“Smart boy, he is.” His speech became clearer as he grew in confidence, and his manner became more aggressive. “Talks a lot.... But he’s a crook.”
The “he,” Jerry figured, must mean Jawn.
“Funny names, and all that,” he explained.
After a moment he laughed derisively, almost vindictively. “Says his name’s Richard! Huh! Richard Richard! Hah! Fools the women all right. But don’t fool me.... Has ’nother name, too.” He fumbled in his pocket and produced the card that Richard had ripped off his stateroom door. “But I cornered him. Tol’ me ’at was a fake name, too. Found it on his things ... in his stateroom.... Big gun, he was tryin’ to be.... Big gun.”
Mechanically Jerry took the card. By the light from the window she could see the hold black characters. It was indeed a big gun, one of the Crœsuses of his age. It seemed less like the name of a person, as she studied it, than that of some heavily advertised merchandise.
Jerry was not a newspaper reader, but vaguely she was conscious of knowing something about that name. While Walter bragged of his cleverness in discovering this further act of imposture, she was searching over her memory. Suddenly it became clear that the man whose card she held in her hand had been dead several years; he had gone down at sea with his whole family; she was not sure, but she thought she remembered something about an accident to a sea-going yacht off the Newfoundland Banks.
“Where did you find this card?” she asked.
“On his door.”
“His stateroom door?”
“Yes. That’s the name he was goin’ to use at first, but I scared him off. Tore it down, he did, when I came ’long.”