“How did you know I was looking for her?”
“You’ve been looking for something these few days past, so I took the liberty of surmising it was the Rajah.”
“You are quite right.’”
“I always am, Mackeller. Haven’t you discovered that yet? Always be right and then you’ll be happy, although you’ll also be extremely disliked by everybody else. Still, I never aimed at popularity, not wishing to write a book, or stand for Parliament, so a lack of popularity does not matter.”
“I never pretend to be always right, sir.”
“Well, that’s a good thing. I dislike pretense myself; nevertheless, it is so easy to be right that I sometimes wonder you don’t practice the art. All that is necessary is knowledge and brains.”
“I do not lack knowledge in my own line of business, and no one ever hinted before that I was lacking in brain power.”
“I do not hint that at all, Mackeller. I bear willing testimony to your brain power, but I sometimes think you don’t exercise it enough. For instance, you think things out in somber silence, when sometimes a question might throw a good deal of light on your problem. Take my own actions, for instance. Do you suppose I wish the whereabouts of my yacht reported in the marine columns of the English newspapers day by day, thus running the risk that certain people will begin to wonder what I am doing so far south?”
“Of course not.”
“Very well. Why have we met none of the South African liners, or overtaken any of the tramps threshing their way to Cape Town?”