"Why, a chap down there—a Dago peasant, you know—has turned up a dreadful mess of stuff Wrenmarsh has bought. I told you all that at breakfast."
"Yes," Jack said imperturbably.
"You see, Wrenmarsh turned to and bought the whole slithering lot of it, and he's just crazy over it; but as I said at the hotel, he's up against the government, and he doesn't know how under the heavens he's going to get the loot out of Italy."
"Great Scott, Tab, did you undertake to run his things out of the country for him? In the Merle, too?" cried Jack, at last showing some consternation.
"It's not quite so bad as that," Jerry protested; "but I did tell him I'd help him out of Pæstum and up here. Naples is all I agreed to. That's all he asked."
Castleport smoked in silence a moment, looking decidedly grave.
"Jack, old man," Jerry said pleadingly, "I've been an awful ass, but the way that beastly Wrenmarsh snarled me up with his talk was perfectly inconceivable. He'd have talked the tail off a brass monkey. He kept appealing to my sense of honor and heaven knows what, until I felt that I'd be a perfect cad not to help him."
"That's all right, Tab," Jack answered thoughtfully. "It's only the Merle—I should hate awfully to get her into a mess."
"He assured me that nothing could happen to her, and I don't think he'd lie."