"There was one thing," said Ben, but stopped at a knocking on the office door, and after a nod from Uncle John opened it.
Daniel Shawn was very clean, fresh, brisk. He smiled at Ben, not with any smirk of conspiracy or other reminder of the night, but openly and amiably. "Good morning, Ben—but it's not the good morning, now that's no lie." He turned at once to Mr. Kenny. "Sir, don't be slow to tell me if I intrude. I heard, sir—the water front is talking of nothing else the day. I wished to say, if there be anything I might do, I owe you some service, Mr. Kenny, if only for your kindness and hospitality the other night, and you may call on me for anything it's in my power to do at all."
"That's kind," said Mr. Kenny vaguely.
Mr. Derry got his legs loose at last, and moved to lean against the door, by that rambling action somehow making them all his prisoners of the moment. The room had been crowded before—Captain Jenks made any closed space seem so; now, with Daniel Shawn lean and large in his green coat, and Mr. Derry obscurely grown in stature, the little place was stifling as a shut box. "Who are you, sir?"
"Daniel Shawn, seaman. And you?"
"I am Malachi Derry, and Constable. Your name was mentioned but now, Mr. Shawn. I understand you dined yesterday evening with Mr. Cory here, at the Lion Tavern on Ship Street?"
"Oh, I did that," said Mr. Shawn lightly. "And later, Mr. Kenny, I feared maybe I had presumed, but sir, the boy and I were both at a loose end, you might say, and most pleasant conversation we had, and no harm in it, I hope?"
"Oh, none," said John Kenny, groping at something in his mind. "I wish Ben might have let me know, but that's unreasonable of me, for I don't know how he could, seeing I left early for Roxbury. Ben, you had something more to tell?"
"Yes, and I'm glad Mr. Shawn is here, for he'll remember it too. There was a man seated at the back of the tavern when Mr. Shawn and I went in, a total stranger, a one-eyed man I'd know again if I saw him, no matter how far away, and—oh, it can't be important, only a feeling I had——"
"Now I will judge of that," said Malachi Derry, and came alive, leaning away from the door with the sudden monstrous tension of a cat who has just sighted a wriggle in the grass. "A one-eyed man?"