them wildly improbable, flitted through my brain. But one thing I was firmly convinced of, at one o’clock something would happen.
At various times, I heard my fellow-passengers coming to bed. Fragments of conversation, laughing good nights, floated in through the open transom. Then, silence. Most of the lights went out. There was still one in the passage outside, and there was therefore a certain amount of light in my cabin. I heard eight bells go. The hour that followed seemed the longest I had ever known. I consulted my watch surreptitiously to be sure I had not overshot the time.
If my deductions were wrong, if nothing happened at one o’clock, I should have made a fool of myself, and spent all the money I had in the world on a mare’s nest. My heart beat painfully.