“I’m Freddy Pierce,” he said. “Wireless operator and odd-job-man on the Wanderer. Say, Mr. Pitt, will you do me a favor?”
He looked at me with an expression of indescribable comicality on his sun-wrinkled face, and, willy-nilly, I found myself smiling.
“Thank you for them kind words,” he laughed before I had opened my mouth. “Knew you’d do it; knew I had you sized up right. Let me roll a pill before we start back? Thanks.”
With amazing swiftness he had produced tobacco and paper, rolled a cigaret, and sent a ring of smoke rolling upward through the clear air.
“Mr. Pitt,” he said suddenly in a new tone, “do you know Captain Brack?”
“No,” I said. “Who is Captain Brack?”
“Captain of the Wanderer,” was the reply.
“I don’t know him.”
He threw away his cigaret and began easing my baggage down into the launch. He was serious for the moment.
“And—and say, Mr. Pitt, do you know a Jane—I mean, a lady named Miss Baldwin?”