He hesitated, putting up his fingers to scratch his head, visibly perturbed.
“Excuse me, but I came here to put a question or two, not to answer any. If you’d told me at the first that Captain Lander was a friend of yours, I should have taken myself off straightway, like as I’m going to now.”
I stepped between him and the door.
“No you don’t. You stopped at the beginning to please yourself; now you’ll remain a little longer to please me. Before you leave this room you’ll give me satisfactory answers to one or two questions.”
“Who says I will?”
“I do. If you decline I send for a policeman. Then I think you’ll find yourself in Queer Street.”
His disturbance obviously increased.
“Now, Mr. Paine, I’ve done nothing to you to make you behave nasty to me. If I made a mistake in coming here to make a few inquiries I apologise, and no man can do more than that, so there’s no harm done to either side.”
“Was Batters your shipmate?”
“My shipmate?”
“Was he an officer or member of the crew on board The Flying Scud?”
“My gracious, no!”
“He was on The Flying Scud?”
“He might have been.”
“As passenger?”
“The Flying Scud’s a cargo boat; she don’t carry no passengers.”
“If he was neither officer, sailor, nor passenger, in what capacity was he there?”
“You ask Captain Lander, he was in command, not me. I’ve had enough of this bullyragging. You let me go before there’s trouble.”
“Gently, my man, gently! Now, come, be frank
