“No, you don’t,” he growled, his black, contemptuous stare turning on me crushingly.
“H’m! Very well, then. Captain Harry looks very stern, and George crumples all up inside. . . He sees through me, he thinks. . . Of course it could not be; but George, by that time, was scared at his own shadow. He is shirking it with Cloete, too. Gives his partner to understand that his brother has half a mind to try a spell on shore, and so on. Cloete waits, gnawing his fingers; so anxious. Cloete really had found a man for the job. Believe it or not, he had found him inside the very boarding-house he lodged in—somewhere about Tottenham Court Road. He had noticed down-stairs a fellow—a boarder and not a boarder—hanging about the dark—part of the passage mostly; sort of ‘man of the house,’ a slinking chap. Black eyes. White face. The woman of the house—a widow lady, she called herself—very full of Mr. Stafford; Mr. Stafford this and Mr. Stafford that. . . Anyhow, Cloete one evening takes him out to have a drink. Cloete mostly passed away his evenings in saloon bars. No drunkard, though, Cloete; for company; liked to talk to all sorts there; just habit; American fashion.
“So Cloete takes that chap out more than once. Not very good company, though. Little to say for himself. Sits quiet and drinks what’s given to him, eyes always half closed, speaks sort of demure. . . I’ve had misfortunes, he says. The truth was they had kicked him out of a big steam-ship company for disgraceful conduct; nothing to affect his certificate, you understand; and he had gone down quite easily. Liked it, I expect. Anything’s better than work. Lived on the widow lady who kept that boarding-house.”
“That’s almost incredible,” I ventured to interrupt. “A man with a master’s certificate, do you mean?”
“I do; I’ve known them ’bus cads,” he growled, contemptuously. “Yes. Swing on the tail-board by the strap and yell, ‘tuppence all the way.’ Through drink. But this Stafford was of another kind. Hell’s full of such Staffords; Cloete would make fun of him, and then there would be a nasty gleam in the fellow’s half-shut eye. But Cloete was generally kind to him. Cloete was a fellow that would be kind to a mangy dog. Anyhow, he used to stand drinks to that object, and now and then gave him half a crown—because the widow lady kept Mr. Stafford short of pocket-money. They had rows almost every day down in the basement. . .