"Is the Hirondelle ready?"
"Quite ready, sir."
"In that case, Mr. Shears...?"
The Englishman looked around him, saw a group of people seated outside a café, another a little nearer, hesitated for a moment and then, realizing that, before any one could interfere, he would be seized, forced on board and packed off at the bottom of the hold, he crossed the foot-plank and followed Lupin into the captain's cabin.
It was roomy, specklessly clean and shone brightly with its varnished wainscoting and gleaming brass.
Lupin closed the door and, without beating about the bush, said to Shears, almost brutally:
"Tell me exactly how much you know."
"Everything."
His voice had lost the tone of politeness, tinged with irony, which he adopted toward the Englishman. Instead, it rang with the imperious accent of the master who is accustomed to command and accustomed to see every one bow before his will, even though it be a Holmlock Shears.