“Do you know him, sir, or know of him?”
“No,” replied Mr. Warden.
“I thought that Pembroke must be known to a French naval officer who passed us,” continued Darrin, and related that incident, too.
“The Frenchman’s shrug was nothing against the Englishman,” remarked Lieutenant Warden. “It might have been merely instinctive aversion, or it might mean merely that the Frenchman and the Englishman had a dispute in the past, at this or some other port. Otherwise it would be odd indeed to see a Frenchman turn the cold shoulder on an Englishman when their countrymen are standing shoulder to shoulder on the long battle lines in Europe.”
“Surely, if the French officer knew Pembroke to be a gentleman, he would have rushed up and gripped Pembroke’s hand just out of a sentimental feeling for the strong bonds of friendship between France and England in these dark days in Europe,” nodded Dan understandingly.
“Pembroke wanted to come on board, sir,” Ensign Darrin went on, “but I couldn’t help feeling that, before inviting him, I would like to know more about him.”
“Caution of that sort is never amiss,” nodded the executive officer thoughtfully. “By the way, you don’t imagine that there could have been any connection between the thieving Chinese and Mr. Pembroke, do you?”
“Why, I hadn’t thought of it in that way,” Ensign Darrin confessed. “There isn’t usually, is there, much connection between a thief who robs you and a man who offers to lend you a little money?”
“There might be easily,” said Mr. Warden.
“Our last half hour on shore was a puzzle altogether,” Dave went on, after a short pause. “First, we followed that burnt-face Chinaman. Then we ran into a crowd of Chinese who cleaned out our pockets of everything but our watches. And then we met Pembroke, at whom the French officer turned up his nose. I am now actually beginning to wonder if ‘Burnt-face,’ the thieves and Pembroke may not all be links in a chain of mystery.”