The Red Un opened the drawed quickly and thrust in a hand.  At first he thought it was empty, working as he did by touch, his eye on the door.  Then he found a disappointing something—­the lid of a cigar-box!  Under that was a photograph.  Here was luck!  Had the Red Un known it, he had found the only two secrets in his Chief’s open life.  But the picture was disappointing—­a snapshot of a young woman, rather slim, with the face obscured by a tennis racket, obviously thrust into the picture at the psychological moment.  Poor spoil this—­a cigar-box lid and a girl without a face!  However, marred as it was, it clearly meant something to the Chief.  For on its reverse side was another stanza from McAndrew’s hymn: 

Ye know how hard an idol dies,
An’ what that meant to me—­
E’en tak’ it for a sacrifice
Acceptable to Thee.

The Red Un thrust it back into the drawer, with the lid.  If she was dead what did it matter?  He was a literal youth—­so far, his own words had proved sufficient for his thoughts; it is after thirty that a man finds his emotions bigger than his power of expressing them, and turns to those that have the gift.  The Chief was over thirty.

It was as he shut the drawer that he realised he was not alone.  The alley door was open and in it stood the Senior Second.  The Red Un eyed him unpleasantly.

“Sneaking!” said the Second.

“None of your blamed business!” replied the Red Un.

The Second, who was really an agreeable person, with a sense of humour, smiled.  He rather liked the Red Un.

“Do you know, William,” he observed—­William was the Red Un’s name—­“I’d be willing to offer two shillings for an itemised account of what’s in that drawer?”

“Fill it with shillings,” boasted the Red Un, “and I’ll not tell you.”

“Three?” said the Second cheerfully.

“No.”

“Four?”

“Why don’t you look yourself?”

“Just between gentlemen, that isn’t done, young man.  But if you volunteered the information, and I saw fit to make you a present of, say, a pipe, with a box of tobacco——­”

“What do you want to know for?”

“I guess you know.”

The Red Un knew quite well.  The Chief and the two Seconds were still playing their game, and the Chief was still winning; but even the Red Un did not know how the Chief won—­and as for the two Seconds and the Third and the Fourth, they were quite stumped.

This was the game:  In bad weather, when the ports are closed and first-class passengers are yapping for air, it is the province of the engine room to see that they get it.  An auxiliary engine pumps cubic feet of atmosphere into every cabin through a series of airtrunks.

So far so good.  But auxiliaries take steam; and it is exceedingly galling to a Junior or Senior, wagering more than he can afford on the run in his watch, to have to turn valuable steam to auxiliaries—­“So that a lot of blooming nuts may smoke in their bunks!” as the Third put it.