Finally Utterbourne, perceiving with a quick glance of his little grey eyes that his visitor seemed momentarily absorbed in the map on the wall, swung slowly round in his swivel chair. Appearing to forget Daedalus entirely, he rocked back and forth, his hands spread loosely on his knees. A light of quizzical and devious affection flickered into his face, and, gazing at the young man before him he murmured:
“Stewart, did you ever sit down before a map of the world and just let yourself go? H’m? It’s a gorgeous piece of adventure!”
After that the Captain sat for a time without saying anything at all—only drumming idly with a pencil. There was something fiendish about these silences; yet out of them, one could be sure, great things were wont to grow.
“I’ve been wondering—h’m?” And still he drummed, his upsetting gaze never quite leaving the other’s face, though it wavered a bit at intervals to a point just beyond, only to return at once. The substantial ticking of a brass clock set into the wall above the Captain’s desk added an effect of overtone to the silence which had fallen between them. Jerome, breathless with impatience and excitement, cleared his throat, and Utterbourne said: “H’m?” in a murmur of unbroken meditation. But at last the Captain stirred, laid aside his pencil—which seemed a sign they were making progress—clasped his hands loosely on the table and said:
“I sent for you, Stewart, because I thought—h’m?—I thought you might be able to help us out.” He hesitated, still quizzical. “You’ve been on my mind, rather, ever since I began hearing about your extraordinary exploits this year. To be perfectly frank”—he smiled, and Jerome, guessing what the Captain would say, smiled back easily—“I shouldn’t have quite picked you out—well, say that night in the Pavillon d’Orient—as a man I’d ever be likely to see my way clear to using. But,” he went on, his voice subtle with congratulation, “a man—h’m?—a man can’t have the experiences you seem to have had without developing a kind of feeling”—he held the thought a little sensuously suspended a moment—“a feeling for the finer grain in adventure—h’m? It’s pretty hard to phrase; it’s a thing to be sensed.”
Jerome would have spoken, his eyes, now, quite aflame with delighted excitement; but the Captain lifted one hand in a faint gesture and went on speaking: “Stewart, I’ve been thinking you may be one of the men I’ll have need of when we launch a project we have in mind—h’m?—a sort of office and clearing house for our Mediterranean trade—maybe at Naples, or perhaps Tripoli—the plans are still very much in the air. I knew you were sailing in the morning, and I wanted to sound you a little—in fact, I didn’t know but you might be induced to come along with us instead—h’m?”
Again Jerome was eager to voice his sentiments in this connection, and again the Captain, perceiving his eagerness, chose to hold him in a torment of unreleased speech. “I presume,” he drawled, “you’re anxious to get home after your life-and-death struggle with the Dark Angel—h’m?” There was a smile on Utterbourne’s lips, a smile of chilly, faint derision, since, so far as he was concerned, the Dark Angel was at liberty to pause on his threshold whenever the impulse prompted; he would be ready, without question or prayer. “But, as a matter of fact,” he resumed, “I expect to reach San Francisco myself maybe sooner than Curry and his songbirds—or at any rate not very much later. If you care to consider the Mediterranean business at all, but feel you’d rather not run the risk of reaching home a week, a day, or even an hour later, then go on tomorrow with Curry, and I’ll get in touch with you afterward. H’m? If, on the other hand, you’d like to come along with us now, I could perhaps lay a sort of ground-work in your mind between here and San Francisco, which might facilitate matters in case it developed that we wanted to get things under way rather quickly.”
“I think,” said Jerome (permitted at last to speak) with a voice he tried hard to keep perfectly steady, “that I’ll run the risk!” His eyes sparkled a little. “Would you like me to sleep on board tonight? I’d hate like the devil to wake up somewhere else and find all this was only a dream!”
Then Utterbourne laughed. That is to say, he shouted. And when Jerome was gone, he sat in the dark on deck a long time, smoking one cigarette after another, and gently humming To a Wild Rose at intervals.