My companions exchanged greetings with the officer in charge of the open port, and then we hurried forward along a narrow corridor, smelling of rubber and heated metal, then up stair after stair, until at last we came to the main companionway. Here the two men left us, to seek certain distinguished passengers, I suppose, whose views upon the questions of the day were (presumably) anxiously awaited by an expectant public. Godfrey stopped in front of the purser's office, and passed his card through the little window to the man inside the cage. "I should like to see M. Pigot, of the Paris _Service du Sûreté_" he said. "Perhaps you will be so kind as to have a steward take my card to him?" "That is unnecessary, sir," replied the purser, courteously. "That is M. Pigot yonder--the gentleman with the white hair, with his back to us. You will have to wait for a moment, however; the gentleman speaking with him is from the French consulate, and has but this moment come aboard." I could not see Inspector Pigot's face, but I could see that he held himself very erect, in a manner bespeaking military training. The messenger from the legation was a youngish man, with waxed moustache and wearing an eyeglass. He was greeting M. Pigot at the moment, and, after a word or two, produced from an inside pocket an official-looking envelope, tied with red tape and secured with an immense red seal. M. Pigot looked at it an instant, while his companion added a sentence in his ear; then, with a nod of assent, the detective turned down one of the passage-ways, the other man at his heels. "Official business, no doubt," commented the purser, who had also been watching this little scene. "M. Pigot is one of the best of our officers, and you will find it a pleasure to talk with him. He will no doubt soon be disengaged." "Yes, but meanwhile my esteemed contemporaries will arrive," said Godfrey, with a grimace. "They are on my heels--here they are now!" In fact, for the next twenty minutes, reporters from the other papers kept arriving, till there was quite a crowd before the purser's office. And from nearly every paper a special man had been detailed to interview M. Pigot. Evidently all the papers were alive to the importance of the subject. There was some good-natured chaffing, and then one of the stewards was bribed to carry the cards of the assembled multitude to M. Pigot's stateroom, with the request for an audience. The steward went away laughing, and came back presently to say that M. Pigot would be pleased to see us in a few minutes. But when five minutes more passed and he did not appear, impatience broke out anew. The lords of the press were not accustomed to being kept waiting. "I move we storm his castle," suggested the _World_ man. And just then, M. Pigot himself stepped out into the companionway. In an instant he was surrounded.