“No, leave him alone. He may be some magazine chap,” put in another. “There’s no knowing how they’ll behave. They think they own the earth.”
And so the fleshy, offensive stranger boarded the craft with the rest when the time came, without being questioned. While Lieutenant Parry and Midshipman Stark were showing the rest of the newspaper men about the deck and explaining such harmless things as the periscope and the torpedo tubes to them, this stranger sought out Channing Lockyer.
“I guess I owe you an apology Mr. Lockyer,” he said, “for my brusqueness. I’m sorry. Will you accept my apology?”
“Of course, of course,” said Mr. Lockyer pleasantly enough, but turning away. Somehow he felt an instinctive repulsion to this person.
But the fleshy man pressed after him.
“Have a cigar, won’t you?” he urged, drawing out a case of the weeds.
“Thank you, I don’t smoke,” was the rejoinder.
“Is that so,” remarked the other; “well, you don’t know what you’re missing. But while the others are nosing about, I’ve got a bit of information that may interest you, Mr. Lockyer. Do you know a man named Gradbarr?”
The inventor, who had been trying to think of some excuse to get away from the fleshy man, became interested at once.