“Then you will not even tell the police?”
“The police are a land force: they cannot take a rowboat and chase the Rajah, and if they could they wouldn’t catch her, so what’s the good of asking impossibilities from either Scotland Yard or the Foreign Office?”
“You have no intention, then, of interfering with this band of gold robbers?”
“Oh, no.”
“You’re going to take it lying down?”
“No, sitting up,” and with that his lordship pushed back his chair, threw his right leg over his left, selected a cigarette, and lit it.
“I should be glad, my lord, to head an expedition, fit up another ship, follow the Rajah, and force those claim-jumpers to abandon their raid on another man’s goods.”
“I don’t like force, Mackeller. I don’t mind possessing a giant’s strength, but we must remember we should not use it like a giant.”
Lord Stranleigh, a picture of contentment, leaned back in his chair, and blew rings of filmy cigarette smoke toward the ceiling. Peter Mae-keller, the gloom on whose face had grown darker and darker, watched the nonchalant young man opposite him with a curl of contempt on his lip, yet he realized that if his lordship could not be forced to move, he himself was helpless. At last he rose slowly to his feet, the first tardy movement he had made since he entered the breakfast room.
“Very good, my lord. Then you have no further need of me, and I beg you to accept my resignation.”