It amused me to talk to him like this. He reflected audibly that
he guessed story-writers were out after money like the rest of the
world which had to live by its wits: and that it was extraordinary
how far people who were out after money would go. . . Some of them.

Then he made a sally against sea life. Silly sort of life, he
called it. No opportunities, no experience, no variety, nothing.
Some fine men came out of it--he admitted--but no more chance in
the world if put to it than fly. Kids. So Captain Harry Dunbar.
Good sailor. Great name as a skipper. Big man; short side-
whiskers going grey, fine face, loud voice. A good fellow, but no
more up to people's tricks than a baby.

"That's the captain of the Sagamore you're talking about," I said,
confidently.

After a low, scornful "Of course" he seemed now to hold on the wall
with his fixed stare the vision of that city office, "at the back
of Cannon Street Station," while he growled and mouthed a
fragmentary description, jerking his chin up now and then, as if
angry.

It was, according to his account, a modest place of business, not
shady in any sense, but out of the way, in a small street now
rebuilt from end to end. "Seven doors from the Cheshire Cat public
house under the railway bridge. I used to take my lunch there when
my business called me to the city. Cloete would come in to have
his chop and make the girl laugh. No need to talk much, either,
for that. Nothing but the way he would twinkle his spectacles on
you and give a twitch of his thick mouth was enough to start you