I gulped some reply—I don’t know what. I wasn’t half as cool as she was.
Keedy right now put that yellow face between us. The affable smile wasn’t there. I got a quick and sharp impression that he didn’t relish the way the girl and I were getting chummy. She was putting out her hand to me, for I had made a motion as though to shake on our general understanding. He took her hand and whirled her around and pointed to a chair.
“You’d better sit down, Kama dear. We’re going to talk a little business, and you can listen, for you are too much father’s girl to be kept out of any deal of ours.”
She pulled her hand out of his, but she went and sat down without shaking my hand.
“Father’s girl sees more clearly every day that he needs a guardian,” she said, with a rather hard laugh. “Thank you, Mr. Keedy, but I do not need your invitation to stay.”
Captain Holstrom looked very sheepish. It was plain that he had been listening to some plain and frank opinions on his way back from the ferry station.
He tried to act unconcerned, and spying the drink I had not touched, started to lift it to his lips. His daughter snatched it away and sprayed the liquor on the wall. He sat down, coughing behind his hand. I had seen men like Capt. Rask Holstrom before—a bully and a braggart among men, but half a fool where women were concerned—pliable in the hands of the loose female, and mortally afraid of his own womenkind.
The men in the room were silent for some time. Keedy was looking at Holstrom; then his eyes fell on my canvas sack at Holstrom’s feet. He spoke to me in almost the same fawning tone he had used with the girl. It was that almost indescribable air—that cheap assumption of gentility that a professional gambler uses when he is prosecuting his business, and it rather jars on an honest man.
“I’m sure it would be almighty interesting to me and to these other gents and the lady to see an Eastern divingsuit. I reckon you’re pretty much up to date back there.” Liar and knave himself, he wasn’t exactly sure I had been telling the truth. He wanted to see the goods. But I did not mind much. I knelt on the floor, and opened the sack and dug out the equipment. This yam of mine goes back before the days of the compressed-air chamber which the modern diver carries on his back just as an automobile carries fuel. But I had a mighty good suit, almost a new one. There wasn’t a dent in the helmet or a patch oh the rubber or canvas.
“We have had a long talk, this gent and I,” said Keedy, after he had squatted like a frog and had peered at all I had to show him. “I’m naturally a man to get to cases quick. I’m open and free with them I take a liking to.” He went to the door and peeked into the corridor. “Number-two Jones, you stand here and keep an eye and ear out,” he directed. “Now, Brother Sidney, you Eastern chaps are apt to be pretty cold-blooded, and you need first-hand evidence. I’m going to open up to you one of the biggest prospects you ever heard of—reckoning that, as a human being, you simply can’t resist coming into it. If you don’t see fit to come in after it has been opened up to you—well—” He scowled at me like a demon, snapped his fingers above his head, and turned on old Ike.