"'Take a seat, Captain. Take a seat, Mister Chief. Mr. Grünbaum is engaged at the moment. I take the opportunity of mentioning the little matter we discussed yesterday, Captain. I have no doubt you will take shares in our company.' "Jack looked at me, and I regarded Monsieur Nikitos with fresh interest. He was a most mysterious creature to look at, now we were close to him. He was quite young, not more than twenty-five, and the black fuzz on his face gave him a singularly dirty appearance. As he sat in his swivel chair with the tails of his dusty frock coat draped over the arms, tapping his large white teeth with his pen and brushing his black hair from his blotchy forehead, he suddenly gave me the impression of a poet trying to think of a rhyme. "'We have decided,' I said, and he dropped his hands and inclined his ear, 'to think it over.' He slumped back in his chair, smiled, and shook his head. Then he straightened up and reaching for a ruler looked critically at it. "'We cannot wait. In affairs of finance one must think quickly, then act--so!' He snapped his thumb and finger. 'If not, the chance is gone. Now I show you. To-day, Captain Macedoine resigns. Yes! To-morrow, _I_ resign. Like that. To-morrow also, Monsieur Spilliazeza, our invaluable manager of works, resigns! To-night, the _Osmanli_ calls for the mails. We go by the _Osmanli_, our vessel, to Saloniki. We arrive. We take action at once.' He waved his arms. 'Action! Next week it will be too late. Option taken up, work commenced, contracts awarded, organization complete. It is all here.' He tapped his forehead. 'I have it complete, in inauguration, here.' And he regarded us with a gaze of rapt abstraction in his brilliant black eyes. "I don't mind telling you that the chief impression this performance made upon me was that he was a lunatic. Jack was staring solemnly at him. I imagine he began to have doubts of the wisdom of entrusting this creature with real money. And then a bell tinkled, one of a pair of high dark folding doors opened, and I had a glimpse of a great room where an enormously fat man sat in the curve of a vast horseshoe shaped desk. It was only a momentary view, you understand, of the diffused light shed by three tall windows upon a chamber of unusual size. I had an impression of glancing into a museum, a glimpse of a statue, very white and tall with an arm broken off short, gleaming glass cases of small things that shone like opals and aquamarines, and great bunches of coral like petrified foam. I saw all this as the door stood for a moment, the fezzed head of a little old gentleman looking out and mumbling the word '_Kapitan!_' We stood up. Jack made a movement to go in. Monsieur Nikitos came between us and regarded us as though we were conspirators.