our bitter chagrin that, after towing that relic of a bygone age all those miles at a cost of fuel and time, we had lost her almost at the mouth of the Thames. But regret was useless. The Seahorse, with its freight of crumbling skeletons, had gone down again, and would certainly never reappear. So Job Seal drew his oilskin closer around him, lamented his infernal luck, and, recollecting the thousand odd pieces of gold in his cabin, turned and gave an order to the helmsman which caused the bows of the Thrush to run nearer towards the dark line of England’s cliffs between Folkestone and Dover. Seahorse Thrush Lights white and green were beginning to show in the distance, those of other ships passing up and down Channel, and as I stood by his side in my dripping oilskins I congratulated myself that if we weathered the squall I should be safely back in London in a very few hours, with as strange a story to tell as any man had related. CHAPTER VI AN EXPERT OPINION AN EXPERT OPINION AN EXPERT OPINION On the night following the regrettable disaster to the Seahorse I was back again in the cheap and rather comfortable rooms I had occupied for a couple of years or so in Keppel Street, Chelsea. It is a thoroughfare in which nearly every house exhibits the enticing legend, “Apartments to Let,” mostly in permanent, neatly-framed signs of black and gold. On Seahorse Mrs. Richardson, my landlady, was “full” and had been for a year past, so No. 83, where I had diggings, was a quiet, eminently respectable house, a fitting, residence for a man of my serious calling. When, however, I returned with the Mysterious Man in a well-worn seaman’s suit, unkempt head, and his sword in hand instead of a cane, Mrs. Richardson looked askance at me. I explained that my friend had come to live with me for a few weeks, and that I should want an extra room; when she, good soul, looked him up and down, noticed the big cracks in his sea-boots and the slit in the sleeve of his pea-jacket, and rather reluctantly replied that she would turn one of the servants out and prepare the room for my friend.
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