“That is unfortunate for you,” Sir James said, “as I suppose it means that she has both come and gone; but it is fortunate for me, for I hope it will mean that you will come home with us in the Yuba.”
* * * * *
PART FOUR
As soon as Sard was free, he went ashore to see Messrs. Wrattson & Willis’s agents. He was puzzled by the Pathfinder’s not being in the port. She could not be overdue, he thought, in just dropping down to leeward. She might have come and gone: in which case he would have missed her by a few hours. “More probably,” he thought, “she has gone down the coast to Otorin to complete her cargo. I’ll find her there.”
At the agents, as he asked for his letters, one of the managers of the firm, a tall, alert inscrutable man of about thirty-five, a Mr. Waycock, heard his name.
“Are you Mr. Harker of the Pathfinder,” he said, “come into my office, will you? I want to speak to you. Sit down here: the cigars are at your elbow. You don’t smoke? You’re the first sailor I’ve ever known who could say that. You know, Mr. Harker,” he said, “I heard that we might expect you apart from the Pathfinder. I had news of you from a man with whom I have business dealings, a man called Douglas Castleton.”
“Has he been here?” Sard asked. “Where is he?”
“Isn’t that a little like asking where is the curlew?” Mr. Waycock said. “It is best, perhaps, not to ask where Mr. Castleton is. I understand that he is not here at the moment, but away again on . . . well . . . on a business journey.”
“What news of the Pathfinder, sir?” Sard asked.