A moment’s low conversation in the telephone booth, and Mrs. Thompson returned. “He’ll come right up,” she said, and, turning to her machine, was soon pounding away at the keys with a practised hand.
“Remarkable woman, my wife,” said Thompson, swelling with intense pride behind the shelter of his rolltop desk. “Took a medal for speed in an open competition. Smart as they make ’em in any deal. Never lets family relationships stand in the way of business. B. F. T. S. I call her, ‘business from the start.’” He would have gone on, but the door opened, and a huge grizzled sailor with an officer’s cap in his hand lumped in. His massive bulk loomed above us for a moment, as Thompson motioned him to a chair.
“You put the liquid on board the Kaiserin Luisa the day before she disappeared, didn’t you?” asked Thompson.
“Aye, sir,” came the deep answer from the depths of the Captain’s chest.
“Can you tell us just where she lay?” the manager went on.
Captain McPherson stirred uneasily as he looked at us. “I’ve heer’d said we were to say naught of that unfort’nit ship,” he rumbled, turning half round to regard us with a fixed stare.
“That’s all right, Cap’n,” said Thompson. “These gentlemen have been sent here to investigate the matter, and you are to tell them all you know.”
The Captain evidently felt misgivings, but the habit of obeying the orders of his superiors was not lightly to be broken. “If ye go straight out from the carstle till the Ry’al Jarge buoy’s in line with three chimneys t’gether on the shore, ye’ll have the spot where she lay when we were ’longside.”
“Thank you, Cap’n, that’s all,” said Thompson.
Whereupon Captain McPherson rose and lumbered off as heavily as he had come.