Why ?' The man mopped a perspiring face.
'I was afraid I had missed you.

I should have gone out on the tender, only I was late.

Can you spare me a moment?
You have time.' 'Certainly,' answered Drake, with a look of inquiry.
The man in the knickerbockers led the way along the quay until he came to an angle between an unused derrick and a wall.
'We shall not be disturbed here,' he said, and he drew an oblong note-book and a cedar-wood pencil from his pocket.
'I begin to understand,' said Drake, with a laugh.
'You can have no objection ?' There was the suavity of the dentist who holds the forceps behind his back in the tone of the speaker's voice.
'On the contrary, a little notoriety will be helpful to me too.' That word 'too' jarred on the reporter, suggesting a flippancy which he felt to be entirely out of place.

The feeling, however, was quickly swallowed up in the satisfaction which he experienced at obtaining so easily a result which had threatened the need of diplomacy.
'_O si sic omnes!_' he exclaimed, and made a note of the quotation upon the top of the open leaf.
'Surely the quotation is rather hackneyed to begin with ?' suggested Drake with a perfectly serious inquisitiveness.

The reporter looked at him suspiciously.
'We have to consider our readers,' he replied with some asperity.
'By the way, what paper do you represent ?' The reporter hesitated a little.
'The _Evening Meteor_,' he admitted reluctantly, keeping a watchful eye upon his questioner.