“That’s all for the present,” said Harman, rising up. “You’ll be there?”
“Yes, I’ll be there,” said Blood, “though I’m blest if I can see your meaning.”
“You will soon,” replied the other, and, paying the score, off he went.
He turned from the wharves up an alley, and then into a fairly respectable street of small houses. Pausing before one of these, he knocked at the door, which was opened almost immediately by a big, blue-eyed, sun-burned, good-natured-looking man some thirty years of age and attired as to the upper part of him in a blue woollen jersey.
This was Captain Mike, of the Fish Patrol.
“Billy Harman!” said Captain Mike. “Come in.”
“No time,” said Harman. “I’ve just called to say a word. I wants you to do me a favour.”
“And what’s the favour?” asked the Captain.
“Well, I should think I did know the swab. Why, he’s in with all the Greeks, and there’s not a dog’s trick played in the bay he hasn’t his thumb in. Him and his old shark boat. Whatcher want me to do with him?”
“Nothin’,” replied Harman, “and maybe a lot. I want you just to drop into the Fore and Aft and sit and smoke your pipe at haff past three. Then when I give you the wink you’ll pretend to fall asleep. I just wants you as a witness.”
Had you been watching the two men from a distance, you might have fancied that there was a great joke between them from the laughter of Captain Mike and the way in which Harman was slapping his thigh. Then the door closed, and Harman went off, steering north through a maze of streets till he reached his lodgings.
Here he packed a few things in a bundle and had an interview with his landlady, a motherly woman whose income was derived from a washtub and two furnished bedrooms.
Among the other belongings which he took with him was a box of quinine tabloids. These he placed in the pocket of his coat, and, with the bundle under his arm, departed.
It was five minutes past three when he entered the dirty doggery misnamed the Fore and Aft, and there before the bar behind which Bone was serving drinks stood Ginnell.
Pat Ginnell, to give him his full name, was an Irishman of the sure-fwhat type, who might have been a bricklayer but for his decent clothes and sea air and the big blue anchor tattooed on the back of his left hand. There was no one else in the bar.