The two men exchanged another look, and the red-bearded one tapped his forehead twice with a blunt forefinger.
“I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about, Mr. Fehrenbach,” said the man in the yachting cap, calmly.
“Fehrenbach!” cried the brewer. “My name isn’t Fehrenbach!” he screamed. “Otto Fehrenbach is on the East Side. I’m on the West. My name is Geltman, I tell you!”
The man in blue looked gravely down at the astonished brewer and pushed a bell on the side of the cabin skylight.
“That was one of the symptoms, Weckerly,” he said aside to the man with the red beard.
“Yes, Doctor,” said the other quizzically. “The sea air ought to do him a lot of good.”
Geltman, now bewildered, limp and very much alarmed, suffered himself to be led shivering below by the two blue-shirted sailor-men. There he found the steward in the cabin with a drink, and the blue flannels, and a boy laying a warm breakfast in the saloon. He dressed. At table he discovered an appetite which even his troubled spirit had not abated. Hot coffee and a cigar completed his rehabilitation. His situation would have been an agreeable joke had it not been so tragic. He had learned enough to feel that he was powerless, that there had been some terrible mistake, and that the only way out of the difficulty was through the somewhat tortuous and sparsely buoyed channels of diplomacy.
But he walked out upon deck with renewed confidence. It was early yet. If he could persuade his host of his mistake there was still time to run in shore where the telegraph might set all things right. The man in the yachting cap was smoking a pipe in the lee of the after hatch.
“Will you please tell me your name?” began the brewer, constrainedly.