WHEN he had finished his cigar he cast the stump overboard, watched it until it disappeared astern, and then went around to state-room No. 34. As he stepped in, and closed the door a masculine voice said very pleasantly:

“How do you do?”

Mr. Webster looked up and beheld a young man, arrayed in a very fancy pair of light blue silk pyjamas, stretched at his ease in the upper berth. In his right hand he held an open book; his left hand grasped his bare right foot, which he was rubbing comfortably; in his mouth he held an aromatic Turkish cigarette. He was very much at home, no doubt of that, for he was smiling in the friendliest fashion imaginable.

John Stuart Webster stared at the stranger for several seconds and concluded he was invading the sanctity of another's stateroom. “Excuse me,” he said, “I guess I'm in the right church but the wrong pew,” and he stepped out and looked for the number on the stateroom. To his surprise it was No. 34 after all, so he stepped back into the stateroom and favoured the stranger with another scrutiny.

“It does appear to me, my friend,” he said presently, “that I detect something strangely familiar about your pyjamas.”

“I wouldn't be the least bit surprised, Mr. Webster. I found them in your suitcase.”

“Well, how do you do?” Webster declared. “Pretty well, all things considered. May I offer you one of your own cigarettes? I found them in the suitcase also, and can recommend them highly.”

“Thank you very much.” Webster helped himself to a cigarette and sat down on the settee. Fell a silence of perhaps half a minute. Then:

“I dislike to appear inquisitive,” Webster began, “but the fact is, neighbour, I'm curious to know where you got that book. I observe you are reading Samuel Butler's 'Way of all Flesh,' and that the book is slightly damaged. Recently I purchased such a book in——”

“Pray do not take the trouble to explain,” the other answered airily. “I discovered this excellent book in your suitcase also. In fact, for me, that suitcase has proved to be a repository of treasures.” John Stuart Webster's neck came out of his collar with the suddenness of a turtle snapping at a fly; he drew himself up beside the top berth until his face was on a level with his unbidden guest's, upon whom he bent a look of mingled emotions. On his part the stranger returned his gaze with grave interest, and when the silence threatened to become embarrassing he said:

“Will you have the goodness to press that button? I think we should drink a bumper to our better acquaintance and I have no doubt but that the barkeeper on this packet can manufacture a golden fizz. Do you care for the famous New Orleans golden fizz?”

“It is a wonderful institution,” Webster replied, “and I'll have one. I need it to sustain me, for I am faint with amazement.” He pressed the button. “'While the golden fizz is fizzing,” he continued, “suppose you let me have a look at your ticket.”

“Ticket?” echoed his visitor. “I haven't any ticket. A kind gentleman bought one for me and has it in his possession. Do you, sir, by any chance, happen to be that philanthropic individual?”

“Well, I'll be——”

“Hush!” the stranger warned, raising an admonitory finger. “No profanity, please. I have been tenderly reared and cuss words will only shock me and clog the atmosphere. I'm here to do you and do you a delicate brown, so bear up, kind sir, and take your walloping like a sport.”

“Who the devil are you?” John Stuart Webster demanded.

“I regret I have no card, but even if I had it would be no kindness to inflict upon an American gentleman the cognomen my parents honoured me with, for it is long and many-jointed, like a peanut, and embodies the names of all the saints in the calendar. Moreover, just at present I am travelling under an alias. I am known as Mr. Andrew Bowers.”

“And your occupation?” Webster managed to articulate.

“Valet de chambre to that prince of gentlemen, Mr. John S. Webster,” the other replied with a mischievous gleam in his dark eyes.

Mr. Webster sat down limply on the settee. He was undecided whether to roar with laughter or shriek with rage; while he struggled for a decision Andrew Bowers blew smoke rings at the ceiling.

“Haven't I seen you before?” Webster queried presently.

“I wouldn't be surprised. I drove you down to the steamer in a taxi half an hour ago. You will recall that the taxi driver carried your luggage aboard.”

Webster gazed around the stateroom. “Where have you hidden your livery?” he demanded.

“I wrapped it in a newspaper; then, seeking a moment when the deck outside was deserted, I stepped forth in my—I beg your pardon, your—pyjamas and tossed it overboard.”

“But apparently you did not bring aboard with you a suit of clothes to take the place of your livery?”

“Quite true—lamentably so, Mr. Webster. Perhaps you will accept my desperate need as an excuse for borrowing your pyjamas. I notice you have another suit of them. Fortunate man!”

When confronted by something mysterious it was not John Stuart's habit to ask innumerable questions, and for the space of two minutes he gave himself up to deduction and a close scrutiny of his companion.

