“Mr. Onslow!” exclaimed the other passionately, “will you never learn to moderate your language? There are a hundred clerks within a hundred feet of you through that door, and sometimes even walls can listen and repeat. Besides, I object altogether to your phraseology. We engage in no such things as swindles in the City. Our operations are all commercial enterprises.”
“Very well,” said Onslow, shrugging his shoulders; “don’t let’s squabble over it. You call your spade what you like, only I reserve a right to clap on a plainer brand. We’re built differently, Mr. Shelf. I prefer to be honest in my dishonesty. And now, as I’ve said, let’s get to business. You say the charter of this steamer of yours, the Port Edes, has expired, and she is back on your hands. She’s 2000 tons, built under Lloyds’ survey, and classed 100 A1. She’s well engined, and has just been dry-docked. She’ll insure for every sixpence of her value without comment, and there’s nothing more natural than to send out your specie in such a sound bottom. Remains to pick a suitable complement.”
“I’ve got a master waiting here now by appointment. His name is Kettle. I have him to a certain extent under my thumb, and I fancy he will prove a reliable man. He was once in our firm’s employment.”
“Owen Kettle, by any chance?”
Mr. Theodore Shelf referred to a paper on his writing-table. “Captain Owen Kettle, yes. He was the man who lost the Doge of Venice, and since then he’s never had another ship.”
“Poor devil! yes, I know. That Doge of Venice case was an awful scandal. Owners filled up the Board of Trade surveyor to the teeth with champagne, or she’d never have been passed to sea. As it was, she’d such an unholy reputation that two crews ran from her before they could get her manned. She was as rotten as rust and tumbled rivets could make her, and she was sent to sea as a coffin ship to earn her dividends out of Lloyds’. Kettle had been out of a job for some time. He was a desperate man, with a family depending on him, and he went as skipper, fully conscious of what was expected of him. He did it like a man. He let the Doge of Venice founder in a North Sea gale, and, by a marvelous chance, managed to save his ship’s company. At the inquiry, of course, he was made scapegoat, and he didn’t contrive to save his ticket. They suspended his master’s certificate for a year. On the strength of that he applied to owners for maintenance, putting it on the reasonable claim of services rendered. Owners, being upright merchants and sensible men, naturally repudiated all knowledge or liability; said he was a blackmailing scoundrel as well as an unskilful seaman; and threatened him with an action for libel. Kettle, not having a solitary proof to show, did the only thing left for him to do, and that was eat dirt or subside. But the incident and the subsequent starvation haven’t tended to sweeten his temper. Latterly he’s been serving as mate on a Pacific ship, and he was just a terror with his men. He simply kept alive by carrying his fist on a revolver-butt. There isn’t a man who’s served with Red Kettle three weeks that wouldn’t have cheerfully swung for the enjoyment of murdering him.”
“You appear to know a good deal about this man.”
“When it suits my purpose,” returned Onslow drily, “I mostly contrive to know something about anybody. However, it’s no use discussing the poor beggar any longer. What’s amiss with having him in now?”
Shelf touched one of the electric buttons which studded the edge of his table, and a clerk appeared, who went away again, and shortly returned. With him was a dried-up little man of about forty, with a red head and a peaked red beard, who made a stiff, nervous salaam to Mr. Theodore Shelf, and then turned to stare at Onslow with puckered amazement.
Onslow nodded and laughed. “Been carrying any more pilgrims from Port Saïd to the Morocco coast on iron decks?” he asked.