“You are a sailor?” he said.
“Yes.”
“I was told to look for an English sailor—Louis d'Arragon.”
“Then you have found me,” was the reply.
Still the cobbler hesitated.
“How am I to know it?” he asked suspiciously.
“Can you read?” asked D'Arragon. “I can prove who I am—if I want to. But I am not sure that I want to.”
“Oh! it is only a letter—of no importance. Some private business of your own. It comes from Dantzig—written by one whose name begins with 'B.'”
“Barlasch,” suggested D'Arragon quietly, as he took from his pocket a paper which he unfolded and held beneath the eyes of the cobbler. It was a passport written in three languages. If the man could read, he was not anxious to boast of an accomplishment so far above his station; but he glanced at the paper, not without a practised skill, to seize the essential parts of it.
“Yes, that is the name,” he said, searching in his pockets. “The letter is an open one. Here it is.”