eward getting an unwelcome earful.
We need to know many things you alone can tell us--and I'll wager you
could do with a drink. What?"

"But I assure you, monsieur, I find your reception sufficiently
refreshing."

"Well," said Phinuit, momentarily but very slightly
discountenanced--"you've been uncommon' damn' useful, you know... I
mean, according to mademoiselle."

"Useful?" Lanyard enquired politely.

"He calls it that," Liane Delorme exclaimed, "when I tell him you have
saved my life!" She swept indignantly through the door by which Monk
and Phinuit had come to greet them. Two ceremonious bows induced
Lanyard to follow her. Monk and Phinuit brought up the rear. "Yes," the
woman pursued--"twice he has saved it!"

"In the same place?" Phinuit enquired innocently, shutting the door.

"But no! Once in my home in Paris, this morning, and again to-night on
the road to Cherbourg. The last time he saved his life, too, and
Jules's."

"It was nothing," said the modest hero.

"It was nothing!" Liane echoed tragically. "You save my life twice, and
he calls it 'useful,' and you call it 'nothing!' My God! I tell you, I
find this English a funny language!"

"But if you will tell us about it..." Monk suggested, placing a chair
for her at one end of a small table on which was spread an appetising
cold supper.

Lanyard remarked that there were places laid for four. He had been
expected, then. Or had the fourth place been meant for Jules? One
inclined to credit the first theory. It seemed highly probable that
Liane should have telegraphed her intentions before leaving Paris.
Indeed, there was every evidence that she had. Neither Monk nor Phinuit
had betrayed the least surprise on seeing Lanyard; and Phinuit had not
even troubled to recognise the fiction which Liane had uttered in
accounting for him. It was very much as if he had said: That long-lost
brother stuff is all very well for the authorities, for entry in the
ship's papers if necessary; but it's wasted between ourselves, we
understand one another; so let's get down to brass tacks... An
encouraging symptom; though one had already used the better word,
refreshing....

Spacious, furnished in a way of rich sobriety, tasteful in every
appointment, the captain's quarters were quite as sybaritic as the
saloon of the Sybarite. A bedroom and private bath adjoined, and the
open door enabled one to perceive that this rude old sea dog slept
in a real bed of massive brass. H