Andrew Bowers was a man of perhaps thirty years, five feet ten inches tall, and apparently in excellent health. He might have weighed a hundred and seventy pounds and he was undeniably handsome. His head was nobly formed and covered with thick, wavy hair, shiny and black as ebony; his eyes were dark blue; the eyebrows, thick but fine and silky, almost met over the bridge of a thin, high nose that was just a trifle too long for his face. Webster decided it was the nose of a thinker. Andrew Bowers's forehead was broad and high and his head was thick forward of the ears, infallible sign of brains; his mouth and chin were full of determination, although capable of a smile of singular sweetness; while the skin on his legs was milk-white, his hands and face were tanned to the colour of a manzanita stick, seeming to indicate that he had lived an outdoor life.

While Webster was wondering whether his companion was merely a high-class tramp or an absconding bank cashier, a knock sounded on the stateroom door. He opened it and the purser stood in the entrance.

“Tickets, please?” he announced.

Webster surrendered both tickets, receiving in turn two seat checks for the dining saloon, and the purser passed on to the next cabin.

Andrew Bowers smiled a small, prescient smile, but said nothing and presently John Stuart Webster broke the silence. “Well,” he ordered “sing the song or tell the story.”

“I noticed you surrendered my ticket to the purser,” the young man answered irrelevantly, “and I am glad of that. I take it as prima facie evidence that you have made up your mind to accept my company.”

“You're too infernally cool and cocksure, my friend,” Webster warned him testily. “I pride myself on a sense of humour and I dearly love a joke until it's carried too far, but be advised in time, young man, and don't try to play horse with me. I haven't made up my mind to accept your company, although, provided you do not rub my fur the wrong way, I may decide to put up with you, for whether you are a decayed gentleman or an engaging scoundrel, you are, at least, intelligent and impressive, clean, white, resourceful, and pleasant. However, my acceptance or non-acceptance of you is a subject for future discussion, since at present we have some fiduciary matters before us. You owe me fifty dollars for your ticket, Andrew Bowers, and in view of the fact that I never saw you before to-day, suppose we start the voyage by squaring the account.”

Andrew Bowers sat up in the berth and let his legs drape over the side. “Mr. Webster,” he began seriously, “had I sung my song or told my story before you surrendered that ticket to the purser I might have found myself in a most embarrassing predicament. If, prior to the arrival of the purser to collect the tickets, you had handed my ticket to me, saying: 'Here is your ticket, Mr. Bowers. Be kind enough to reimburse me to the extent of fifty dollars,' I should have been compelled to admit then, as I do now, that I haven't fifty dollars. Fortunately for me, however, you surrendered the ticket to the purser before acquainting yourself with the state of my fortunes; the voyage has commenced and whether you like it or not, my dear sir, I am your guest from now until we reach San Buenaventura. Rather an interesting situation, don't you think?”

John Stuart Webster was of Scotch ancestry. He had an hereditary regard for his baubees. He was a business man. Prodigal spender though he was and generous to a fault, the fact remained that he always made it a point to get value received, and he was prodigal with his own money; he preferred that the privilege of prodigality with the Websterian funds should remain an inalienable prerogative of the sole surviving member of the Webster family. He gazed contemplatively now upon his devil-may-care, unbidden guest, torn between a desire to whisk him out of the berth and shake him until his teeth fell out, and another to be just and patient, in the hope that some great extenuating circumstance might be adduced to account for this impudent daylight robbery. Mr. Webster had been deluded, cheated, robbed, and pillaged many a time and oft in the course of his rather eventful career, but he had yet to meet the man who, having swindled him out of fifty dollars, had the effrontery to add insult to injury by exhibiting a perfectly obvious intention of making him like it. Indeed, John Stuart Webster was obsessed with a secret fear that the smiling bandit in the upper berth was going to succeed in his nefarious design, and, in the contemplation of this unheard-of contretemps, the genial John was struck temporarily speechless.

“The last cent I had in the world went to that taxi person whose taxi I borrowed and whose old uniform I purchased,” Andrew Bowers supplemented his confession.

“You asked me to ring for two golden fizzes,” Webster reproached him. “Am I to be stuck for the drinks? Not satisfied with rooking me for a first-class passage to San Buenaventura you plan to tack on extras, eh?”

“Oh, I'll pay for the drinks,” Andrew Bowers assured him.

“How can you, if you gave your last cent to that taxi driver?”

“You tipped me very liberally for carrying your baggage aboard,” Andrew Bowers retorted slyly.

“Ouch!” cried Mr. Webster, and laughed. The very next instant he was provoked at himself for having done so. That laugh gave the brigand Andrew a decided advantage, for it placed Webster on defensive ground. He was convinced of this when the brigand said:

“Thanks for that laugh, Mr. Webster. It arouses hope in my sad heart. I have outraged your patience, your privacy, and your pocketbook—yet you laughed. Bueno. I will be equally good-natured and forgive you for questioning my sincerity in the matter of dispensing my hospitality; even the little slur cast on my veracity in the matter of my finances shall pass unnoticed.”

