Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/189

 Two hundred pounds in three days, on riffraff he did not know, hangers-on at American bars, hotel gamblers, sailors' dives. God! hadn't he one shred of dignity left? Always the latest bout carried him into lower company, fouler haunts. All his good resolutions gone to pot!

The supreme agony came when he stooped over his shoes; and then he knew that this carouse was at an end. He noticed, as the second shoe came off, that the hem of the trousers leg was rolled up. He unrolled it, and a slip of white paper fluttered to the floor. He recovered it. It was a hundred-pound note. He laughed weakly. For the first time in his life, then, he had shown caution in his cups!

He was pulling on his bath-robe when he saw the torn envelope. His first impression was that he had discovered more money, something that had fallen out of his pocket the night before. It was merely William's contribution: "Keep your cabin until you sober up.—Grogan."

Grogan? Camden slowly made a ball of the note and threw it out the port. Grogan?—so the Irishman had piloted him down to the cabin? Camden sat down on the edge of his bunk and stared at the carpet. In this position the steward found him.

"Your bath is ready, sir."

"Thank God for that!"

William did not see Camden again until the Ajax dropped anchor in the basin at Piraeus. In Athens the man turned up perfectly normal except