Chapter 27
SO PEDDER had returned and, back in New York, Reardon was making ready to rejoin him. Why, then, the Astarte’s nocturnal departure? To bring Reardon to New York, presumably. With what object? The Scotland Yard man found no answer to the question.
He was suddenly conscious that he had eaten nothing all day. But the prospect of lunch on the crowded terrace did not appeal to him. The fashionable throng was out of tune with his mood. These care-free, well-groomed, ultra-sophisticated New-Yorkers, with their expensive cars, and yachts, and power-boats, depressed him. They seemed to stress the utter unreality of the dark events which the Scotland Yard man was convinced were in preparation out there beneath the Astarte’s fluttering burgee. The contrast shook his belief in himself. Bo
