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Updated: May 13, 2025
Outwardly at least he met them with complete indifference. The voice of one of my countrymen, a noisy pest named Smedburg, was raised in excited accusation. "When the ship's surgeon first met you," he cried, "you called yourself Lord Ridley." "I'll call myself anything I jolly well like," returned Talbot. "If I choose to dodge reporters, that's my pidgin.
It was a silly ass thing to do," protested the purser. "Everybody knows Meyer hasn't a brother, and if he hadn't made that break he might have got away with the other one. But now this Smedburg is going to wireless ahead to Mr. Meyer and to the police." "Has he no other way of spending his money?" I asked. "He's a confounded nuisance!" growled the purser.
Below us on the dock, protected by two obvious members of the strong-arm squad, the great banker, philanthropist, and Hebrew, Adolph Meyer, was waiting. We were so close that I could read his face. It was stern, set; the face of a man intent upon his duty, unrelenting. Without question, of a bad business Mr. Smedburg had made the worst. I turned to speak to Talbot and found him gone.
Looking over my notes, I said: "You seem to have made every charge except murder." "How'd I come to leave that out?" Schnitzel answered flippantly. "What about Coleman, the foreman at Bahia, and that German contractor, Ebhardt, and old Smedburg? They talked too much, and they died of yellow-fever, maybe, and maybe what happened to them was they ate knockout drops in their soup."
I asked what the excited Smedburg had meant by telling Talbot not to call himself Meyer. "They accused him of travelling under a false name," explained the purser, "and he told 'em he did it to dodge the ship's news reporters. Then he said he really was a brother of Adolph Meyer, the banker; but it seems Smedburg is a friend of Meyer's, and he called him hard!
Outwardly at least he met them with complete indifference. The voice of one of my countrymen, a noisy pest named Smedburg, was raised in excited accusation. "When the ship's surgeon first met you," he cried, "you called yourself Lord Ridley." "I'll call myself anything I jolly well like," returned Talbot. "If I choose to dodge reporters, that's my pidgin.
I asked what the excited Smedburg had meant by telling Talbot not to call himself Meyer. "They accused him of travelling under a false name," explained the purser, "and he told 'em he did it to dodge the ship's news reporters. Then he said he really was a brother of Adolph Meyer, the banker; but it seems Smedburg is a friend of Meyer's, and he called him hard!
I don't have to give my name to every meddling busybody that " "You'll give it to the police, all right," chortled Mr. Smedburg. In the confident, bullying tones of the man who knows the crowd is with him, he shouted: "And in the meantime you'll keep out of this smoking-room!" The chorus of assent was unanimous. It could not be disregarded.
We had long passed quarantine and a convoy of tugs were butting us into the dock. "What are you going to do?" I asked. "Doesn't depend on me," he said. "Depends on Smedburg. He's a busy little body!" The boy wanted me to think him unconcerned, but beneath the flippancy I saw the nerves jerking. Then quite simply he began to tell me.
As though furnishing a description for the police, he began to enumerate: "Hair, dark and curly; eyes, poppy; lips, full; nose, Roman or Hebraic, according to taste. Do you see?" He shrugged his shoulders. "But it didn't work," he concluded. "I picked the wrong Jew." His face grew serious. "Do you suppose that Smedburg person has wirelessed that banker?"
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