The Grey Monk

by T. W. Speight

Lisle had not recovered from his astonishment when the cabin door was opened from without and he saw before him a tall, finely-built man of middle age, with high aquiline features, dark, grave, earnest-looking eyes, a somewhat worn and thoughtful-looking face, and a long flowing beard already flecked with white.

“My cabin chum, I presume,” said the stranger in a deep mellow voice, and with an exceedingly pleasant smile. “I hope we shall have a good passage, and that at the end of it our companionship will remain a pleasant recollection in connection with it.”

Everard smiled and bowed. “I have taken the liberty of reading the name on your luggage,” he said. “Pray excuse the question. I have a special reason for asking it, but are you Mr. John Alexander of Pineapple City in the State of Michigan?”

The other lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “That is certainly my address, and therefore I can only assume that I am the person to whom you refer.”

“Then you must be the person whom I was going all the way to Pineapple City in search of. I am especially glad that I have met you now and here—for one thing, because my having done so will save me the necessity of a voyage to the States and back. Mr. Alexander, I am the bearer of a letter addressed to you from Sir Gilbert Clare of Withington Chase.”

For a moment or two it seemed to Mr. Alexander as if the cabin floor were rising and sinking, as it might have done in a heavy gale. He seated himself on the edge of his berth; his face had faded to an ashen grey.

“A letter from my—from Sir Gilbert Clare for me!” he said, speaking like a man in a dream.

From the case which he carried in his breast pocket, Everard extracted Sir Gilbert’s missive and handed it to the other. “I will see you again in the course of a few minutes,” he said.

It will be enough to say that neither one nor the other sailed by the Arbaces, but caused themselves and their belongings to be transferred back to shore at the last moment.

A few hours later, as they sat together over their coffee and cigars in a private room of the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, John Alexander Clare proceeded to give his companion an outline of his history from the time of the explosion of the lake steamer by which he was supposed to have been killed. Of that narrative all that need be given here is such a summary as will enable the reader to follow the sequence of events, the outcome of which was the unpremeditated meeting of himself and Lisle on board the Arbaces.