"I'll go with you, Bonteck; and chiefly for the reason you have just given—the reason and the permission. Let this be your fair warning: if at any time your little farce threatens to grow into a tragedy, I shall most certainly call you down."
"I was rather hoping you'd say something like that," he agreed, with what appeared to be the utmost sincerity.
"At the same time," I went on, "it is only fair to add that your expensive experiment will fail. Nothing will happen on the Andromeda that couldn't, or wouldn't, happen in a house party at your country place in the Berkshires. You will come back as wise—or as foolish—as you are now."
"Oh, well," he said, pushing his chair back and casting the napkin aside, "we needn't pull the bud in pieces to find out what kind of a flower it's going to be. I can't promise you that you will be greatly edified, and it is quite within the possibilities that you may find yourself frightfully bored. But, in any event, it will help out a little if we leave something to the imagination, don't you think?—something to speculate about and to look forward to. I know it does look rather cut-and-dried in the prospect; eight bells breakfast, luncheon when you like to have it, dinner in the second dog-watch, and cards—always cards when Mrs. Van Tromp can find a partner and a table—in the evening."
He had got upon his feet and was standing before me, an acutely attractive figure of a well-built, well-groomed man in faultless evening dress. The identifying smile of other and less cynical days was drawing at the corners of his eyes when he went on.
"We'll live in hopes. Perhaps we shall be able to smash the Andromeda on some reef that isn't down on the charts. Failing that, there is always the chance of a stray hurricane—with the other chance of the engines breaking down at the inopportune moment. We shall find excitement of some kind; I can feel it in my bones."
"Small chance on a baby Cunarder," I grumbled, rising in my turn.
"Oh, I don't know," he offered, in gentle deprecation. "At any rate we can still be hopeful. Now if you are ready we'll go to the railroad station and meet the players. I told you they were on the way down from New York, but I omitted to add that they are due to arrive to-night; within fifteen or twenty minutes, to be strictly accurate. Let's gather up a few for-hire autos and go to the rescue."
II
THE SHIP'S COMPANY
We were on the sidewalk—"banquette," as it is called in New Orleans—in front of the hotel, and Van Dyck was marshaling a number of vehicles for a descent upon the railroad station, when a small man with his soft hat pulled well down over his eyes appeared at my elbow as silently as if he had materialized out of the rain-wet pavement.
"Pardon, M'sieu'," he murmured, in the broken English which placed him, apparently, as a native of the French quarter, "ze brother of my cousin ees h-ask me to fin' out for heem w'en M'sieu' Van Dyck's steamsheep comes on N' Orlean. 'Ees h-oncle been de chef h-on dat sheep, an' 'ee's want sand heem lettaire. Oui."
Van Dyck had started his procession of cabs, and he called to me as the last of the vehicles pulled up to the curb to take us in. Almost mechanically I gave the soft-spoken and apologetic questioner his answer.
"Mr. Van Dyck's yacht came up the river to-day. Tell your cousin's brother he will have to hurry his letter. The Andromeda will sail either to-night or to-morrow morning, I believe."
It was not until after I had joined Van Dyck in the waiting taxi, and we were sluing and skidding over the wet pavements on the way to the railroad station, that my companion said: "Didn't I see you talking to a little fellow in gray tweeds and a soft hat just before we drove away from the hotel? Do you know the man?"
"No; he was a stranger to me," I returned. "He asked a question and I answered it. He is the man who sat two tables away on your right in the hotel dining-room. He said he was the cousin of a cousin of somebody who wanted to send a letter to the Andromeda's cook, and he wanted to know when the yacht would arrive."
"You told him the Andromeda is already here?"
"Yes."
"That's a bit odd," was Van Dyck's comment.
"What is odd?"
"That this little sallow-faced fellow should turn up here in New Orleans practically at the same moment that I do. I spotted him while we were at dinner and wondered if he could be the same one."
"The same one as who? And why shouldn't he be here?" I asked, rather more than mildly curious.
"The same one I have seen at least twice before in the past few weeks. The first time was at our anchorage in the Hudson when he, or somebody very much like him, was the last man overside as we were leaving port a month ago. I understood then that he was a friend of some member of the Andromeda's crew and had come aboard for a farewell visit."
"And the second time?"
"The second time was some three weeks later, and the place was Havana. There he, or again somebody exactly like him, was hanging around the water front chinning with any member of the crew who happened to have shore leave. That time he wasn't trying to mail a letter; he was trying to find out why it had apparently taken us three weeks, instead of something less than one, to make the run down from New York to Cuba."
"Did he find out?" I inquired, with a little private wonderment of my own to prompt the query.
"I can't say as to that," was Van Dyck's half-guarded reply. "What is puzzling me now is his—er—omnipresence, so to speak. So far as I know, we left him in Havana. How does he come to be here in New Orleans on the very day of our arrival?"
"That is easy," I said; "the method, I mean—not his object. He could have come by railroad from Key West in less time than it took the Andromeda to steam across the Gulf."
"Of course," Van Dyck agreed, quite as if this simple explanation had not occurred to him. And then, since we had reached the station, where, upon inquiry, we found that the New York train was already in, there was time only for a hospitable dash to the platform upon which our prospective ship's company was at the moment debarking.
Though I knew all of Van Dyck's guests well enough to need no introductions, the mob of them that was pouring out of the private car Kalmia was overwhelming by sheer weight of numbers.
"Heavens!" I said to Van Dyck as we came upon the scene, "I don't wonder that you wanted help," and therewith we plunged in to bring order out of the platform chaos of mingled humanity and hand baggage.
It was after we had the human part of the chaos marching, with an army of laden red-caps, upon the line of chartered taxis, that Van Dyck thrust a sheaf of baggage checks into my hand.
"Be a good fellow, Dick, and see to it that the heavy dunnage gets started for the Andromeda's wharf before you leave, won't you?" he asked. "I'll go on with the crowd, and have one of the taxis wait for you—T. and P. wharf, foot of Thalia Street, you know."
That was how it came about that I was left alone to wrestle with the baggage-masters and the transfer people, and after I had seen the last truck-load of steamer trunks sorted, tarpaulined, and started on its way over town, I returned to the cab rank and found my taxi awaiting me, as Van Dyck had promised.
It was not until I was climbing into the covered cab that I discovered that it was already occupied. As I ducked for shelter from the rain, which was now falling smartly, a voice that I should have recognized if I had heard it on another planet said, "I hope you found my little green trunk with the others. It has all my dinner gowns in it."
"Conetta!"