t
Gorman that I thought it well to break my rule. I should, under the
circumstances, have considered myself justified in breaking a temperance
pledge, on the principle, once explained to me by an archdeacon, that
charity is above rubrics. I gave my vote for whisky and soda as the
more thorough-going drink of the two. A cocktail is seldom more than a
mouthful. Gorman gave the order.

"Don't you think," he said, "that it would be rather a good plan for us
to sit together at meals? I'll make arrangements with the steward and
have a table reserved for us in the upper saloon. I can manage it all
right. I often cross on this boat and everybody knows me."

Again he looked at me and again smiled in his fascinating childlike way.

"I'm A-1 at ordering meals," he said, "and it really; does make a
difference on these ships if you know how to get the best that's going."

That was the one attempt he made to justify himself in forcing his
company on me. But it was not the hope of better dinners, though I like
good dinners, which led me to agree to his proposal. I was captivated by
his smile. Besides, I had not, so far as I knew, a single acquaintance
among the passengers. I should be better off with Gorman as messmate
than set down beside some chance stranger who might smile in a
disagreeable way, or perhaps not smile at all.

"Very well," I said. "You arrange it."

"It would be pleasant," he said, "if we could get hold of a couple of
other interesting people, and make four at our table."

I do not deny that Gorman is an interesting person, but I did not see
what right he had to put me in that select class. I could only hope
that the other interesting people would regard me as he did. He pulled a
passenger list out of his pocket and turned over the pages.

"What about the Aschers?" he said.

He handed the list to me. There was a pencil mark opposite the name of
Mr. Carl Ascher. Immediately below it was "Mrs. Ascher and maid."

"I don't know him," I said. "Who is he? Has he done anything
particular?"

"Heavens above!" said Gorman. "Who is Ascher! But perhaps you don't
recognise him apart from the rest of the firm. Ever heard of Ascher,
Stutz & Co.?"

I recognised the name then. Ascher is a banker, one of those
international financiers who manage, chiefly from London offices, a
complicated kind of business which no ordinary man understands anything
about, a kind of foreign business which for some reason very few
Englishm