The steamer Narcissus had been built in Glasgow in 1894 by Sutherland & Sons, Limited.  She was four hundred and fifty-five feet long, fifty-eight feet beam and thirty-one feet draft.  She had triple-expansion engines of two thousand indicated horse power, two Scotch boilers, and was of seventy-five hundred tons net register.

“Huh!” Matt murmured.  “She’ll carry forty per cent. more than her registered tonnage; if I had the loading of her she’d carry fifty per cent. more, at certain seasons of the year.  I wonder why her owners have let her lie idle for eight years?  I’ll have to ask Jerry Dooley.  He knows everything about ships that a landsman can possibly know.”

Jerry Dooley had presided over the desk at the Merchants’ Exchange for so many years that there was a rumor current to the effect that he had been there in the days when the water used to come up to Montgomery Street.  Before Jerry’s desk the skippers of all nations came and went; to him there drifted inevitably all of the little, intimate gossip of the shipping world.  If somebody built a ship and she had trouble with her oil burners on the trial trip, Jerry Dooley would know all about it before that vessel got back to her dock again.  If somebody else’s ship was a wet boat, Jerry knew of it, and could, moreover, give one the name of the naval architect responsible; if a vessel had been hogged on a reef, Jerry could tell you the name of the reef, the date of the wreck, the location of the hog, and all about the trouble they had keeping her cargo dry as a result.  To this human encyclopedia, therefore, did Matt Peasley come in his still-hunt for information touching the steamer Narcissus.

He opened negotiations by handing Jerry Dooley a good cigar.  Jerry examined it, saw that it was a good cigar, and said:  “I don’t smoke myself, but I have a brother that does.”  He fixed Matt Peasley with an alert, inquisitive eye and said:  “Well, what do you know, Captain?”

“Nothing much.  What do you know about the steamer Narcissus?”

Jerry Dooley scratched his red head.

“Narcissus!” he murmured.  “Narcissus!  By George, it’s a long time since I heard of her.  Has she just come into port?” And he glanced apprehensively at the register of arrivals and departures, wondering if he hadn’t overlooked the Narcissus.

“She’s been in port eight years at least,” Matt answered; “tucked away down in Mission Bay, with a watchman aboard.”

“Oh, I remember now,” Jerry replied.  “She belongs to the Oriental Steamship Company.  Old man Webb, of the Oriental Company, got all worked up about the possibilities of the Oriental trade right after the Spanish War.  He had a lot of old bottoms running in the combined freight and passenger trade and not making expenses when the war came along, and the Government grabbed all his boats for transports to rush troops over to the Philippines.  That was fine business for quite a while and the Oriental