“No, sir; not, I say, if you put it in that light.”
“Let me put it in this light,” was Sir Dace Fontaine’s testy rejoinder: “Had three or four people been with Mr. Pym in his parlour, you could not have told whose voice it was quarrelling with him? You would not have known?”
“That is so, sir. But, you see, I knew it was his captain that was with him.”
Sir Dace folded his arms and leaned back in his chair, his cross-questioning over. Mrs. Richenough was done with for the present, and Captain Tanerton entered upon his version of the night’s events.
“I wished particularly to see Mr. Pym, and went to Ship Street in search of him, as I have already said. He was not there. Later, I went down again——”
“I beg your pardon, Captain Tanerton,” interrupted the lawyer; “what time do you make it—that second visit?”
“It must have been nearly nine o’clock. Mr. Pym was at home, and I went into his parlour. He sat at the table writing, or preparing to write. I asked him the question I had come to ask, and he answered me. Scarcely anything more passed between us. He was three-parts tipsy. I had intended to tell him that he was no longer chief mate of my ship—had been superseded; but, seeing his condition, I did not. I can say positively that I was not more than two minutes in the room.”
“And you and he did not quarrel?”
“We did not. Neither were our voices raised. It is very probable, in his then condition, that he would have attempted to quarrel had he known he was discharged; but he did not know it. We were perfectly civil to each other; and when I wished him good-night, he came into the passage and shut the front-door after me.”
“You left no one with him?”