The speaker had been hidden from Martin by the post. He heard Mr. Slocum hurry away; then the other man came in sight and walked down the steps. Under his arm he carried a small box.
“Old Slocum here again,” thought Martin. “It’s very strange.”
He was now so much interested that he decided to wait and see what happened. The man was tall and swarthy, with a big red nose, and a beard as black as the foreign seaman’s. As he sat on the stairs he muttered to himself.
After a while a heavily-laden wherry approached from upstream. It contained several passengers, laughing and singing noisily, and when they disembarked and mounted the stairs Martin saw that they carried baskets, and guessed that they were picknickers returning from a jaunt to Chelsea or Battersea. The waterman was Jack Boulter, a friend of his.
The waiting stranger called to Boulter, demanding to be taken to Deptford.
“Not me; not to-night,” said the waterman. “I’ve been out all day. I’m going home.”
“But you must take me, I say,” the stranger protested. He raised his voice, and Martin was surprised at a change in his accent. With Mr. Slocum he had spoken like an Englishman, but now his utterance was exactly that of a foreigner.
“What you say don’t matter,” returned Boulter, proceeding to tie up his boat. “I won’t stir out again for no man.”
The stranger began to plead and coax and threaten, but to all his excited words Boulter turned a deaf ear. Some impulse prompted Martin to rise and walk down to the bottom of the stairs.
“I say, Boulter, let me take him to Deptford,” he said.