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.

Mr. Cooke was not a person who made any great distinction between the three degrees, acquaintance, friendship, and intimacy.  When a stranger pleased him, he went from one to the other with such comparative ease that a hardhearted man, and no other, could have resented his advances.  Mr. Drew was anything but a hard-hearted man, and he did not object to my client’s familiarity.  Mr. Cooke made no secret of his admiration for Mr. Drew, and there were just two things about him that Mr. Cooke admired and wondered at, above all else,—­the bushy red whiskers.  But it appeared that these were the only things that Mr. Drew was really touchy about.  I noticed that the detective, without being impolite, did his best to discourage these remarks; but my client knew no such word as discouragement.  He was continually saying:  “I think I’ll grow some like that, old man,” or “Have those cut,” and the like,—­a kind of humor in which the captain took an incredible delight.  And finally, when a certain pitch of good feeling had been arrived at, Mr. Cooke reached out and playfully grabbed hold of the one near him.  The detective drew back.  “Mr. Cooke,” said he, with dignity, “I’ll have to ask you to let my whiskers alone.”