"There you go again," said Peyrol. "And what's that to you where I learned it all? Suppose I learned it all from a man who is dead now. Put it down to that."
"I see. It amounts to this, that one can't get at the back of their minds very easily."
"No," said Peyrol, then added grumpily, "and some Frenchmen are not much better. I wish I could get at the back of your mind."
"You would find a service matter there, gunner, that's what you would find there, and a matter that seems nothing much at first sight, but when you look into it, is about as difficult to manage properly as anything you ever undertook in your life. It puzzled all the big-wigs. It must have, since I was called in. Of course I work on shore at the Admiralty and I was in the way. They showed me the order from Paris and I could see at once the difficulty of it. I pointed it out and I was told . . ."
"To come here," struck in Peyrol.
"No. To make arrangements to carry it out."
"And you began by coming here. You are always coming here."
"I began by looking for a man," said the naval officer with emphasis.
Peyrol looked at him searchingly. "Do you mean to say that in the whole fleet you couldn't have found a man?"
"I never attempted to look for one there. My chief agreed with me that it isn't a service for navy men."