“I hardly know what she looks like,” he said, “and I am not likely to fall in love with a lady who left absolutely no impression upon me.”
He left next day on the boat for Cadiz, en route to Paris and London, and he and Cartwright had as a fellow-passenger a shabby little man whose belongings were packed in an American-cloth suit-case inscribed in flourishing capitals, evidently by the owner, “Jose Ferreira.”
Mr. Ferreira spent most of his time on the ship’s deck, biting his nails and enlarging his grievance against the unconscious Cartwright.
CHAPTER III
MAXELL did not stay many hours in Paris. The Sud Express landed him in the French capital at seven in the morning. He left Paris by the midday train for London. The Long Vacation was drawing to an end, and there were briefs of certain importance requiring examination. There was also a consultation with the Attorney-General on an interpretation of a clause in the new Shipping Act, and he was also due to address his constituents before the reassembling of Parliament.
He might ruminate in vain to find one attractive feature of his programme. Parliament wearied him, and the ordinary practices of the law no longer gave him pleasure.
There was an interest in the work he was doing for the Government, and if he had the faintest hint of pleasure in his immediate prospects, the cause was to be found in the vexed problems centring about this new, and loosely drawn, shipping law. It was a measure which had been passed in a hurry, and when the acid test of litigation had been applied, some of its weak points had been discovered.
The weakest of these points was one affecting the load-line. In an action heard before a High Court Judge, the doubtful clause had been interpreted so as to render the Act a dead letter; and there were particular and especial Governmental reasons why the appeal which the Government had made from the verdict of the lower Court should upset that decision.
There is no need to give the particulars of the great dispute, which arose over the three words “or otherwise loaded,” and it is only necessary to say that, before he had reached London, Mr. Maxell had discovered a way for the Government out of their difficulty.