"'I know,' he said. 'I know. I was ashore this morning.'
"'We won't discuss it here, Mr. Hank,' I said, hastily. 'If you don't mind, I'll see you ashore, since you're busy.'
"Mr. Hank, Signore Hank, was a man I would never be very intimate with, however well I knew him. I'm not saying he was so bad, or that I was so virtuous myself, at all. It was simply, I suppose, a matter of temperament. To me it always seemed as though he had so many mysterious things in his mind that he was borne down by them; that the outward and visible world, in which I saw him and spoke to him, was only a thin mask behind which his real existence was concealed. I may have been wrong. It doesn't matter, for Signore Hank is dead now, his long life of ingenious peculation is over, and the good and the ill of it, we'll hope, have balanced, anyway. But I couldn't possibly discuss Rosa with him, let alone have that smooth, dissipated little bounder of a Sachs sit by and hear it all. I had to call a halt. I was making up my mind to leave the mud alone and not stir it up at all, when Mr. Hank, sitting asprawl in his swivel chair at his roll-top desk, his big chin and nose and moustache buried in his hand, and staring at me with his hard-boiled eyes, remarked abruptly:
"'Do you know the Hotel Robinson?'
"'Certainly,' I said. 'What about it?'
"'What you want to do is to go to the Hotel Robinson and ask for Doctor West. He's the man. He'll tell you all about it. You know Doctor West? Tall, big black beard, pale face. Flag's letter P. You know him?'
"'I've seen him some time or other, I dare say,' I said. 'Hotel Robinson, you say. All right and thank you.'
"'Just a minute,' sang out little Sachs as I made to go. 'I'll go with you. I know Doctor West. I'll introduce you.' And he went on discussing a paper he had, with Mr. Hank.
"I felt a little indignant and walked off, walked in the wrong direction, of course, and lost myself in interminable alleyways of passenger-cabins, hustled by stewards and stewardesses who were polishing brass-work, rolling up carpets, washing floors and so on. All about was that curious odour that seems inseparable from the corridors of steamers, hospitals, workhouses and the like—an odour which is a compound of cleanliness, antiseptic and cold enamelled iron. Such surroundings depressed me. I felt, more acutely than ever before, the distance between Rosa's environment and what I would have had it. I felt dissatisfied with Signore Hank, and with myself too, if the truth be told. I had not taken hold of the situation. I had allowed him to impose on me. I suppose you have had the experience, when someone for whom you have no esteem, imposes his pinchbeck personality upon you. Save for the story which this Doctor West of the Hotel Robinson might spin, I would have gone back to the Corydon and forgotten it. I wandered about a good bit, when a bell-hop showed me an unexpected way out, and there was Mister Sachs at the gangway, looking about for me.
"'Why, where 'ave you been?' he asked. 'I thought you'd gone.'