The two men jumped out of the boat and hauled it up.  Mr. Cooke waved an easy salute to one, whom I recognized as the big boatman from Asquith, familiarly known as Captain Jay.  He owned the Scimitar and several smaller boats.  The captain went through the pantomime of an introduction between Mr. Cooke and the other, whom my client shook warmly by the hand, and presently all three came towards us.

Mr. Cooke led them to a bar he had improvised by the brook.  A pool served the office of refrigerator, and Mr. Cooke had devised an ingenious but complicated arrangement of strings and labels which enabled him to extract any bottle or set of bottles without having to bare his arm and pull out the lot.  Farrar and I responded to the call he had given, and went down to assist in the entertainment.  My client, with his back to us, was busy manipulating the strings.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “let me make you acquainted with Mr. Drew.  You all know the captain.”

Had I not suspected Mr. Drew’s profession, I think I should not have remarked that he gave each of us a keen look as he raised his head.  He had reddish-brown hair, and a pair of bushy red whiskers, each of which tapered to a long point.  He was broad in the shoulders, and the clothes he wore rather enhanced this breadth.  His suit was gray and almost new, the trousers perceptibly bagging at the knee, and he had a felt hat, a necktie of the white and flowery pattern, and square-toed “Congress” boots.  In short, he was a decidedly ordinary looking person; you would meet a hundred like him in the streets of Far Harbor and Beaverton.  He might have been a prosperous business man in either of those towns,—­a comfortable lumber merchant or mine owner.  And he had chosen just the get-up I should have picked for detective work in that region.  He had a pleasant eye and a very fetching and hearty manner.  But his long whiskers troubled me especially.  I kept wondering if they were real.

“The captain is sailing Mr. Drew over to Far Harbor,” explained Mr. Cooke, “and they have put in here for the night.”

Mr. Drew was plainly not an amateur, for he volunteered nothing further than this.  The necessary bottles having been produced, Mr. Cooke held up his glass and turned to the stranger.

“Welcome to our party, old man,” said he.

Mr. Drew drained his glass and complimented Mr. Cooke on the brand,—­a sure key to my client’s heart.  Whereupon he seated himself between Mr. Drew and the captain and began a discourse on the subject of his own cellar, on which he talked for nearly an hour.  His only pauses were for the worthy purpose of filling the detective’s or the captain’s glass, and these he watched with a hospitable solicitude.  The captain had the advantage, three to one, and I made no doubt his employer bitterly regretted not having a boatman whose principles were more strict.  At the end of the hour Captain Jay, who by nature was inclined to be taciturn and crabbed, waxed loquacious and even jovial.  He sang us the songs he had learned in the winter lumber-camps, which Mr. Cooke never failed to encore to the echo.  My client vowed he had not spent a pleasanter afternoon for years.  He plied the captain with cigars, and explained to him the mystery of the strings and labels; and the captain experimented until he had broken some of the bottles.