"To the water-line, man."
"Then it may be much the best thing to leave him where he is for the moment. He's thoroughly comfortable, and we have a breathing-space while he's in a place where he can't possibly get into trouble. At least," Morgan amended, rather doubtfully, "I don't see how he can get into trouble. The whole thing was in your attitude, Captain. If you'd like us to talk to Sturton now, we're ready."
They met storm signals at the door of the peer's large Mild rather elaborate suite of cabins on B deck. The door to the drawing-room was on the latch, and they penetrated Into a stuffy finery of curtains drawn at the portholes, gilt furniture disarranged, and an array of medicine-bottles sprawled round a chaise-lounge on which Sturton had evidently taken his hitherto sea-sick rest. Whether his recovery had been due to smooth weather or the loss of the emerald they did not know; but he had definitely recovered. From behind the door of the bedroom rose a dry, quick, high-pitched voice in a sort of pounce.
"… and take a radiogram. Ha. Now. 'Messrs. Kick-wood, Bane, and Kickwood, Solicitors."… Spell it? Damn it, Miss Keller, you spell it the way it's pronounced: K-i-c-k-w-o-o-d, Kickwood. Ha. "31b King's Bench Walk." Or is it 31a? Why can't these confounded lawyers make up their minds? How should I remember their infernal addresses? Wait a minute, wait a minute… "
The door popped open in the gloom. A lean figure in a shabby grey dressing-gown, with a worsted plaid shawl wrapped round its shoulders, stared at them. Even indoors It wore a broad-brimmed black hat, and the greyish face underneath had so queer a look, in the midst of Lord Sturton's costly trinkets strewn about the drawing-room, that it reminded Morgan of one of those pictures of wizards in an Arthur Rackham illustration. Also, Morgan wished somebody would open a porthole.
The figure said, "Hah!" and stalked over. It was observable that before this man Captain Whistler looked exactly m Warren had looked before Captain Whistler.
"Well?" said Lord Sturton. "I'm waiting, I'm waiting." lie took a thin finger and thumb and flicked at one of his sideburns. "Have you got that emerald?"
"If you'll only be patient, sir," replied Whistler, as
though he were trying to swell himself out with affability and be his public beaming self, "I — ha-ha! Of course we shall get it."
"Then you haven't got the emerald. Very well. Why don't you say so?"