He ambled over toward me, grinning sheepishly.
"Why the look of horror?" he asked, sitting down across the table from me.
"Is it really you?" I gasped, taking a clean seat, beyond the drip of my overturned coffee.
"Certainly," he replied. "Who did you think it was?"
"But you shipped on the Mary B, a week ago," I objected, unconvinced.
"Yes, and no," said he. "I'll tell you. Just as the Mary B was about to sail, I see all the rats leaving her. Swarming up the hawsers onto the dock. Now I'm not superstitious; but I know, as everyone else knows, that when the rats all leave a ship just before she starts on a voyage, it's a sure sign she's going to be lost on that trip. So I goes to the captain, and tells him I'm quitting.
"'What for?' says he with a grin. 'Seen the rats leaving?'
"I admitted as much. Then he laughed and laughed.
"'I fooled the rats,' says he, 'and the rats fooled you. Turn about is fair play,' says he, still laughing.
"'What do you mean?' says I.
"Then he takes a circular from his pocket, and shows it to me. It's all about how some German scientist made an investigation to find out just why rats always leave sinking ships. And finally, after years of study, this German fellow discovered that doomed ships always have a peculiar smell about them, sort of musty, too faint for a human to notice, but particularly annoying to varmints. So the reason rats will leave a sinking ship, is not because they are prophets or anything, but merely because they can't stand her smell. A sinking ship is a stinking ship, it says.
Well, anyhow, this German chemist was able to make up exactly the same smell out of coal-tar, or something-those Germans are great hands at making colors and smells-and so he went into the business of selling it, at five dollars a package, to rid houses and ships of rats. It's called 'Rexmel', R-E-X-M-E-L-get that-'Rexmel,' 'wreck-smell,' 'cause it smells like a wreck.
"The Captain of the Mary B had bought a package of Rexmel, and sprinkled it in the hold; and that was why the rats were all leaving.
"But I dunno. Maybe I am superstitious, but still I wouldn't ship on a craft that the rats had all left. So the Mary B sailed away, with the captain and crew all laughing at me. I feel kind o' foolish now, come to think of it."
He paused, and looked at me sheepishly across the table.
"Bill," said I levelly, "have you seen the afternoon's papers?"
"No," he replied. "What's up?"
"Nothing much," said I casually. "Merely that the Mary B is reported lost with all hands aboard."
For a moment Bill Fiske stared at me stunned. Then he whistled softly. Then a look of diabolical glee flooded his face.
"All of which goes to prove," he announced, "that you can't fool a rat!"
It was now my turn to laugh.
"Bill," I said, "perhaps rats can be fooled, after all. I was only stringing you about the shipwreck. What the newspaper really says is that the Mary B is safe in port in England."
All of which proves nothing!