The steward, Parsons, was there. Marjorie Garth pulled her sleeve down.
"Don't keep Daddy waiting!" she warned, and added: "You shall dress my arm afterwards!"
I said "Oh, rather!" or something equally idiotic and followed the steward out. As I passed the girl, she leant forward and whispered;
"Mind you stand up to him!"
As we crossed the blinding sunshine of the deck and went down a companion-way Parsons confided to me that the owner was at breakfast. My heart sank rather. It is poor tactics to ask a man for favours before noon.
The saloon, which was panelled in some light-coloured wood, maple or birch, resembled, with its little domed sky-light, the restaurant of a liner in miniature. It was a small, snug little place with rose-coloured silk curtains and carpet and a profusion of silver and flowers. At the far end was a door which, I imagined, led to the cabins.
At the sound of my entrance Sir Alexander Garth looked up from his egg. As he stood up to greet me, I saw he was a tall, heavily-built man in the fifties with a heavy iron-grey moustache. He had about him an air I have noticed in other prosperous business people—a sort of "moneyed manner" which reveals itself in a great deal of self-confidence with just a touch of parade. The hard grey eyes and the firm chin denoted the man of action; but the physiognomist in me (which my work has considerably developed) took mental stock of the arched nostril and the downward dip to the corners of the mouth which are the unmistakable signals of a violent temper.
These and other little details I noticed about him as we shook hands and he asked me if I had breakfasted. And because I was really pretty peckish and because I believe one can always do business best over a meal, I accepted his invitation and started in on a luscious grape-fruit. When he had poured out my coffee, pushed the toast-rack at me and generally put me at my ease, Sir Alexander Garth, who had been scrutinising me rather closely, remarked:
"I should never have taken you for a doctor!"
"I'm not a doctor, sir!" I answered.