"I never read advertisements if I can help it, except of new patents in razors. They're a fad of mine."
"Thank goodness you've got fads. Then we've something in common. I make money out of my fads. I call 'em inspirations. I thought the Candace business was one of my inspirations, and that I'd have some fun out of it. I advertised her to start on her first pleasure cruise from Marseilles to Gib, Algiers, Tangier, Tunis, Greece, Alexandria, and Jaffa. 'That'll be a smack in the eye for the big liners,' I said to myself. 'I'll skim the top layer of clotted cream off their passenger lists!' I was going to do the thing de luxe straight through—bid for the swell set, exclusiveness my motto. Of course I didn't expect to hit the dukes and dollar kings first shot, but I thought if everything went right the passengers would tell their friends at home how much better we did them on board than any one else had ever done, and we'd get a 'snowball' ad, that nothing could stop. All would have worked out first rate, if I hadn't made one mistake. I engaged a retired army colonel for a conductor on board my yacht. I got the man cheap. But I was a fool to economize on him. I ought to have launched out on a belted earl. Folks, especially Americans, don't like retired colonels. The woods are full of 'em over there, crawling with 'em. Most Americans are colonels and not retired. Besides, this chap of mine's no good anyhow —fancies himself as a politician, and is a first-class snob; has no tact; rubs up the passengers the wrong way, and outrages their feelings. We got a lot of people from the north of England, rich and a bit crude, like me. Will you believe it, Colonel Corkran began his job by sneering audibly at 'provincials' to some beastly friend of his, come to see him off at Marseilles? Instead of making his dinner-table lectures a kind of travellogue as he was hired to do, he turns 'em into political tirades, and calls the Liberals scoundrels, half of our folks being red-hot Rads. Not only that, if the girls and boys talk while the band's playin' any of his favourite airs, he hisses out 'Silence,' through a hole in his mouth where one tooth's missin'. That tooth bein' gone, has got on the girls' nerves worse than anything else, it would seem, except his being down on Suffragettes. And the crisis was reached when he insulted Miss Hassett Bean, the richest and most important woman in the bunch, when she expressed her political opinions. Said to her, 'My dear lady, why do you bother to have opinions? They give you a lot of trouble to collect, and nobody else will trouble to listen. Why not collect insects or stamps instead?' Of course she did think Germany had already invaded England with a large army of soldiers disguised as hotel waiters, which was calculated to rile an old officer; but that's no excuse for a man who's paid to please. And now the fellow's wondering why he's not popular with the passengers!"
I laughed, but Sir Walter had worked himself into a state past smiling point. "It's no laughing matter," he said, "This snob Corkran's killing my scheme. There's a plot on foot for the party to walk off the yacht at Alexandria, and demand half their passage money. Some old grampus on board has started the story that the Candace has been down three times———"
"A lie, of course," I soothed him.
"A dastardly lie. She's been down only twice. The first time was a collision, the second a coincidence."
"But I thought she was the most up-to-date yacht in the world!"
"So she is, as the Candace. That was the Marquis's name for her: gave it after a trip to Egypt. He bought her second hand, and rechristened her while she was being redecorated. He spared no expense, which he could well afford, seeing that he never paid a penny. I got her at cost price, as you may say. But these plotters are going to claim that they were inveigled on board under false pretences, by my advertising the Candace as the newest thing in yachts. I've had a letter and several cypher telegrams from the assistant conductor, a useful chap, telling me the whole story of the plot, which he's nosed out; and I'm faced with humiliating failure unless I can save the situation by a grand coup at the eleventh hour. Now, you can guess why on the spur of the moment I bought up your rights to dig in the Sudan, can't you?"
"I confess I can't," I said.
"Why, I want you to take Colonel Corkran's place on the Candace as conductor. And I want you and your friend Fenton to go up Nile in charge of the splendid steam dahabeah I've bought to supplement the Mediterranean trip. There you have my motives in a nutshell!"
I burst out laughing. "A cracked nutshell," I remarked. Sir Marcus' rosy face turned royal purple. "What—you won't undertake it?"