“I think you're too cool, young man,” Webster retorted. “Just a trifle too cocksure. Up to the present moment you have proffered no evidence why you should not be adjudged a cad, and I do not like cads and must decline to permit one to occupy the same stateroom at my expense. You are clever and amusing and I laughed at you, but at the same time my sense of humour is not so great as to cause me to overlook your impudence and laugh with you. Now, if you have anything to say, say it quickly, because you're going to go away from here—in a hurry.”

“I plead guilty to the indictment, Mr. Webster, and submit as an excuse the fact that desperate circumstances require desperate measures. I am not begging my way, neither am I beating it, for the reason that both forms of travel are repugnant to me. I am merely taking advantage of certain fortuitous circumstances to force you, an entire stranger, to extend to me a credit of fifty dollars until we reach San Buenaventura when you will be promptly reimbursed. I had thought,” he added sadly, “that my face might prove ample security for a fifty-dollar loan. There has never been a crook in my family and I have never been charged with a penal offence or been in jail.”

“It is not my habit,” Webster retorted stiffly, “to extend credit to strangers who demand it.”

“I do not demand it, sir. I beg it of you, and because I cannot afford to be refused I took care to arrange matters so that you would not be likely to refuse my request. Really, I do not mean to be cocksure and impudent, but before you throw me out I'd like to let you in on a secret about yourself.”

“Well?”

“You're not going to throw me out.”

“Why not?”

“Because you can't.”

“That's fighting talk. Now, just to prove to you the depth of error in which you flounder, young man, I am about to throw you out.” And he grasped Andrew Bowers in the grip of a grizzly bear and whisked him out of the top berth.

“Wait one second,” his helpless victim cried. “I have something to say before you go any further.”

“Say it,” Webster ordered. “Your tongue is the only part of you that I cannot control.”

“When you throw me out on deck,” Andrew Bowers queried, “do your pyjamas go with me? Does the hair go with the hide?”

“They cost me sixteen dollars in Salt Lake City, but—good lord, yes. I can't throw you out mother naked; damn it, I can't throw you out at all.”

“Didn't I tell you so? Be a good fellow and turn me loose.”

“Certainly—for the time being. You'll stay locked in this stateroom while I have a talk with the captain. He'll probably dig up a shirt, a pair of dungarees, and some old shoes for you and set you ashore before we get out of the river. If he doesn't do that he'll keep you aboard and you'll shovel coal for your passage.”

“But I'm Andrew Bowers and the purser has collected my first-class ticket!”

“What of it? I shall declare—and with truth—that you are not Andrew Bowers, that you are not my valet, and that I did not buy the ticket for you. I dare you to face the captain in my pyjamas and prove you aren't a stowaway.”

“You would win on that point,” the baffling guest admitted, “but it is a point you will not raise. Why? Because I have another trump up my kimono.” He climbed back into the upper berth and from that vantage point gazed down benevolently upon John Stuart Webster. “I'm disappointed in you,” he continued sadly. “I thought you'd show a little normal human curiosity about me—and you haven't. You do not ask questions or I could explain, while I cannot volunteer information without seeming to seek your pity, and that course would be repugnant to me. I have never shovelled coal, although I daresay I could manage to earn my passage as a stoker; indeed, I daresay I shall have to, if you insist on being belligerent, and if you insist I shall not oppose you. I am hoping, however, that you will not insist, but that you will, on the contrary, accept my word of honour that you shall be reimbursed two hours after you land in San Buenaventura.”

“New music to your song, my friend, but the same old words,” Webster retorted, and stepped to the stateroom door. “You're doomed to shovel coal or go ashore.”

“Listen. If I go ashore, your responsibility for my life ceases, Mr. Webster, but if the chief engineer happens to be short one coal-passer and the captain sends me down to the stokehole, your responsibility for my death begins, for I'll be put ashore publicly at San Buenaventura and two hours later I'll be facing a firing squad in the cemetery of the CatedrÂl de la Vera Cruz.”

“Gosh,” John Stuart Webster murmured dazedly, “I'm afraid I can't take a chance like that for fifty dollars.”

A knock sounded on the door and Webster opened it. A waiter stood in the entrance. “Did you ring, sir?” he queried.

“I did,” replied John Stuart Webster. “Bring up two glasses and a quart of the best wine aboard the ship.”

The waiter hastened away and Webster turned to face the little, cryptic, humorous smile that made his travelling companion so singularly boyish and attractive.

