"The same one I have seen at least twice before in the past few weeks. The first time was at our anchorage in the Hudson when he, or somebody very much like him, was the last man overside as we were leaving port a month ago. I understood then that he was a friend of some member of the Andromeda's crew and had come aboard for a farewell visit."
"And the second time?"
"The second time was some three weeks later, and the place was Havana. There he, or again somebody exactly like him, was hanging around the water front chinning with any member of the crew who happened to have shore leave. That time he wasn't trying to mail a letter; he was trying to find out why it had apparently taken us three weeks, instead of something less than one, to make the run down from New York to Cuba."
"Did he find out?" I inquired, with a little private wonderment of my own to prompt the query.
"I can't say as to that," was Van Dyck's half-guarded reply. "What is puzzling me now is his—er—omnipresence, so to speak. So far as I know, we left him in Havana. How does he come to be here in New Orleans on the very day of our arrival?"
"That is easy," I said; "the method, I mean—not his object. He could have come by railroad from Key West in less time than it took the Andromeda to steam across the Gulf."
"Of course," Van Dyck agreed, quite as if this simple explanation had not occurred to him. And then, since we had reached the station, where, upon inquiry, we found that the New York train was already in, there was time only for a hospitable dash to the platform upon which our prospective ship's company was at the moment debarking.
Though I knew all of Van Dyck's guests well enough to need no introductions, the mob of them that was pouring out of the private car Kalmia was overwhelming by sheer weight of numbers.
"Heavens!" I said to Van Dyck as we came upon the scene, "I don't wonder that you wanted help," and therewith we plunged in to bring order out of the platform chaos of mingled humanity and hand baggage.
It was after we had the human part of the chaos marching, with an army of laden red-caps, upon the line of chartered taxis, that Van Dyck thrust a sheaf of baggage checks into my hand.