“No, nor any one else,” Mr. Coulson replied. “I don’t think he was seasick, but he was miserably unsociable, and he seldom left his cabin. I doubt whether there were half a dozen people on board who would have recognized him afterwards as a fellow-passenger.”
“He seems to have been a secretive sort of person,” Sir Charles remarked.
“He was that,” Mr. Coulson admitted. “Never seemed to care to talk about himself or his own business. Not that he had much to talk about,” he added reflectively. “Dull sort of life, his. So many hours of work, so many hours of play; so many dollars a month, and after it’s all over, so many dollars pension. Wouldn’t suit all of us, Sir Charles, eh?”
“I fancy not,” Somerfield admitted. “Perhaps he kicked over the traces a bit when he was over this side. You Americans generally seem to find your way about—in Paris, especially.”
Mr. Coulson shook his head doubtfully.
“There wasn’t much kicking over the traces with poor old Fynes,” he said. “He hadn’t got it in him.”
Somerfield scratched his chin thoughtfully and looked at Penelope.
“Scarcely seems possible, does it,” he remarked, “that a man leading such a quiet sort of life should make enemies.”
“I don’t believe he had any,” Mr. Coulson asserted.
“He didn’t seem nervous on the way over, did he?” Penelope asked,—“as though he were afraid of something happening?”