His grin when he caught sight of me was all the satisfaction I got before he popped immediately back down[Pg 46] the companionway. But I didn’t have long to wait for further developments, for I don’t believe it was a full minute before a little Jap glided up the steps, and came directly toward me.
“You come follow me,” said the flunky abruptly, as he whirled a most ridiculous rightabout. But naturally I was in no mood to read humor in things, so I followed meekly enough.
The Jap led down the steps, and across a saloon; then he tapped almost reverently at a door that gave off from a passageway beyond.
To a sharp summons to enter, he opened the door, and stood aside for me to pass him, which I did. Then the door closed behind me, and I faced the strangest stateroom I ever saw.
But it was not the room itself, remarkable as it was, that focused the entire attention, for a man in a broad-backed chair, busied at something on the table before him, sat facing me.
The whole breadth of the room was between us, but I could feel every nerve of my ill-controlled features pass under the appraising scrutiny of that pair of half-closed gray eyes that drilled at me as he glanced up from what had been engrossing his attention.
It will be remembered that on the two occasions I had seen this man, Carl Stroth, I had not got a fair and square look at him. Back there on the launch at Port Washington he had stood steadily at the wheel, peering ahead, while I, of necessity, was busied with the engine.
And that other time when, as the accommodating “deck hand,” he had made a fool of me, his disguise had been of the cleverest.
But now I had ample opportunity for a searching survey of the man, for he let a minute pass in silence. And I availed myself of this opportunity to the full; though now, as I attempted to word the impression his face made upon me, I am forced lamely to state that its strongest characteristic lay in its very indefinableness; a sort of haunting fitting of something I decidedly didn’t like across features which seemed more naturally to fit themselves into something I instinctively did like.
Even seated as he was, there came to his shoulders suddenly that forward hunch which I had before noted, and which now I could see was accompanied by a forward craning of the neck in riveting his eyes upon me. Vulturelike it was, and more.