"And listen, Julius, you'll be able to help Roy just a little, too, won't you?" she said, putting her hands up to her hair before the mirror in her bedroom.
"What do you mean, Mimika, by help?" Vandermeer's voice rolled in a very unsatisfactory way from the adjoining room.
"Oh, of course there's only one kind of help Roy would accept," she replied hastily. "He's going to write something about the sea, and he thinks you might give him some hints."
"Why, certainly, Mimika. They say there's a book in every man's life." The voice was thoroughly hearty again now. "In mine I should say there would be a hundred books. I will tell him some splendid things."
Even more jovial was the mood of Julius Vandermeer that evening after dinner; and he expanded his rosy views of the future to his brother-in-law over their cigars and a steaming rum punch flavored with lemon, which was his own invention for coping with the cold of a California night. He called it his "smudge pot."
"And now, Roy," he said at last, "I hope your own affairs go well. It is a great thing, the gift of expression. I wish I had it. Ah, what books I could write! The things I have seen, things you will never see in print!"
"That's precisely what I want to discuss with you, Julius. I have just signed a contract with the Copley-Willard Publishing Company to write them a serial dealing with the heroism of the merchant marine in war-time. I don't mind confessing that I told them a little about you—said you had no end of crackajack material I could use. The result was the best contract I've yet made with any publisher; so I owe that to you. The Star News Company was very well satisfied with my record as a correspondent; but I bungled the contract with them. If I can put this thing through it means that I shan't be a poor relation much longer. Now if you can only give me a good subject and put me wise on the seamanship and help me to get the local color, the rest will be as easy as falling off a log. You must have had a good many experiences, for instance, with the submarines, when you were crossing the Atlantic twice a month."
"Experiences—why, yes, many experiences; but my good fortune comes—well—from my good fortune. I am like the happy nation. I have not had much history for these two years. But I have seen things—oh, yes, I have seen things—that were like what you call clues—clues to many strange tales."
"That's precisely what I want—a rattling good clue!"
"Well now, let me think. There were some interesting things about those big merchant submarines that the Germans sent at one time across the Atlantic."