As the ship in these dangerous waters sailed with few lamps burning, and none at all had been turned on upon the main deck, it was too dark for Ruth to see clearly either the man who had spoken or the person hidden by the wraps in the deck chair.
She saw the spotlight in the hand of an officer up the deck and she hastened toward him. The passengers were warned not to use the little electric hand lamps outside of the cabins and passages. She was not mistaken in the identity of this person with the lamp. It was the purser.
“Oh, Mr. Savage!” she said. “Will you walk with me?”
“Bless me, Miss Fielding! you fill me with delight. This is an unexpected proposal I am sure,” he declared in his heavy, English, but good-humored way.
“‘Fash not yoursel’ wi’ pride,’ as Chief Engineer Douglas would say,” laughed Ruth. “I am going to ask you to walk with me so that you can tell me the name of another man I am suddenly interested in.”
“What! What!” cried the purser. “Who is that, I’d like to know. Who are you so suddenly interested in?”
She tried to explain the appearance of the round-shouldered man as she led the purser along the deck. But when they reached the spot where Ruth had left the individuals both had disappeared.
“I don’t know whom you could have seen,” the purser said, “unless it was Professor Perry. His stateroom is yonder—A-thirty-four. And the little chap in the deck chair might be Signor Aristo, an Italian, who rooms next door, in thirty-six.”
“I am not sure it was a man in the other chair.”
“Professor Perry has nothing to do with the ladies aboard, I assure you,” chuckled the purser. “A dry-as-dust old fellow, Perry, going to France for some kind of research work. Comes from one of your Western universities. I believe they have one in every large town, haven’t they?”