"Well, what is it?" asked Helston, amused at his earnestness.
"Well, I reckoned this affair was going to be a simple slap-up picnic, and if there's devilry about now there will be a jolly sight more before you've squared yards, and I'm just keen to be in it. I'm a bit of a sailor and picked up a bit of the lingo, so I should be worth my nose-bag. Will you take me on, sir, if you find this explosion was due to treachery?"
"I'll see about it when I come back," replied Helston.
"Thank you, sir. Good-night;" and Hopkins disappeared.
"I don't care for that man," said the Doctor, as he saw Helston off to Portsmouth (they were talking of Hopkins). "He talks too much, and I hate foreigners. I hope you won't take him."
However, Hopkins himself was apparently confident that he would be taken, for next morning at breakfast he joined their table, quite unasked, and kept forcing his conversation on the Doctor. Now there was one thing the Doctor would never do, and that was, talk at breakfast; not even till he had had his after-breakfast pipe was it safe to address him, and he happened to be especially "livery" that morning. He was boiling over with wrath when the meal was over.
"Bad temper, I suppose it is," growled the Doctor, as, later, he jumped into a hansom and drove to the U.S. Legation; "a villainous liver that makes me dislike that fellow. At any rate, if he comes with us we had better know all about him."
At the Embassy he managed to get hold of several old navy lists, and found the name Reginald S. Hopkins given as a cadet on board the Monocacy in 1885, but no mention of it in later years.
He enquired whether the Naval Attaché was in the building, and, as luck would have it, he was, and could give the Doctor more information.
"A naval officer yourself, Doctor?" said the Attaché, looking at his card.