"So you know too, Peter?"
"Ja."
I could restrain my impatience no longer.
"What is this mystery?" I demanded. "I thought I knew all the secrets of the business; but sure, father, I never thought to hear that we were concerned as a firm with pirates!"
"We are not," my father answered curtly. "This is a matter of which you know nothing, Robert, because until now there has been no occasion for you to know of it."
He hesitated.
"Peter," he went on, "must we tell the boy?"
"He is not a boy; he is a man," said Peter.
I flashed my gratitude to the fat Dutchman in a smile, but he paid me no attention. My father, too, seemed to forget me. He strode up and down the counting-room, hands under the skirts of his coat, head bowed in thought. Tags of phrases escaped his lips:
"I had thought him dead— Strange, if he bobs up again— Here is a problem I had never thought to face— Mayhap I exaggerate—it cannot have significance for us— Certes, it must be accident——"