Part 14 (1/2)

That's fixed. Now, when we've had something to eat we'll go see the Transport Officer. He's the man.”

”I hope you don't want _me_ to go with you,” said Captain Rannie, looking down at the floor as though he saw the bottomless pit just on the point of opening under their feet. ”I've only seen the man once and then he failed to show the very slightest glimmer of comprehension of what I had to put up with. Might as well talk to a stone wall.

Absolutely. I'm sure _I_ don't want to see your Transport Officer.”

”I was going to ask you,” said Mr. Spokesly, ”if you don't mind, a question. You seem to be in the know all round here.”

”What is it?” said Mr. Dainopoulos, regarding Mr. Spokesly with sudden interest. He even left his pen in the air while he listened.

Mr. Spokesly mentioned the incident of the suit of clothes left behind by the indigent Jack Harrowby and the memories of the post-card shop evoked by the interview with Mr. Theotokis.

Mr. Dainopoulos let his pen descend to the doc.u.ment he was auditing and nodded in comprehension.

”Yes, all finished, eh? Wal, what you think?” he went on nonchalantly.

”She little d.a.m.n fool. She tell plenty stories to anybody who get sweet on her, you unnerstand? She hear _Tanganyika_ go south, time so and so.

She talk”--here Mr. Dainopoulos made a gesture with his thumb and fingers indicating violent blabbing--”ba-ba-ba-ba! Now she's in jail.

_Tanganyika_, wal, you know all about _Tanganyika_, Mister. You unnerstand; these peoples, French, English, they play, you know, golf and tennees, and seem half asleep.” He shook his head. ”No! Not asleep.

Very bad business that. Me; I go all the time like this.” And he drew a perfectly straight line with his pen along the edge of his desk. ”That crooked business no good.”

Captain Rannie was suddenly overtaken by a violent fit of coughing, and buried his nut-cracker features in a large plum-coloured silk handkerchief. His head was bowed, his shoulders heaved horribly, and from him came a sound like an asthmatic horse whinnying. He might have been laughing save that laughter was unknown to him beyond a short sharp yawp, a ”Ha!” involving a lift of the diaphragm and an intake of breath.

And since none had ever seen him laugh they would not suspect merriment in this dreadful cacophony, this laryngeal uproar, which had so suddenly a.s.sailed him. Mr. Dainopoulos looked at his captain very sternly and then renewed the proposal to eat. Captain Rannie rose, joint by joint, and stuffed his plum-coloured handkerchief into his breast pocket.

”No,” he said, and Mr. Spokesly wondered if the man ever agreed to anything except under protest. ”No, I'm a two-meal-a-day man myself. I find I am less bilious on two meals a day. And anyhow, after that, I couldn't possibly eat anything.”

And he coughed himself out of the door.

Mr. Dainopoulos stared after him, his features dest.i.tute of any emotion at all. Captain Rannie halted, turned half round, and it almost seemed as though for once in his life he was going to raise his eyes and look somebody square in the face. But he paused at the second b.u.t.ton of his owner's waistcoat and nodded several times, his toothless mouth open, a perfect ventriloquist's dummy.

”I'll have indigestion for a fortnight,” he said. ”Absolutely.” And he started off again, the plum-coloured handkerchief to his face, his shoulders heaving, making a noise like a foundered horse.

”What's the matter with him?” Mr. Spokesly felt justified in asking.

”He's an old b.u.m!” said Mr. Dainopoulos with a gloomy air, but made no further allusion to the bronchial troubles of his captain. The fact was, as Mr. Spokesly became aware in time, that Mr. Dainopoulos, in the course of his many negotiations, was obliged to entrust some of the business to his employees. And a stroke of business entirely correct to him did not make that impression upon Captain Rannie, who was under the illusion that he himself was the soul of honour. So he was, in theory.

When Captain Rannie did a mean and dishonourable action, it bore to him the aspect of an act of singular rect.i.tude. And he promptly forgot all about it. He wiped it out of his mind as off a slate. It was gone; had never existed, in fact. For the exploits of others, however, he not only never left off thinking about them, but he could not be induced to refrain from discussing them, for ever and ever. Anyone who had ever had any dealings with him would find him an embarra.s.sing witness at the Day of Judgment, if we are correct in a.s.suming that witnesses will be called. Mr. Dainopoulos could not afford to quarrel with him, but he sometimes wished he had a more amiable disposition, and could get on better with his crew. And he felt for him also the puzzled contempt which men of affairs feel for the sensualist. An elderly man who, as Mr.

Dainopoulos had heard, had a wife somewhere and a married daughter somewhere else, and who was continually engaged in some shabby unmentionable intrigue, made one feel a little uncomfortable and slightly ashamed of one's species. Captain Rannie's view of his own conduct was not available, for he never by any chance recognized the existence of such affairs in his intercourse with other men. His sentiments about women were unknown save what might be gathered from his short sharp yawp--”Ha!”--whenever they were mentioned, the laugh of a n.o.ble nature embittered by base ingrat.i.tude. So he visualized himself.

No one had ever betrayed the slightest grat.i.tude for anything he had ever done. So he would be revenged on the whole pack of them--Ha!

It was Mr. Spokesly's chance question, whether the Captain was a visitor at the house, which let him fully into the mind and temper of his new employer.

”He's not that sort of man,” said Mr. Dainopoulos, shovelling beans into his mouth with a knife. ”My wife, she wouldn't like him, I guess. He's got something of his own, y'unnerstand. Like your friend Mr. Bates, only he don't drink. He take the pipe a leetle. You savvy?”

Mr. Spokesly remembered this conversation later on, when events had suddenly carried him beyond the range of Mr. Dainopoulos and his intense respectability. He remembered it because he realized that Mr.

Dainopoulos at that time, and behind his mask of bourgeois probity, which had been so enigmatically received by Captain Rannie, was devising a daring and astute stroke of business based on his exact knowledge of the aegean and his relations with the late consuls of enemy powers. And Captain Rannie, of course, had been aware of this. But at the moment Mr.

Spokesly easily abandoned the morals of his new commander and listened to what might be called the wisdom of the Near East. He thought there was no harm in asking Mr. Dainopoulos what he thought of the emerald ring. That gentleman evidently thought a great deal of it. He offered to buy it, spot cash, for a thousand drachma, about one sixth of its actual value. He merely shrugged his shoulders when he heard the tale of a woman giving it to Archy. According to his own experience that sort of woman did not give such things away to anybody. He thoroughly understood precious stones, as he understood drugs, carpets, currency, bric-a-brac, dry goods, wet goods, and the law of average. He noted a minute flaw in the stone, and finally handed it back hurriedly, telling Mr. Spokesly to give it away to some lady.

”Or throw it into the sea,” he added, drinking a gla.s.s of wine in a gulp.

”What for?” demanded Mr. Spokesly, mystified by this sudden fancy.