her brother, Fred, who had an engineering shop for small repairs by
the water side. Suddenly Falk takes to going up to their bungalow after
dinner, and sitting for hours in the verandah saying nothing. The poor
girl couldn't tell for the life of her what to do with such a man, so
she would keep on playing the piano and singing to him evening after
evening till she was ready to drop. And it wasn't as if she had been
a strong young woman either. She was thirty, and the climate had been
playing the deuce with her. Then--don't you know--Fred had to sit up with
them for propriety, and during whole weeks on end never got a single
chance to get to bed before midnight. That was not pleasant for a tired
man--was it? And besides Fred had worries then because his shop didn't
pay and he was dropping money fast. He just longed to get away from here
and try his luck somewhere else, but for the sake of his sister he hung
on and on till he ran himself into debt over his ears--I can tell you.
I, myself, could show a handful of his chits for meals and drinks in
my drawer. I could never find out tho' where he found all the money at
last. Can't be but he must have got something out of that brother of
his, a coal merchant in Port Said. Anyhow he paid everybody before he
left, but the girl nearly broke her heart. Disappointment, of course,
and at her age, don't you know. . . . Mrs. Schomberg here was very
friendly with her, and she could tell you. Awful despair. Fainting
fits. It was a scandal. A notorious scandal. To that extent that old Mr.
Siegers--not your present charterer, but Mr. Siegers the father, the old
gentleman who retired from business on a fortune and got buried at sea
going home, _he_ had to interview Falk in his private office. He was a man
who could speak like a Dutch Uncle, and, besides, Messrs. Siegers had
been helping Falk with a good bit of money from the start. In fact you
may say they made him as far as that goes. It so happened that just at
the time he turned up here, their firm was chartering a lot of sailing
ships every year, and it suited their business that there should be good