"Dummies, sir, dummies," Tommy corrected. "Nice people don't say stuffies, ever!"
"Your Tommy does so much cut-upping, eh!" he smiled at me. I had noticed that when preoccupied or excited the idioms of his various languages got tumbled into a rather hopeless potpourri.
Quarantine and customs were passed in the leisurely fashion of Cuban officials, and Monsieur asked to be sent immediately ashore, promising to return at sundown. There was a man, the secret agent, he explained, who held important information.
"I'll have the launch for you at Machina wharf, sir," Gates told him, but he refused to consider this, declaring that he could hire any of the boatmen thereabout to bring him out.
"He's that considerate, sir," Gates later confided to me. "But I carn't make head nor tail of him. Bilkins says he went in to lay out his clothes, and the things he's got stuck in those bags would astonish you!"
Nearing six o'clock a skiff drew alongside, being propelled by one oar—a method much in vogue with Havana harbormen—and when Monsieur came aboard we saw at once evidences of disappointment. His arms hung listlessly, and his large head drooped forward as if at last its weight had proven too great for the squat body.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"How do you know there is anything wrong, my boy Jack?"
"You look so killingly happy," Tommy said, joining us.
Monsieur's pale eyes stared for a moment, then blinked several times before he murmured: