"
After having said this, slowly and deliberately, with an appalling
earnestness of voice and manner, Joyce Harker looked from Dennis Wayman
to Black Milsom, and this time the masks they were accustomed to wear
did not serve these scoundrels so well as usual, for in the faces of
both there was a look of fear.
"I am going to search for my captain," said Joyce. "Good night, mates."
He left the tavern. The two men looked at each other earnestly as the
door closed upon him.
"A dangerous man," said Dennis Wayman.
"Bah!" muttered Black Milsom, savagely; "who's afraid of a hunchback's
bluster? I dare say he wanted the handling of the money himself."
All that night Joyce Harker wandered to and fro amidst the haunts of
sailors and merchant captains; but wander where he would, and inquire
of whom he would, he could obtain no tidings of the missing man.
Towards daybreak, he took a couple of hours' sleep in a tavern at
Shadwell, and with the day his search began again.
Throughout that day the same patient search continued, the same
inquiries were repeated with indomitable perseverance, in every likely
and unlikely place; but everywhere the result was failure.
It was towards dusk that Joyce Harker turned his back upon a tavern in
Rotherhithe, and set his face towards the river bank.
"I have looked long enough for him among the living," he said; "I must
look for him now amongst the dead.
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