“You win, son,” Webster declared. “I'm whipped to a frazzle. Any time I'm sitting in back of a royal flush and the other fellow bluffs me out of the pot, I always buy the wine. When it arrives we shall drink to our better acquaintance. Pending its arrival, please be advised that you are welcome to my pyjamas, my cigarettes, my book, and my stateroom. You are my guest and you owe me nothing, except, perhaps, your confidence, although I do not insist upon that point. Where I come from every man kills his own snakes.”

And he held up his hand for Andrew Bowers to shake.

“Mr. Webster,” the latter declared feelingly, “I am not a lord of language, so I cannot find words to thank you. I agree with you that you are entitled to my confidence. My name is——”

“Tut, tut, my boy. Your name is Andrew Bowers, and that identifies you sufficiently for the time being. Your face is a guaranty of your character and entitles you to a nominal credit.”

“But——”

“Make me no buts. I care not who you are; perhaps what I do not know will not distress me. When I suggested that I was entitled to a measure of your confidence, I meant on a few minor points only—points on which my curiosity has been abnormally aroused.”

“Very well, my friend. Fire away.”

“Are you an American citizen?”

“No, I am a citizen of Sobrante.”

“You have assured me that you are not a crook; consequently I know you are not fleeing from the United States authorities. You had no money to pay for your passage to San Buenaventura so you schemed to make me pay your way. Hence I take it that your presence in the capital of your native country is a matter of extreme importance and that the clerk in the ticket office of the Caribbean Mail Line is a friend of yours.”

“Quite true. He knew my need.”

“You were under surveillance and could not leave New Orleans for San Buenaventura unless you left secretly. When I purchased both berths in this stateroom and the ticket clerk knew I held a firstclass ticket for a valet that was not, he decided to saw off on me a valet that was. So he gave you my name and the name of my hotel, you arranged matters with the taxi starter and the taxi driver and drove me to the steamer. Disguised in the livery of a chauffeur and carrying hand baggage you hoped to get aboard without being detected by your enemies who watched the gangplank.”

Andrew Bowers nodded.

“Do you think you succeeded?” Webster continued.

“I do not know, Mr. Webster. I hope so. If I did not—well, the instant this steamer drops anchor in the roadstead at San Buenaventura, she will be boarded and searched by the military police, I will be discovered and——” He shrugged.

“Lawn party in the cemetery, eh?” Webster suggested.

Andrew Bowers reached under his pillow and produced two heavy automatic pistols and a leathern box containing five clips of cartridges. These he exhibited in silence and then thrust them back under the pillow.

“I see, Andrew. In case you're cornered, eh? Well, I think I would prefer to die fighting myself. However, let us hope you will not have to face any such unpleasant alternative.”

“I'm not worried, Mr. Webster. Somehow, I think I ran the gauntlet safely.”

“But why did you throw your livery overboard?”

“It was of no further use to me. A chauffeur on shipboard would be most incongruous, and the sight of the livery hanging on yonder peg would be certain to arouse the curiosity of the room steward. And I'm not going to appear on deck throughout the voyage, might meet somebody who knows me.”

“But you'll have to have some clothes in which to go ashore, you amazing man.”

“Not at all. The steamer will arrive in the harbour of San Buenaventura late in the afternoon—too late to be given pratique that day. After dark I shall drop overboard and endeavour to swim ashore, and in view of that plan clothes would only prove an embarrassment. I shall land in my own country naked and penniless, but once ashore I shall quickly find shelter. I'll have to risk the sharks, of course.”

“Man-eaters?”

“The bay is swarming with them.”

“You're breaking my heart,” Webster declared sympathetically. “I suppose you're going to feign illness throughout the voyage.”

“Not the land of illness that will interfere with my appetite. I have prescribed for myself a mild attack of inflammatory rheumatism, as an excuse for remaining in bed and having my meals brought to me. This service, of course, will necessitate some slight expense in the way of tips, but I am hoping you will see your way clear to taking care of that for your guest.”

Silently Webster handed Andrew Bowers ten dollars in silver. “That ought to hold you,” he declared. “For the rest, you're up to some political skullduggery in Sobrante, and what it is and what's your real name are two subjects in which I am not interested. I am on a vacation and intend to amuse myself. If I find you as amusing as you appear at the outset of our acquaintance I shall do my best to break the tedium of your confinement in this stateroom and if I find you dull I shall leave you to your own devices. Let us talk anything but business and personalities and let it be understood that you are my valet, Andrew Bowers. That's all I know about you and that's all I care to know about you. In fact, the less I know about you the less will I have to explain in the event of your sudden demise.”

“Fair enough,” quoth Andrew Bowers. “You're a man after my own heart. I thank you.”