Schomberg, after looking at the card, admitted that it was, and laid it down on the table.
'I can make you take any card I like nine times out of ten,' exulted the secretary, with a strange curl of his lips and a green flicker in his raised eyes.
Schomberg looked down at him dumbly. For a few seconds neither of them stirred; then Ricardo lowered his glance, and, opening his fingers, let the whole pack fall on the table. Schomberg sat down. He sat down because of the faintness in his legs, and for no other reason. His mouth was dry. Having sat down, he felt that he must speak. He squared his shoulders in parade style.
'You are pretty good at that sort of thing,' he said.
'Practice makes perfect,' replied the secretary.
His precarious amiability made it impossible for Schomberg to get away. Thus, from his very timidity, the hotel-keeper found himself engaged in a conversation the thought of which filled him with apprehension. It must be said, in justice to Schomberg, that he concealed his funk very creditably. The habit of throwing out his chest and speaking in a severe voice stood him in good stead. With him, too, practice made perfect; and he would probably have kept it up to the end, to the very last moment, to the ultimate instant of breaking strain which would leave him grovelling on the floor. To add to his secret trouble, he was at a loss what to say. He found nothing else but the remark:
'I suppose you are fond of cards.'
'What would you expect?' asked Ricardo in a simple, philosophical tone. 'It is likely I should not be?' Then, with sudden fire: 'Fond of cards? Ay, passionately!'
The effect of this outburst was augmented by the quiet lowering of the eyelids, by a reserved pause as though this had been a confession of another kind of love. Schomberg cudgelled his brains for a new topic, but he could not find one. His usual scandalous gossip would not serve this turn. That desperado did not know anyone anywhere within a thousand miles. Schomberg was almost compelled to keep to the subject.
'I suppose you've always been so—from your early youth.'
Ricardo's eyes remained cast down. His fingers toyed absently with the pack on the table.
'I don't know that it was so early. I first got in the way of it playing for tobacco—in forecastles of ships, you know—common sailor games. We used to spend whole watches below at it, round a chest, under a slush lamp. We would hardly spare the time to get a bite of salt horse—neither eat nor sleep. We could hardly stand when the watches were mustered on deck. Talk of gambling!' He dropped the reminiscent tone to add the information, 'I was bred to the sea from a boy, you know.'
Schomberg had fallen into a reverie, but without losing the sense of impending calamity. The next words he heard were:
'I got on all right at sea, too. Worked up to be mate. I was mate of a schooner—a yacht, you might call her—a special good berth too, in the Gulf of Mexico, a soft job that you don't run across more than once in a lifetime. Yes, I was mate of her when I left the sea to follow him.'
Ricardo tossed up his chin to indicate the room above; from which Schomberg, his wits painfully aroused by this reminder of Mr. Jones's existence, concluded that the latter had withdrawn into his bedroom. Ricardo, observing him from under lowered eyelids, went on:
'It so happened that we were shipmates.'
'Mr Jones, you mean? Is he a sailor too?'
Ricardo raised his eyelids at that.
'He's no more Mr. Jones than you are,' he said with obvious pride. 'He a sailor! That just shows your ignorance. But there! A foreigner can't be expected to know any better. I am an Englishman, and I know a gentleman at sight. I should know one drunk, in the gutter, in jail, under the gallows. There's a something—it isn't exactly the appearance, it's a—no use me trying to tell you. You ain't an Englishman, and if you were, you wouldn't need to be told.'
An unsuspected stream of loquacity had broken its dam somewhere deep within the man, had diluted his fiery blood and softened his pitiless fibre. Schomberg experienced mingled relief and apprehension, as if suddenly an enormous savage cat had begun to wind itself about his legs in inexplicable friendliness. No prudent man under such circumstances would dare to stir. Schomberg didn't stir. Ricardo assumed an easy attitude, with an elbow on the table. Schomberg squared his shoulders afresh.
'I was employed, in that there yacht—schooner, whatever you call it—by ten gentlemen at once. That surprises you, eh? Yes, yes, ten. Leastwise there were nine of them gents good enough in their way, and one downright gentleman, and that was . . .'
Ricardo gave another upward jerk of his chin as much as to say: He! The only one.
'And no mistake,' he went on. 'I spotted him from the first day. How? Why? Ay, you may ask. Hadn't seen that many gentlemen in my life. Well, somehow I did. If you were an Englishman, you would—'
'What was your yacht?' Schomberg interrupted as impatiently as he dared; for this harping on nationality jarred on his already tried nerves. 'What was the game?'
'You have a headpiece on you! Game! 'Xactly. That's what it was—the sort of silliness gentlemen will get up among themselves to play at adventure. A treasure-hunting expedition. Each of them put down so much money, you understand, to buy the schooner. Their agent in the city engaged me and the skipper. The greatest secrecy and all that. I reckon he had a twinkle in his eye all the time—and no mistake. But that wasn't our business. Let them bust their money as they like. The pity of it was that so little of it came our way. Just fair pay and no more. And damn any pay, much or little, anyhow—that's what I say!'
He blinked his eyes greenishly in the dim light. The heat seemed to have stilled everything in the world but his voice. He swore at large, abundantly, in snarling undertones, it was impossible to say why, then calmed down as inexplicably, and went on, as a sailor yarns.
'At first there were only nine of them adventurous sparks, then, just a day or two before the sailing date, he turned up. Heard of it somehow, somewhere—I would say from some woman, if I didn't know him as I do. He would give any woman a ten-mile berth. He can't stand them. Or maybe in a flash bar. Or maybe in one of them grand clubs in Pall Mall. Anyway, the agent netted him in all right—cash down, and only about four and twenty hours for
