“My agents at F—­ have full instructions about the sale.”

“Yes, but they tell me you have the papers.  I may say that I have seen the yacht and gear and am ready to pay the price you ask for immediate possession.  I said as much to Mr. Dewy.  But the papers, of course—­”

“Are they necessary?”

“Certainly they are.  At least the certificate of registry or, failing that, some reference to the port of registry, if the transfer is to be made.  I should also like to see her warrant if she has one, and her sailmaker’s certificate.  Messrs. Dewy and Moss could draw up the inventory.”

She still hesitated.  At length she said, “I have the certificate; I will fetch it.  The other papers, if she had any, have been lost or destroyed.  She never had a warrant.  I believe my husband belonged to no Yacht Club.  I understand very little of these matters.”

She left the room, and returned in five minutes or so with the open document in her hand.

“But,” said I, looking over it, “this is a certificate of a vessel called the Wasp.”

“Ah, I must explain that.  I wished the boat to change her name with the new owner.  Her old name—­it has associations—­painful ones—­I should not like anyone else to know her as the Wasp.”

“Well,” I admitted, “I can understand that.  But, see here, she is entered as having one mast and carrying a cutter rig.”

“She was a cutter originally.  My husband had her lengthened, in 1886, I think by five feet, and turned her into a yawl.  It was abroad, at Malaga—­”

“A curious port to choose.”

“She was built, you see, as long ago as 1875.  My husband used to say she was a broad boat for those days, and could be lengthened successfully and turned into quite a new-looking vessel.  He gave her an entirely new sheathing, too, and all her spars are new.  She was not insured, and, being in a foreign port, it was understood he would have her newly registered when he returned, which he fully intended.  So no alterations were made in the certificate here, and, I believe, her old tonnage is still carved up somewhere inside her.”

This was true enough.  The figures on the certificate, 29.56, were those I had seen on the beam in the forecastle.

“My husband never lived to reach England, and when she came back to F—­, though she was visited, of course, by the Custom House officer and coastguard, nobody asked for her certificate, and so the alterations in her were never explained.  She was laid up at once in the F—­ River, and there she has remained.”

Certain structural peculiarities in the main cabin—­scarcely noted at the time, but now remembered—­served to confirm Mrs. Carlingford’s plainly told story.  On my return to London that night I hunted up some back volumes of Hunt, and satisfied myself on the matter of the Wasp and her owner, William Carlingford.  And, to be short, the transfer was made on a fresh survey, the cheque sent to Mrs. Carlingford, and the yawl Siren passed into my hands.