"Welcome to our party, old man," said he.
Mr. Drew drained his glass and complimented Mr. Cooke on the brand,--a
sure key to my client's heart. Whereupon he seated himself between Mr.
Drew and the captain and began a discourse on the subject of his own
cellar, on which he talked for nearly an hour. His only pauses were for
the worthy purpose of filling the detective's or the captain's glass, and
these he watched with a hospitable solicitude. The captain had the
advantage, three to one, and I made no doubt his employer bitterly
regretted not having a boatman whose principles were more strict. At the
end of the hour Captain Jay, who by nature was inclined to be taciturn
and crabbed, waxed loquacious and even jovial. He sang us the songs he
had learned in the winter lumber-camps, which Mr. Cooke never failed to
encore to the echo. My client vowed he had not spent a pleasanter
afternoon for years. He plied the captain with cigars, and explained to
him the mystery of the strings and labels; and the captain experimented
until he had broken some of the bottles.
Mr. Cooke was not a person who made any great distinction between the
three degrees, acquaintance, friendship, and intimacy. When a stranger
pleased him, he went from one to the other with such comparative ease
that a hardhearted man, and no other, could have resented his advances.
Mr. Drew was anything but a hard-hearted man, and he did not object to my
client's familiarity.
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