"Music-hall or chapel—it's all one to me, so long as you're not a drinker. You're free to spend your evenings as you like, provided it doesn't interfere with your work."
"There was a preacher there, a Mr Enoch Way, who impressed me very strongly, sir. So much so that I had to leave the meeting. When I got back to my hotel, I found a wire from you telling me to travel to New York. I caught the morning train, and on the train I met Mr Way again. We were on the observation platform together when the railway-car went over the bridge. He died not a yard away from me, down in the river! He was a fine man—a great man! and if I could die like he died, with a prayer on his lips for someone who was only a stranger——" Dean choked and stopped.
Presently he resumed: "And when I lay in hospital at Fort William, I thought things over and over. I began to see clearly that I ought never to have taken on the work you asked me to do."
"Why not?"
"It's not right, sir! You know what you asked me to do wasn't right! It's fraud!" The words came clear and strong now.
If Larssen had been a man of ordinary passions, he would have kicked Dean out of the door and told him to go to the devil. But the shipowner had not reached his present power by giving way to ordinary feelings.
He answered very quietly: "I should have liked to meet that Mr Way. He must have been a man of personality. What did you tell him?"
"I didn't tell him anything. I think he guessed. He was that kind of man—he could read right into you."
"What did he tell you?"
"The story of his life. He had been in prison twice when he was a young man."