Except that these two men were much of a size and at a first glance rather alike in general aspect; and except that one of them, the rearmost, bore two bulging handbags while the other kept his hands muffled in a grey tweed ulster that lay across his arms, there was nothing about them or either of them to distinguish them from any other belated pair of men in that jostling procession of the flurried and the hurried. Oh, yes, one of them had a moustache and the other had none. Indian file they went up the gangway and past the second officer, who stood at the head of it; and still tandem they pushed and were pushed along through the jam upon the deck. The second man, the one who bore the handbags, gave them over to a steward who had jumped forward when he saw them coming. He hesitated then, looking about him. "Come on, it's all right," said the first man. "How about the tickets? Don't we have to show them first?" inquired the other. "No, not now," said his companion. "We can go direct to our stateroom." The same speaker addressed the steward: "D-forty," he said briskly. "Quite right, sir," said the steward. "D-forty. Right this way, sir; if you please, sir." With the dexterity born of long practice the steward, burdened though he was, bored a path for himself and them through the crowd. He led them from the deck, across a corner of a big cabin that was like a hotel lobby, and down flights of broad stairs from B-deck to C and from C-deck to D, and thence aft along a narrow companionway until he came to a cross hall where another steward stood. "Two gentlemen for D-forty," said their guide. Surrendering the handbags to this other functionary, he touched his cap and vanished into thin air, magically, after the custom of ancient Arabian genii and modern British steamship servants. "'Ere you are, sirs," said the second steward. He opened the door of a stateroom and stood aside to let them in. Following in behind them he deposited the handbags in mathematical alignment upon the floor and spoke a warning: "We'll be leavin' in a minute or two now, but it's just as well, sir, to keep your stateroom door locked until we're off--thieves are about sometimes in port, you know, sir. Was there anything else, sir?" He addressed them in the singular, but considered them, so to speak, in the plural. "I'm the bedroom steward, sir," he added in final explanation. The passenger who had asked concerning the tickets looked about him curiously, as though the interior arrangement of a steamship stateroom was to him strange. "So you're the bedroom steward," he said. "What's your name?" "Lawrence, sir." "Lawrence what?" "I beg your pardon, sir?" said the steward, looking puzzled.