“I think they cooked up this smuggling business and kidded him into it just to get the use of his yacht for their own purposes and at the same time get him where he can’t put up a howl if he finds out the truth.  Suppose he does...”  The mutter became momentarily a deep-throated chuckle of malice.  “He’s in so deep on the booze smuggling side he dassent say a word, and that puts him in worse yet, makes him accessory before the fact of criminal practices that’d made his hair stand on end.  Then, suppose they want to go on with the game, looting in Europe and sneaking the goods into America with the use of his yacht:  what’s he going to say, how’s he going to stop them?”

Accepting these questions as purely rhetorical, Lanyard offered no comment.  After a moment the mutter resumed: 

“Well, what do you think?  Am I right or am I wrong?”

“Who knows, Mr. Mussey?  One can only say, you seem to know something.”

“I’ll say I know something!  A sight more than Whit Monk dreams I know—­as he’ll find out to his sorrow before he’s finished with Tom Mussey.”

“But”—­obliquely Lanyard struck again at the heart of the mystery which he found so baffling—­“you seem so well satisfied with the bona fides of your informant?”

There was a sound of stertorous breathing as the intelligence behind the mutter grappled with this utterance.  Then, as if the hint had proved too fine—­“I’m playing my hand face up with you, Mr. Lanyard.  I guess you can tell I know what I’m talking about.”

“But what I cannot see is why you should talk about it to me, monsieur.”

“Why, because I and you are both in the same boat, in a manner of speaking.  We’re both on the outside—­shut out—­looking in.”

In a sort of mental aside, Lanyard reflected that mixed bathing for metaphors was apparently countenanced under the code of cynics.

“Does one gather that you feel aggrieved with Captain Monk for not making you a partner in his new associations?”

“For trying to put one over on me, an old pal... stood by him through thick and thin... would’ve gone through fire for Whit Monk, and in my way I have, many’s the time.  And now he hooks up with Phinuit and this Delorme woman, and leaves me to shuffle my feet on the doormat... and thinks I’ll let him get away with it.”

The voice in the dark gave a grunt of infinite contempt:  “Like hell...”

“I understand your feelings, monsieur; and I ask you to believe in my sympathy.  But you said—­if I remember—­that we were in the same boat, you and I; whereas I assure you Captain Monk has not abused my friendship, since he has never had it.”

“I know that well enough,” said the mutter.  “I don’t mean you’ve got my reasons for feeling sore; but I do mean you’ve got reason enough of your own—­”

“On what grounds do you say that?”

Another deliberate pause prefaced the reply:  “You said a while ago I knew something.  Well—­you said it.  I and you’ve both been frozen out of this deal and we’re both meaning to take a hand whether they like it or not.  If that don’t put us in the same boat I don’t know...”