It lacked half an hour of nine o'clock as we drove up before the Loomis
House, where I alighted, and ran up to my rooms. I had scarcely more
than made a hasty toilet, when Arthur came in. After telling me who had,
during my absence, called to see me, and after attending to some
trifling wants which I expressed, he shuffled his feet in a style that I
had learned to recognize as indicating a desire to say something not
within the compass of our purely business relationship--a liberty which
the precedents of our first two days of acquaintanceship in connection
with later events had solidified into a vested right.
"Well, Arthur?" I said.
"I read the whole book, sir--there it is, on the table. That book just
did get me. But what did become of Pym and Peters? And is it true you've
found that old soc-doligin' pirate?"