"Clever? She's surely that; but he's only a boy, Major."
"What's twenty-six? He's still a dreaming boy. I'd like to say what I really thought of her."
"Don't. They'd be having a squad of stewards in here to police the place after you got through."
"Huh! No, no, Mister Meade--I'm still young and fair. You break it to him. Who knows, your age may save you from being projected through the nearest embrasure!" Crupp crushed the smoking end of his cigarette against the ash-tray. "I'll have to run along now."
"After I've said good night to two or three dear old ladies in the loungeroom before they go below."
"And two or three dear young ladies who won't be going below."
"Don't be saucy, Meade. You look out of uniform when you try to be saucy. Exactness as to fact and luminosity of language--that's you, if you please."
"If I can detach him from his beloved maps. Forty millions in railroads he's got now. And colored maps of 'em he's got. He gloats over 'em--- gloats, every night before he turns in."
"Hurry him up, anyway. And drive Cadogan in. I'll get him going on a few adventures, and make him forget his beautiful lady."
Lavis had been sitting on the transom. He always seemed to be sitting on the transom--a long, lean, huddled-up figure in the corner, looking out with half-closed eyes on the life of the smoking-room.
Cadogan came in. Meade revolved the chair next to him at the table, so that Cadogan had only to fall into it. Cadogan abstractedly nodded his thanks. Catching sight of Lavis, he nodded and smiled.
With eyes staring absently into space Cadogan was drumming on the table with his fingers.
"Sounds like some tom-tom march you're trying to play," interrupted Meade, and proffered a cigar. Cadogan shook his head.
"No?" Meade dropped his cigar placidly back into its case. "But listen here, Cadogan. As a writer and newspaper man, my main business in life is to discover people who know more than other people about some particular thing, and then get it out of them. What about this ocean-liner travelling of to-day--is it perfectly safe?"
"The safest mode of travel ever devised--or should be."
"Surely. And probably will be. But they should not be--not on the high sea--except in a collision, and then probably one ship or the other is to blame. Even inshore, if they keep their lead and foghorn going, and steam up to kick her off, nothing will happen either, unless"--he shrugged his shoulders--"they've gone foolish or something else on the bridge."