Five minutes' walking brought us to the house we sought. The proprietor was not very fastidious, and whatever he may have thought of our appearances he took us in without demur. A bath and a good meal followed, and then after a thorough overhauling of all the details connected with our imprisonment we turned into bed, resolved to thrash it out upon the morrow.
Next morning, true to our arrangement, as soon as breakfast was over, I set off for the steamship company's office, leaving the Marquis behind me at the hotel for reasons which had begun to commend themselves to me, and which will be quite apparent to you.
I found the Saratoga's agent hard at work in his private office. He was a tall, thin man, slightly bald, wearing a pair of heavy gold pince-nez, and very slow and deliberate in speech.
"I beg your pardon," he began, when I had taken possession of his proffered chair, "but did I understand my clerk to say that your name was Hatteras?"
"That is my name," I answered. "I was a passenger in the Saratoga for Australia three weeks ago, but had the misfortune to be left behind when she sailed."
"Ah! I remember the circumstances thoroughly," he said. "The young Marquis of Beckenham went ashore with you, I think, and came within an ace of being also left behind."
"Within an ace!" I cried; "but he was left behind."
"No, no! there you are mistaken," was the astounding reply; "he would have been left behind had not his tutor and I gone ashore at the last moment to look for him and found him wandering about on the outskirts of Arab Town. I don't remember ever to have seen a man more angry than the tutor was, and no wonder, for they only just got out to the boat again as the gangway was being hauled aboard."
"Then you mean to tell me that the Marquis went on to Australia after all!" I cried. "And pray how did this interesting young gentleman explain the fact of his losing sight of me?"
"He lost you in a crowd, he said," the agent continued. "It was a most extraordinary business altogether."