"You don"t think there is anybody on board who will know me, do you?"
"No one, barring the Captain."
"Oh," said Agar calmly, "he is all right. He can keep his mouth shut."
"There is no doubt about that," replied the Doctor.
A little pause followed, during which they both listened involuntarily to the ice-cream merchant"s musical voice, which was now floating over the silent decks, raised in song.
"I should like to hear all about it some day," said the ship"s surgeon at last. He knew his man, and no detail of the strange lives that pa.s.sed the horizon of his daily existence was ever forgotten. Only he usually found that those who had the most to tell required a little a.s.sistance in their narration.
"It is rather a rum business," answered Jem Agar, not displeased.
At this moment the ship"s bell rang four clear notes into the night.
"Ten o"clock," said the Doctor. "Come into my cabin and have a smoke; the Captain will be in soon. He would like to hear the story too."
So they pa.s.sed into the cabin, and before they had been there many minutes the Captain joined them. For a moment he stood in the doorway, then he came forward with outstretched hand.
"Well," he said, "all that I can say is that you ought to be dead. But it"s not my business."
He had seen too many freaks of fortune to be surprised at this.
"I thought," he continued, "that there was something familiar about the back of your head. Back of a man"s head never changes. It"s a funny thing."
He sat down in his usual chair, and looked with a cheery smile upon him who had risen from the death column of the _Times_. Then he turned to his pipe.
"You know, Agar," he said, "I was beastly sorry about that--death of yours. Cut me up wonderfully for a few minutes. That is saying a lot in these days."
Agar laughed.
"It is very kind of you to say so," he said rather awkwardly.
"And I," added Dr. Ruthine from behind the whisky and soda tray, in the deliberate voice of a man who is saying something with an effort, "felt that it was a pity. That is how it struck me--a pity."
Then, very disjointedly, and in a manner which could scarcely be set down here, Major James Agar told his singular story. There are--thank heaven!--many such stories still untold; there are, one would be inclined to hope, many such still uncommenced. As a nation we may be on the decline, but there is something to go on with in us yet.
Once when the narrator paused, Dr. Ruthine went to the side table and opened some bottles.
"Whisky?" he inquired, with curt hospitality, "or anything else your fancy may paint, down to tea."
Agar rose to pour out his own allowance, and for a moment the two men stood together. With the critical eye of a soldier, which seems to weigh flesh and blood, he looked his host for the time being up and down.
"They don"t make men like you and me on tea," he said, reaching out his hand towards a tumbler.
Then the story went on. At first the ship"s doctor listened to it with interest but without absorption, then suddenly something seemed to catch his attention and hold it riveted. When a pause came he leant forward, pointing an emphasising finger.
"When you spoke just now of the chief," he said, "did you mean Michael?"
"Yes."
"What! Seymour Michael?"
"Yes."
The Captain tapped his pipe against his boot and leant back with the shrug of the shoulders awaiting further developments.
"And you mean to tell me that you put yourself entirely in the hands of Seymour Michael?" pursued the Doctor.
"Yes, why not?"
Mark Ruthine shook his head with a little laugh. "I always thought, Agar, that you were a bit of a fool!"
"I have sometimes suspected it myself," admitted the soldier meekly.
"Why, man," said Ruthine, "Seymour Michael is one of the biggest rascals on G.o.d"s earth. I would not trust him with fourpence round the corner."
"Nor would I," put in the Captain, "and the sum is not excessive."
Jem Agar was sipping his whisky and soda with the placidity of a giant who fears no open fight and never thinks of foul play.
"I don"t see," he muttered, "what harm he can do me."
"No more do I, at the moment," replied the Doctor; "but the man is a liar and an unscrupulous cad. I have kept an eye on him for years because he interests me. He has never run a straight course since he came into the field; he has consistently sacrificed truth, honour, and his best friend to his own ambition ever since the beginning."
Jem Agar smiled at the Doctor"s vehemence, although he was aware that such a display was far from being characteristic of the man.
"Of course," he admitted, "in the matter of honour and glory I expect to be swindled. But I don"t care. I know the chap"s reputation, and all that, but he can hardly get rid of the fact that I have done the thing and he has not."
"I was not thinking so much of that," replied the other. "Men sell their souls for honour and glory and never get paid."
He paused; then with the sure touch of one who has dabbled with pen and ink in the humanities, he laid his finger on the vulnerable spot.
"I was thinking more," he said, "of what you had trusted him to do--telling certain persons, I mean, that you were not dead. He is just as likely as not to have suppressed the information."
Jem Agar was looking very grave, with a sudden pinched appearance about the lips which was only half concealed by his moustache.
"Why should he do that?" he asked sharply.
"He would do it if it suited his purpose. He is not the man to take into consideration such things as feelings--especially the feelings of others."
"You"re a bit hard on him, Ruthine," said Jem doubtfully. "Why should it suit his convenience?"
"Secrecy was essential for your purpose and his; in telling a secret one doubles the risk of its disclosure each time a new confidant is admitted.
Besides, the man"s nature is quite extraordinarily secretive. He has Jewish and Scotch blood in his veins, and the result is that he would rather disseminate false news than true on the off chance of benefiting thereby later on. For men of that breed each piece of accurate information, however trivial, has a marketable value, and they don"t part with it unless they get their price."
There followed a silence, during which Jem Agar went back in mental retrospection to the only interview he had ever had with Seymour Michael, and the old lurking sense of distrust awoke within his heart.
"But," said the Captain, who was an optimist--he even applied that theory to human nature--"I suppose it is all right now. Everybody knows now that you are among the quick--eh?"