“Well,” he said sternly, “so there you are!”
Eustace Hignett looked up brightly, even beamingly. In the brief interval which had elapsed since Sam had seen him last, an extraordinary transformation had taken place in this young man. His wan look had disappeared. His eyes were bright. His face wore that beastly self-satisfied smirk which you see in pictures advertising certain makes of fine-mesh underwear. If Eustace Hignett had been a full-page drawing in a magazine with “My dear fellow, I always wear Sigsbee’s Super-fine Featherweight!” printed underneath him, he could not have looked more pleased with himself.
“Hullo!” he said. “I was wondering where you had got to.”
“Never mind,” said Sam coldly, “where I had got to! Where did you get to and why? You poor, miserable worm,” he went on in a burst of generous indignation, “what have you to say for yourself? What do you mean by dashing away like that and killing my little entertainment?”
“Awfully sorry, old man. I hadn’t foreseen the cigar. I was bearing up tolerably well till I began to sniff the smoke. Then everything seemed to go black—I don’t mean you, of course. You were black already—and I got the feeling that I simply must get on deck and drown myself.”
“Well, why didn’t you?” demanded Sam with a strong sense of injury. “I might have forgiven you then. But to come down here and find you singing....”
A soft light came into Eustace Hignett’s eyes.
“I want to tell you all about that,” he said.
“It’s the most astonishing story. A miracle, you might almost call it. Makes you believe in Fate and all that kind of thing. A week ago I was on the Subway in New York....”
He broke off while Sam cursed him, the Subway, and the city of New York in the order named.