“‘I wouldn’t deny it,’ I answered. ‘What, if I may ask, has brought you here?’ “‘Oh, we’ve had a small breakdown, and the skipper came in here to repair it. We’ve just come ashore to have a look round.’ “I glanced through the window, and noticed for the first time that a steam yacht was lying off the shore. She was a real beauty—looked about a thousand tons—and I gave a sigh of envy. “‘You’re not in want of a barman, by any chance, are you?’ I said. ‘If so, I’ll swim out and chance the sharks.’ “‘’Fraid we’ve got everything in that line,’ he answered. ‘But select the least deadly of your poisons, and join us.’ “And it was as I was pulling down the gin and vermouth that Jimmy Mainwaring came into the bar. He got about half-way across the floor, and then he stopped dead in his tracks. And I guess during the next two seconds you could have heard a pin drop. “‘So this is where you’ve hidden yourself,’ said the smaller of the two men—the one who had done most of the talking. ‘I don’t think we’ll trouble you for those drinks, barman.’ “Without another word he walked out of the place—and after a moment or two the other man started to follow him. He hesitated as he got abreast of Jimmy, and then for the first time Mainwaring spoke: “‘Is she here?’ “‘Yes,’ answered the other. ‘On board the yacht. There’s a whole party of us.’ “And with that he stepped into the street and joined his pal. With a perfectly inscrutable look on his face Jimmy watched them as they walked through the glaring sun and got into the small motor-boat that was waiting alongside the quay. Then he came up to the bar. “‘An artistic touch, doubtless, on the part of Fate,’ he remarked, quietly. ‘But a little unnecessary.’ “And I guess I metaphorically took off my hat to him at that moment. What he’d done, why he was there, I neither knew nor cared; all that mattered to me was the way he took that last rotten twist of the surgeon’s knife. Not by the quiver of an eyelid would you have known that anything unusual had happened: he drank his three double-gins at exactly the same rate as every other morning. And then he too swung out of the bar, and went back to his office in McAndrew’s warehouse, leaving me to lie down on my bed and sweat under the mosquito curtains, while I wondered at the inscrutable working out of things. Was it blind, the Fate that moved the pieces; or was there some definite pattern beyond our ken? At the moment it seemed pretty blind and senseless; later on—well, you’ll be able to form your own opinion.