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!" I gasped; and then I saw what Van Dyck had done, either with malice aforethought or in sheer heedlessness. In the taxicab loading there had been an overflow of one, and Conetta Kincaide had been left behind to share the waiting vehicle with me.

"You – you knew this was my cab?" I stammered, after I had accumulated wit enough to shut the door and tell the driver to go on.

"Of course. Bonteck put me in and said you'd be along in a few minutes; that you'd gone to look after the baggage. How do you happen to be here with Bonteck?"

"That," I evaded, "is a rather tedious story. Later on you may have it for what it is worth, if you still care to hear it. Excuse me a moment," and I leaned forward and stuck my head through the open window at the taxi-driver's ear to whisper: "Take your time, and don't bother to make any short cuts."

"What was that you were saying to the man?" was the question I had to answer after I had fallen back into the seat beside the possessor of the cool voice and self-contained manner.

"I was telling him he needn't hurry," I confessed brazenly. "In a few minutes you will be one of the crowd again, and there are three years to be bridged, in some fashion, in those few minutes."

I felt, rather than heard, her little gasp of dismay.

"Do you mean to say that – that you are going along in the Andromeda?" she asked faintly.

"It is even so – more is the pity. I had committed myself to Bonteck, in a way, before I knew the names on his passenger list."

"And if you had known, you would have refused?"

"I don't know. Most likely I should; and not altogether out of consideration for you. You see, I am quite frank."

"You are; most refreshingly frank. One might have hoped that time, and – and – "

–"And absence and new fields and faces, and all that, would make me forget," I finished for her. "Unhappily, they haven't. But that is neither here nor there. Though I have kept pretty well out of the civilized world for the past three years, there has been a word now and then from home. Tell me plainly, Connie – how much does Jerry Dupuyster know?"

"He knows that three years ago we were engaged to be married, you and I." The cool voice trembled a little, but it was still well under control.

"That is better," I commented with a sigh of relief; and it was better because, if Jerry hadn't known, there would have been chances for hideous complications on the proposed cruise of the Andromeda, or at least, in some inchoate way, I felt there would. "Does Jerry know why it was broken off?" I went on.

"He thinks he does."

"Which is to say that he accepts your Aunt Mehitable's version of it; the one she published broadcast among our friends – that, without any cause assigned, we simply agreed to disagree?"

"I suppose so."

Silence for a square or so, broken only by the drumming of the taxi's motor. Then I took the bull by the horns.

"Shall I tell Bonteck that, for reasons which I don't care to explain, I shall have to drop out of this badly mixed ship's company of his?"

The cool voice had fully regained its even tones when she said: "Why should you?"

"There is no 'why' unless you care to interpose one of your own making. But I should think, with Jerry Dupuyster along – "

"The Andromeda is a reasonably roomy little ship," was the calm retort. "And, besides, there are enough of us to afford protection – the protection of a crowd. If you have promised Bonteck, you can hardly break with him at the last moment, can you?"

"You don't care, then?"

"Why should I care? What is done is done, and can't be helped. Aunt Mehitable thinks I ought to marry; I suppose she thinks I owe it to her to marry and set up an establishment of my own. Perhaps I do owe it to her. I've been a charge upon her generosity all my life."

"So you are going to marry Jerry Dupuyster, a lisping club-lizard who apes the English so hard that he forgets that he has a string of American ancestors as long as your arm?" I flamed out.

"Well, if I am, what is it to you, Dick Preble? Or to any one else besides Jerry and me? Also, I might ask what right I have given you to put me upon the rack?"

"None; none whatever," I admitted gloomily. "Still, I have a right, of a sort – the right of the first man. You seem conveniently and successfully to have forgotten. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to forget, though I have tried all of the customary antidotes."

"Other women?" she asked, with the faintest possible touch of malice.

I was resentful enough to meet her baldly upon her own ground.

"There was a young woman in Venezuela; a pure Castilian, with the blood of kings in her veins. I could have married her."

"Why didn't you?" she asked sweetly.

"I have wished many times that I had. I wonder if you can understand if I say that I was afraid?"

"Mr. Kipling says that we can't understand – that we can never understand. But I think I know what you mean. You may have been Adam – the first man, again – for her; but she wasn't, and never could be, Eve – the first woman – for you. Was that it?"

The taxi was finally approaching the quarter of the city in which our wharf lay. There were other things to be said, and they had to be said hurriedly.

"Let us get things straightened out – before the crowd messes in," I said. "Three years ago we were engaged to be married. One day I was obliged to tell your Aunt Mehitable that the comfortable fortune my father had left me had been swallowed up in an exhausted Colorado gold mine, and that I'd have to go to work for a living. She then told me – with what seemed to me to be unnecessary spitefulness – that her will was made in favor of some charitable institution, and since you would thus be left penniless, it was up to me to set you free and give you a chance to marry somebody who could provide for you. Am I stating it clearly?"

"Clearly enough."

"Then she went on to say that the news of my misfortune had preceded me; that you had already been told all there was to tell; and that it would be a kindness to you if I should agree not to see you again."

"And you did me the kindness," she put in calmly. "I ought to be thankful for that. Perhaps I am thankful."

"I was furious," I confessed. "If you will permit me to say it this long after the fact, your aunt carries a vicious tongue in her head, and she didn't spare me. Also, I'll admit that my own temper isn't exactly patient or forgiving. It was the next morning that I had the chance to go to South America thrust at me, and the ship was sailing at noon. I left a letter for you and disappeared over the horizon."

"Yes," she replied in the same even tone; "I got the letter."

"That brings us down to date," I went on, as the taxi drew up at the wharf. "The next thing is the modus vivendi