Corrie had him, by the collar, and brought him to the pier, a streaming, shivering wreck.
"Man's size, am I?" demanded the victor. "Here, what are you shaking like that for? You'll kill yourself, man."
The captive looked at him, speechless, shuddering miserably in the boisterous rush of wind that wrapped his wet garments about him like a sheath of ice.
"You silly idiot," Corrie snapped impatiently. "Why didn't you do as I told you? Open the basement door, won't you, Gerard, while I bring him? We'll be sure to find a fire there. Are you going to come quietly, yes?"
The victim followed tamely to the lower part of the building, where Corrie threw open a furnace-door and installed him in the red glow of heat.
"Take off your clothes," he commanded. "Trying to get pneumonia, are you, so I will feel like a brute? Oh, I'll give you something to wear; I've got a lot of old duds in my locker here. What are you laughing at, Allan Gerard?"
"The responsible man's burden. Never mind me, go on with your rescue."
"I should like to throw something at you."
"Haven't you got enough on your hands?"
The raillery struck some note in the man's pride. He looked from Gerard to Corrie, who was bringing an armful of assorted clothing, with a reawakening defiance not so much evil as primitive.
"You couldn't have put it over me so easy," he announced sombrely, "if I'd had the feed I bet you got this morning."
The garments escaped Corrie's grasp.
"Feed? You're hungry?"
"What you think I was sleepin' in your dinky boat for, if I had the price of anythin'? It had a blanket in it an' was better than the open, that's why."
"Why didn't you say so," Corrie stormed at him hotly. "Get into those clothes and come upstairs. Or, no; I'll bring it down, stay there."
It was an elaborate lunch-hamper that presently was brought in and set down.
"Eat it," was the concise direction. "That vacuum-bottle is full of hot coffee; drink it. For Heaven's sake stop shivering—why couldn't you speak? Rupert is coming, Gerard. I heard the motor-horn down the road."
Gerard discreetly had turned his back to the scene, reading a last-season bulletin of yacht racing that was fixed to the wall at the end of the room.
"You want to start?" he interpreted, as Corrie joined him.
"Well—I hope you won't mind, but I don't see how we can. I have got to stay here until that chattering, shaking——"
"'Brimstone pig,'" supplied Gerard, with a recollection of the unforgettable Mrs. Smallweed.
"Thanks. Until he finishes and can leave, for the steward will put him out if he finds him here alone."
"That cannot be long."
"No, but," he hesitated, engagingly confused. "But we are miles from a restaurant, you know, and I had to feed him somehow, and there wasn't anything except our luncheon that I had sent over for the trip. So I suppose we had better drive home and get some eats there. It is a shabby way to treat you, all right, after bringing you out."
Gerard dropped his hand on the other's shoulder, his laughing eyes very kind.
"Corrie Rose, how many times a year do you throw your offenders overboard, and give them your own lunch to make up for it?" he challenged.
There was no lack of perception in Corrie; he recognized both the innuendo and its truth.
"About every day," he confessed. "My temper slips. Everyone expects it of me, so it's all right. At least, it has been all right; I guess I've got to stop."
"Corrie, you did not believe me in earnest?"
"No, it isn't that." He shook his head as if to shake off a vexing thought. "I—it makes me feel like a brute to think I've been knocking out a half-starved man and throwing him into that water because he crawled under an old blanket in my boat for shelter. Why didn't I question him decently? I must put on the brake, or I'll spoil something without intending it."
Gerard opened his lips to deny the danger and recall the provocation received, but for some reason he did not analyze, closed them without speaking. The two stood together in silence for many moments, looking out at the gray-green expanse of tumbling water.
"I'll be goin'," the hoarse voice of the involuntary guest said, behind them. "Obliged for your feed."
There was a tentative quality in the statement, an attempt to carry off easily a situation capable of unpleasant developments, a studied ignoring of his captor's possible right to detain him. But Corrie swung around with a face of open sunniness that shamed suspicion, his hands in the pockets of his long overcoat.
"Good enough! Did you find what you liked, or rather, like what you found?" he responded.
The hard face relaxed into a reluctant humor, the man looked again to assure himself of the inquirer's seriousness.
"The best ever," he essayed social graciousness. "I ain't left much. Your little caramels were fine."
"Caramels? Who on earth put in caramels? Armand must have lost his mind! What kind of caramels?"
"Wrapped in tin paper, they were, in a little tin box."
"Wrapped——Holy cats, Gerard, he has eaten the concentrated bouillon squares! They were not to eat, man; they were to be dissolved in a cup of boiling water, to drink."
"They tasted all right. I guess they'll go. I'll be movin'."
"Go? Well, I hope so; you must have enough concentrated beef in you to nourish an army. You are going, you say. Where to?"
"The big town."
"What are you going to do when you get there?"
The man's dissipation-dulled eyes searched the candid face of the questioner scarcely ten years his junior, then he looked to Gerard with a confused and reluctant unease, as he might have looked had Corrie been a young girl whose innocence he feared to offend.
"Aw, lots of things," he evaded, with a short, embarrassed laugh. "You don't want to hear me talk, mister. I'll get there, now I'm fed up."
"Do you want me to find work for you around here? I can."
"My jobs are a different kind, mister. I couldn't stay in yours."
Corrie brought his hand from his pocket.
"All right, as you like. Take this for good luck and we'll call ourselves even. Square, is it?"
The man took the bill awkwardly, his embarrassment deepened.
"You're square, sure," he signified.
As his slouching, bulky figure went out the door opposite, it crossed the small erect form of Jack Rupert, who entered.
"Us for home," Corrie greeted the arrival. "It is too bad to have brought you over for nothing, Rupert, but—what's the matter?"
The mechanician's countenance was a study in disgust, as he contemplated one of his polished tan boots, a high-heeled, ornate affair of the latest design labelled "smart." Off the race course and outside of hours, Rupert had one passion: clothes.
"I ain't registering any complaints if the rest are satisfied," he acidly returned. "But stepping in a puddle of wringing rags that the town board of health ought to condemn for making a noisy demonstration ain't what I look forward to all day as a treat. As for going home, I'm ready, myself. The trip we're missing will keep awhile this weather. The water is mussed bad and the only time I ever was car-sick was on the boat to Savannah."
"Did he spoil his pretty shoes?" Corrie