pass,” said Clement.

“Eh?”

“I want to——”

But Clement did not finish. The mass, as though the thing that had held its attention had suddenly released it, came round with an almost dismaying swiftness—how could such a bulk actuate with such rapidity. A large man stood in front of Clement, bowing and apologizing.... A large man who seemed genial only on the surface, whose eyes were astonishingly close together, and looked steadily, not into Clement’s eyes, but at something mystical across his shoulder. It was the large fat man again. The large fat man who seemed instinctively to mix himself up in Clement’s accidents.

“I owe you a thousand apologies,” said the big man pleasantly and without the slightest sense of right. “I did not know you were behind me.” He smiled sleekly. “It seems that I am foredoomed to stand in your way, sir.”

“That,” Clement’s mind told him at once, “that is a threat—or a warning.” And he answered in his pleasantest, young-fellow-about-town voice,[Pg 43] “Does seem a habit of mine to come stealing up behind, so to speak.”

[Pg 43]

“And that,” he told himself, “is also a threat, or warning. Only he won’t see it. I’m much too well dressed.”

“Ah, ‘behind,’ that has an ominous ring. Let us hope it is not ominous,” smiled the large man with his artificial geniality, and he stepped aside and let Clement by.

And Clement went on musing, “But, by Jove! he did see. That was another warning. I shall have to keep my eyes on that large fellow. He, too, has wits and doesn’t look it.”

He ran down the accommodation stairs towards the dining saloon deck. On that deck he received another shock. Coming through the swing doors of the saloon was the Gorgon. She came out briskly with the gait of an old traveler. She saw Clement, and she smiled. Clement thought it a smile with malice behind it. As she passed him she nodded, and said brightly, “Well, we’ve started them.”

A commonplace remark. One of the ordinary, stupid, current phrases of travelers by liner. It referred, possibly, to the fact that the ship had sailed, that the voyage had started. It might mean only that. On the other hand it mightn’t. In the light of that smile Clement reserved his judgment until he had gone into the saloon.

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