"'Ello!" he cried angrily. "Wot are you doin' ere? 'Oo are you? Be off, instantly."
"I am not going until Mr. Verity hears what I have to ask him, and answers, or not, as he feels disposed," was the firm reply.
"Leave 'im alone, Dickey. It's all right. Wot does it matter now 'oo knows all there is to know? Just gimme a minnit."
Verity poured out some brandy. Man is but a creature of habit, and the hospitable Lancastrian does not drink alone when there is company.
"'Ave a tiddly?" he inquired blandly.
Both Bulmer and the journalist believed that David was losing his faculties. Never did shipowner behave more queerly when faced by a disaster of like magnitude, involving, as did the Andromeda's loss, not only political issues of prime importance, but also the death of a near relative. They refused the proffered refreshment, not without some show of indignation. Verity swallowed a large dose of neat spirit. He thought it would revive him, so, of course, the effect was instantaneous. The same quantity of prussic acid could not have killed him more rapidly than the brandy rallied his scattered forces, and, not being a physiologist, he gave the brandy all the credit.
"Ah!" he said, smacking his lips with some of the old-time relish, "that puts new life into one. An' now, let's get on with the knittin'. I was a bit rattled when this young party steers in an' whacks 'is cock-an'-bull yarn into me 'and. 'Oo ever 'eard of a respectable British ship mixin' 'erself up with a South American revolution? The story is all moonshine on the face of it."
"I think otherwise, Mr. Verity, and Mr. Bulmer, I take it, agrees with me," said the reporter.
"Wot," blazed David, into whose mind had darted a notion that dazzled him by its daring, "d'ye mean to insiniwate that I lent my ship to this 'ere Dom Wot's-'is-name? D'ye sit there an' tell me that Jimmie Coke, a skipper who's bin in my employ for sixteen year, would carry on that sort of fool's business behind 'is owner's back? Go into my clerk's office, young man, an' ax Andrews to show up a copy of the ship's manifest. See w'en an 'ow she was insured. Jot down the names of the freighters for this run, and skip round to their offices to verify. An' if that don't fill the bill, well, just interview yourself, an' say if you'd allow your niece, a bonnie lass like my Iris, to take a trip that might end in 'er bein' blown to bits. It's crool, that's wot it is, reel crool."
David was not simulating this contemptuous wrath. He actually felt it. His harsh voice cracked when he spoke of Iris, and the excited words gushed out in a torrent.