“But next day he weakens and says to Cloete . . .  Perhaps it would be best to sell.  Couldn’t you talk to my brother? and Cloete explains to him over again for the twentieth time why selling wouldn’t do, anyhow.  No!  The Sagamore must be tomahawked—­as he would call it; to spare George’s feelings, maybe.  But every time he says the word, George shudders. . .  I’ve got a man at hand competent for the job who will do the trick for five hundred, and only too pleased at the chance, says Cloete. . .  George shuts his eyes tight at that sort of talk—­but at the same time he thinks:  Humbug!  There can be no such man.  And yet if there was such a man it would be safe enough—­perhaps.

“And Cloete always funny about it.  He couldn’t talk about anything without it seeming there was a great joke in it somewhere. . .  Now, says he, I know you are a moral citizen, George.  Morality is mostly funk, and I think you’re the funkiest man I ever came across in my travels.  Why, you are afraid to speak to your brother.  Afraid to open your mouth to him with a fortune for us all in sight. . .  George flares up at this:  no, he ain’t afraid; he will speak; bangs fist on the desk.  And Cloete pats him on the back. . . We’ll be made men presently, he says.

“But the first time George attempts to speak to Captain Harry his heart slides down into his boots.  Captain Harry only laughs at the notion of staying ashore.  He wants no holiday, not he.  But Jane thinks of remaining in England this trip.  Go about a bit and see some of her people.  Jane was the Captain’s wife; round-faced, pleasant lady.  George gives up that time; but Cloete won’t let him rest.  So he tries again; and the Captain frowns.  He frowns because he’s puzzled.  He can’t make it out.  He has no notion of living away from his Sagamore. . .

“Ah!” I cried.  “Now I understand.”

“No, you don’t,” he growled, his black, contemptuous stare turning on me crushingly.

“I beg your pardon,” I murmured.

“H’m!  Very well, then.  Captain Harry looks very stern, and George crumples all up inside. . .  He sees through me, he thinks. . .  Of course it could not be; but George, by that time, was scared at his own shadow.  He is shirking it with Cloete, too.  Gives his partner to understand that his brother has half a mind to try a spell on shore, and so on.  Cloete waits, gnawing his fingers; so anxious.  Cloete really had found a man for the job.  Believe it or not, he had found him inside the very boarding-house he lodged in—­ somewhere about Tottenham Court Road.  He had noticed down-stairs a fellow—­a boarder and not a boarder—­hanging about the dark—­part of the passage mostly; sort of ‘man of the house,’ a slinking chap.  Black eyes.  White face.  The woman of the house—­a widow lady, she called herself—­very full of Mr. Stafford; Mr. Stafford this and Mr. Stafford that. . .  Anyhow, Cloete one evening takes him out to have a drink.  Cloete mostly passed away his evenings in saloon bars.  No drunkard, though, Cloete; for company; liked to talk to all sorts there; just habit; American fashion.