a
crab for lunch. A very big crab."

Jaffery's face was transfigured into a vast, hairy smile. Barbara could
dress crab like no one else in the world. She herself disliked the taste
of crab. I, a carefully trained gastronomist, adored it, but a Puckish
digestion forbade my consuming one single shred of the ambrosial
preparation. Doria would pass it by through sheer unhappiness. And it
was not fit food for Susan's tender years. Old Jaff knew this. One
gigantic crab-shell filled with Barbara's juicy witchery and flanked by
cool pink, meaty claws would be there for his own individual
delectation. Several times before had he taken the dish, with a "One
man, one crab. Ho! ho! ho!" and had left nothing but clean shells.

"I'm going to dress this crab," said Barbara, "for the sake of the
servants. But if you find I've put poison in it, don't blame me."

She left us, her little head indignantly in the air. Jaffery laughed,
sank into a chair and tugged at his pipe.

"I wish Doria could be persuaded to read the thing," said he.

"Why?" I asked looking up from the proofs.

"It's not quite up to the standard of 'The Diamond Gate.'"

"I shouldn't suppose it was," said I drily.

"Wittekind's delighted anyhow. It's a different _genre_; but he says
that's all the better."

Susan emerged from my study door on to the terrace.

"My good fellow," said I, "yonder is the daughter of the house,
evidently at a loose end. Go and entertain her. I'm going to read this
wonderful novel and don't want to be disturbed till lunch."

The good-humoured giant lumbered away, and Susan finding herself in
undisputed possession took him off to remote recesses of the kitchen
garden, far from casual intruders. Meanwhile I went on reading, very
much puzzled. Naturally the style was not that of "The Diamond Gate,"
which was the style of Tom Castleton and not of Adrian Boldero. But was
what I read the style of Adrian Boldero? This vivid, virile opening?
This scene of the two derelicts who hated one another, fortuitously
meeting on the old tramp steamer? This cunning, evocation of smells,
jute, bilge water, the warm oils of the engine room? This expert
knowledge so carelessly displayed of the various parts of a ship? How
had Adrian, man of luxury, who had never been on a tramp steamer in his
life, gained the knowledge? The people too were lustily drawn. They had
a flavour of the sea and the breeziness of wide spaces; a deep-lunged
folk. So that I shou