The polyglot dissented.
“No admit. Mis’r Gale command.”
“Is Mr. Gale himself on board?”
I assumed a manner of severity with a view of convincing him that I was of some importance, and at the same instant ascended the gang-plank, extending my card before me. Of course the card meant nothing to him except that I was able to have a card, but I could see that he hesitated and was lost. Evidently he had little knowledge of the great American game when I could intimidate him with one card.
He returned presently, and scowlingly led me into a little saloon forward. Then he disappeared again and I was left to look at my surroundings. A desk, a fireplace with a gas-log, some chairs suggestive of comfort, a stairway, probably leading to the bridge above. The evidences of the real estate man’s genius were becoming apparent. I might have been in the reception hall of any one of a thousand country cottages in the better class suburbs of New York. I had barely made these observations when a door to the right of the stairway opened. In a cottage it would have led to the dining-room, and did so, as I discovered later, on the Billowcrest. A tall, solemn-looking man entered, and I rose, half extending my hand, after the manner of the West.
“Mr. Gale,” I said.
The solemn man waved me aside—somewhat nervously it seemed.
“No—I’m—that is, I’m not Mr. Gale. I’m only the—his steward,” he explained. “Mr. Gale is—er—somewhat busy just now and would like to know if your errand is im—that is, I should say, a personal matter. Perhaps I—I might answer, you know.”
My heart warmed instantly toward this sober-faced man with thin whitening hair and nervous hesitation of manner. I was about to tell him that I only wanted to go over the yacht, and that he would do admirably when I thrilled with a sudden impulse, or it may have been an inspiration.
“Please tell Mr. Gale,” I said, “that I am sorry to disturb him, but that I would really like to see him personally. I will not detain him.”