unsteadily. The list of
properties he had read and the letter and Sherrill's statement
portended so much that its meaning could not all come to him at once.
He followed Sherrill through a short private corridor, flanked with
files lettered "Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman," into the large room he
had seen when he came in with Constance. They crossed this, and
Sherrill, without knocking, opened the door of the office marked, "Mr.
Spearman." Alan, looking on past Sherrill as the door opened, saw that
there were some half dozen men in the room, smoking and talking. They
were big men mostly, ruddy-skinned and weather-beaten in look, and he
judged from their appearance, and from the pile of their hats and coats
upon a chair, that they were officers of the company's ships, idle
while the ships were laid up, but reporting now at the offices and
receiving instructions as the time for fitting out approached.

His gaze went swiftly on past these men to the one who, half seated on
the top of the flat desk, had been talking to them; and his pulse
closed upon his heart with a shock; he started, choked with
astonishment, then swiftly forced himself under control. For this was
the man whom he had met and whom he had fought in Benjamin Corvet's
house the night before--the big man surprised in his blasphemy of
Corvet and of souls "in Hell" who, at sight of an apparition with a
bullet hole above its eye, had cried out in his fright, "You got Ben!
But you won't get me--damn you! Damn you!"

Alan's shoulders drew up slightly, and the muscles of his hands
tightened, as Sherrill led him to this man. Sherrill put his hand on
the man's shoulder; his other hand was still on Alan's arm.

"Henry," he said to the man, "this is Alan Conrad. Alan, I want you to
know my partner, Mr. Spearman."

Spearman nodded an acknowledgment, but did not put out his hand; his
eyes--steady, bold, watchful eyes--seemed measuring Alan attentively;
and in return Alan, with his gaze, was measuring him.

CHAPTER VIII

MR. CORVET'S PARTNER

The instant of meeting, when Alan recognized in Sherrill's partner the
man with whom he had fought in Corvet's house, was one of swift
readjustment of all his thought--adjustment to a situation of which he
could not even have dreamed, and which left him breathless. But for
Spearman, obviously, it was not that. Following his noncommittal nod
of acknowledgment of Sherrill's introduction and his first steady
scrut