Dressed now for leaving the cabin, he still had something to tell me.
"Say, there’s one man on board who’ll be glad to hear you’ve waked up. That’s the doctor. Not the ship’s doctor," he hastened to explain, "but my doctor. Say, he’s about the whitest!"
My questions were inspired not so much by sympathy with him, though that affected me, as by the hope of getting sidelights on myself.
"Came over with him just before the war. I was his stenog. Name of Averill. Been in and out to see you five and six times a day ever since we sailed. Tell you all about him after I’ve had my breakfast. Off now to send in John-M’rie. Don’t forget what I said about the griddle-cakes. They can give ’em to you good and greasy if you kick; but if you don’t they’ll just hand you out a pile of asbestos table-mats."
Before getting up to make the investigations on which I was so keen I waited to be rid of Jean-Marie. He came in presently—small, black, wiry, not particularly clean, and with an oily smell, but full of an ingratiating kindness. When I had trumped up an explanation of my abnormally long sleep I set him to separating my hand-luggage from my cabin-mate’s, nominally for the sake of convenience, but really that I might know which was mine.
The minute he had left with my order for breakfast I sprang from my bunk. I searched first the pockets of my clothes. There was nothing in them but a handkerchief, a few French coins, and a card giving the number of a cabin, the number of a seat at a table in the dining-saloon, and the name of Mr. Jasper Soames. It was a name that to me meant nothing. Referring it to my inner self, nothing vibrated, nothing rang. It was like trying to clink a piece of money on wool or cork or some other unresponsive material.
My clothing itself was what I had guessed from the inspection made from my berth. It suggested having been bought ready to wear, a suggestion borne out by the label of what was apparently a big department store, the Bon Marché, at Tours. My cap had the same label, and my hard felt hat no maker’s name at all.
I began on the bags which Jean-Marie had segregated as my property. There were two, a hand-bag and a suit-case, neither of them tagged with a name. The hand-bag contained bottles, brushes, handkerchiefs, all of the cheaper varieties. Where there was anything to indicate the place at which they had been purchased it was always the Bon Marché at Tours.