was not quite so with the Gorgon. She seemed overwhelmed by the knowledge that it was her stupidity in the matter of her watch and the wrong cloakroom ticket that had nearly caused Clement to miss the train and the boat. Her apologies were[Pg 20] profuse, and she endeavored to make an amende by correcting, rather late in the day, the time on her watch.

[Pg 20]

The rest of the journey was uneventful (and Clement was now seeing things in a more acute light)—unless one could see something grave in the tiny incident on the landing stage.

The whole of Clement’s baggage had gone astray.

Now that he looked at it, Clement began to see the strangeness of the happening. He had not been careless. He had instructed a porter fully before returning to help the ladies. He had even chuckled at his own efficiency when, on looking back, he saw the big man who had all but prevented his gaining the boat train, standing helpless near his own busy porter.

Nevertheless twenty minutes later Nicholson, his cabin steward, told him he could not find his luggage anywhere. Nicholson was not a man to make mistakes and if he said luggage could not be found, it could not be found. Angry as he was at the mishap Clement wasted no time. He had to have that luggage. Naturally, he could not possibly sail without a rag to his name.

The stuff that was in Clement Seadon came out in the way he handled this contretemps. He went straight to the Canadian Pacific shipping agent, and put the problem up to him. The man belonged to a service that suffers attractively from[Pg 21] an ideal of complete efficiency. The agent began to hustle.

[Pg 21]

He was, of course, helped by Clement. Clement had the type of mind that pays attention to a porter’s registration number when the porter holds up the metal plate upon which it is stamped to the hirer’s gaze. Clement remembered and repeated the number, and left the matter in the hands of the agent. In half an hour his luggage was on board the Empress.

A foreman had named the porter from the number; a dock policeman had stated that he had seen this man trundling the barrow-load of luggage away from the shed in the direction of the Cunard dock; the luggage was run to earth. The porter, on being taxed with his strange behavior, offered a wild and absurd story of having been told that Mr. Seadon had suddenly received orders to go by 

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