“Look here,” he confided doubtfully, “remember I’ve been out of England for a very long time. I’m not at all sure that I can manage these new steps.”
She slipped her arm through his in friendly fashion.
“You’re the only man on board I know, and you’ve got to,” she declared imperiously.
CHAPTER VI
“Perkins,” Gregory demanded, as he struggled into his dinner coat a few nights later, “what should you think if I told you to drop that grinning piece of wooden monstrosity there into the sea?”
The steward glanced doubtfully over his shoulder at the Image.
“It’s a damned ugly piece of goods, sir,” he admitted, “but I shouldn’t make away with it like that. It’s very likely valuable. They give no end of money sometimes for genuine bits of stuff from China way.”
Gregory straightened his tie and looked at his treasure fixedly.
“Perkins,” he confided, “that Image is either worth a few hundred, or perhaps a thousand pounds as an antique, or it may be worth—listen to me—a million.” The steward coughed. He was inclined to think that this passenger of his, on whom the slackness of the season had enabled him to bestow more than his normal share of attention, was a trifle cracked.
“If it is worth as much money as that, sir,” he remarked, “it would be a sin to think of getting rid of it.”