“I think you had better retire. I wish to hear what Captain O’Shea and Mr. Kent may have to tell me.”
The amiable monarch was unconsciously swayed by the virile personality of Captain O’Shea, who dominated the scene as though he were on the deck of his own ship.
Baron Frederick Martin Strothers made a last attempt to protest, but Johnny Kent glared at him so wickedly and O’Shea moved a step nearer with so icy a glint in his gray eye that there was a moment later a vanished minister of finance.
The etiquette of courts troubled O’Shea not in the least as he cheerily yet respectfully suggested to the perplexed elderly gentleman:
“Now, King Osmond, if you will please sit down and let us talk things over with ye as man to man, we’ll tell you how it happened.”
The personage obediently did as he was told, nor could he feel offended by the shipmaster’s boyish candor. O’Shea chewed on his cigar and his eyes twinkled as he glanced at the stubborn visage of Johnny Kent, which was still flushed. His Majesty began to get his wits together and to wonder why he had permitted this brace of total strangers to take him by storm. O’Shea broke into his cogitations by explaining:
“You are surprised that ye chucked the trusted minister of finance out of the room and consented to listen to us at all. In the first place, we are not askin’ anything of you. What I mean is, we felt bound to put you next to the dirty deal that was framed up to rob ye.”
“We saw you in the Jolly Mermaid tavern, and we liked your looks,” ingenuously added Johnny Kent. “We decided to do you a good turn, whether we ever saw the color of your money or not.”
“And we didn’t like the cut of the jib of your minister of finance,” resumed O’Shea. “And we were dead sure that Captain Handy was rotten.”
King Osmond earnestly interrupted: