Never, he thought, had he known moonlight so pure, so silvery and
strong. Shadows of gates and posts lay upon the forward deck like
stencils of lamp-black upon white marble. Beyond the boat's
bluntly rounded nose the East River stretched its restless, dark
reaches, glossy black, woven with gorgeous ribbons of reflected
light streaming from pier-head lamps on the further shore.
Overhead, the sky, a pallid and luminous blue around the low-swung
moon, was shaded to profound depths of bluish-black toward the
horizon. Above Brooklyn rested a tenuous haze. A revenue cutter, a
slim, pale shape, cut across the bows like a hunted ghost. Farther
out a homeward-bound excursion steamer, tier upon tier of
glittering lights, drifted slowly toward its pier beneath the new
bridge, the blare of its band, swelling and dying upon the night
breeze, mercifully tempered by distance.

Presently Maitland's attention was distracted and drawn, by the
abrupt cessation of its motor's pulsing, to the automobile on his
right. He lifted his chin sharply, narrowing his eyes, whistled
low; and thereafter had eyes for nothing else.

The car, he saw with the experienced eye of a connoisseur, was a
recent model of one of the most expensive and popular foreign
makes: built on lines that promised a deal in the way of speed,
and furnished with engines that were pregnant with multiplied
horse-power: all in all not the style of car one would expect to
find controlled by a solitary woman, especially after ten of a
summer's night.

Nevertheless the lone occupant of this car was a woman. And there