"Did you deliver your letter?" he asked, casually, but I saw in an instant that he had been paving the conversational way all along for that very question.
"What letter?" I asked, although I knew the one he meant.
He looked at me craftily, with what I took for a bit of surprise that I did not know the letter he referred to, or that he expected me to deceive him.
"Perhaps I shouldn"t mention it, for it may recall our little unpleasantness this morning," he sent back. "Perhaps it was my fault, my dear sir, in speaking to you when I picked it up, and I certainly want to a.s.sure you that I was not put out by your disinclination to begin an acquaintance with a stranger."
"Haven"t the slightest idea of what you are talking about," I said lightly, and professing ignorance in my puzzled expression.
"The letter you dropped in the bus." He fairly hurled the sentence at me, although his voice was low and he was pretending to have trouble with the saltcellar.
"Oh! To be sure, the letter I dropped in the bus, and which you so kindly picked up for me. I have an idea that I was rather gruff at the time, and not at all inclined to appreciate the service you performed. I might have lost it entirely but for you, so I"ll thank you now, with an apology."
"Don"t mention it--don"t mention it, I a.s.sure you. I trust you delivered it safely."
He had given me the key to the mystery. The letter for the Russian consul was the cause of Meeker"s attentions to me! And, instead of being a newspaper correspondent, to Meeker I was a Russian agent, probably a spy!
It was all I could do to restrain myself from laughing in his face.
"Delivered it safely," I repeated inanely. "It was only an errand for a friend of mine, and I left it at the--"
He waited for me to finish the sentence. He forgot himself and failed to conceal his a.s.sumed nonchalance regarding the letter, for, as I cut off what I was saying, he held his fork poised over his lamb, so intent was he on learning where I had delivered the letter for the Russian consul.
I seized a gla.s.s of water and struggled with an imaginary obstruction in my throat, and mentally cursing my stupidity in telling my friend"s private business to a stranger who had already betrayed an inordinate interest in the letter.
"Where did you leave it?" purred Meeker.
"At the post-office," I finished, amazed at his boldness in pursuing the destination of the letter, and having no qualms of conscience about telling him a falsehood. I did not regard it as any of his affair where I had delivered the letter, and did not intend to inform him I had left the bulky envelope at the Hong-Kong-Shanghai Bank.
The image of the bank-front which crossed my mind gave me another clue to Meeker"s solicitude about me and the letter. I remembered seeing a sign over the teller"s window, which stated that the bank was a branch of a Russian financial house. What could be more natural for a Russian spy than to cash his drafts in a place which dealt with Vladivostok and Port Arthur, or even St. Petersburg and Moscow?
And, if he took me for a spy in the Russian service, it followed that he must be watching me for the j.a.panese, and it was probable that the cable-agent in Saigon was in the service of the Czar and found it convenient to deliver an important doc.u.ment with my a.s.sistance.
At that time Manila was the headquarters for blockade-runners bound for Port Arthur, and Russian and j.a.panese spies, from coolies to bankers, were watching every ship and every stranger. So it was not strange that I, coming from French Indo-China, with a dispatch for the Russian consul, should be mistaken for a spy by Meeker the instant he read the address on the envelope and saw the wax seals.
I had a mind to tell the old fellow the joke on him, but that would require explaining where the letter to the consul came from, which would hardly be playing fair with my friend in Saigon. If he knew the truth he might abandon his trip to Hong-Kong in the _Kut Sang_, and I would be rid of him, for I knew he was going with me in the steamer for the purpose of attempting to learn what my business would be in the British port.
If I was to remain in Manila I would have disillusioned him, and so put a stop to his trailing me about, but, as I was leaving in a few hours, I antic.i.p.ated but little more trouble from him or the redheaded man.
Besides, I saw an opportunity to make game of him by telling him his mistake after we were well to sea and leading him on a fool"s voyage.
"I am sure that we will have a pleasant pa.s.sage in the _Kut Sang_," he said. "I am something of a literary man myself, Mr. Trenholm--an exhaustive life of the saints, a shilling in paper covers, four shillings in cloth, with gilt t.i.tle and frontispiece of me. It is recommended by the Bishop of Salisbury, and in its cla.s.s quite a standard work.
"Then I did some poems, chiefly on sacred subjects. Not much as poetry, perhaps, judged by severe standards, but I am told they are regarded as marvels of piety and sweetness. I may have a copy in my luggage, which I will show you after we are settled aboard the steamer."
I let him ramble on like that, turning over in my mind the while all the schemes I intended to put into play to convince him I was really a spy, and when a boy brought a paper I fell upon the war news.
"Another Russian defeat," I half moaned, and made out that I was dreadfully upset because the j.a.panese were winning battles.
He said he deplored war, and had a prejudice against the j.a.panese, and hoped they would lose, and praised the Russians as brave and pious. When I expressed satisfaction at his views in order to prove my character as a Russian agent, we might have been mistaken by an observer for a couple of old friends.
He wearied me, however, with his chatter and efforts to make himself agreeable, and after the meal I escaped from him on the plea of business which must be attended to before the steamer sailed.
Leaving the walled city, I crossed the Bridge of Spain to the Escolta and took a stroll in Calle Rosario, where the Chinese merchants keep themselves in grateful shade with miles of awning. After an hour of sight-seeing, I found myself in a square near the San Miguel Bridge.
There was a crowd gathered before a building, which I remember on account of the picture of a frigate painted upon the stucco wall and the great red letters spelling out:
THE FLAGSHIP BAR
There had evidently been a fight; and coolies and natives, and Europeans in white, cl.u.s.tered at the door. I joined the knot of people and pressed forward to see what was holding their attention, and saw the body of a big, foreign-looking man, half inside the door and half on the pavement, with his head outside.
His mouth was open, and from his upper lips drooped long, black moustaches, looking all the blacker for the ghastly pallor of his cheeks.
He had been stabbed in the back, and the spectators in the front of the group edged away to avoid the growing pool of blood on the sidewalk.
"Does anybody know who he is?" demanded a khaki-clad policeman, taking out a note-book.
"A sailor," said an American in a white ap.r.o.n, who leaned out of the door. "Drank whiskey and vermouth and talked like a squarehead."
"Greek he was," said a man with the appearance of a mariner.
"Here"s his cap in here," said the bartender, and he turned and picked up a watch-cap, and held it so we could see letters wrought in it with gilt cord, and I made out "Kut Sang," which excited my interest in the case.
"Boatswain he was in the _Kut Sang_, bound out to-day for Hong-Kong,"
said the mariner.
"Jolly long road to Hong-Kong for him now," said another.
"Who cut him?" demanded the policeman. "Didn"t you see how this happened?
Are you all deaf and dumb? You, there in the ap.r.o.n! Who did this?"
"You can search me," said the bartender. "He had a couple of drinks and was going out when somebody slipped a knife in him. I was at the other end of the bar--never saw a thing until this one here lets out a yell and goes down. Somebody cut and run through the door."
"I see him! I see him!" cried a boy in kilts who had a hoop, and we all turned, expecting the murderer to be pointed out to us; but the boy meant that he had seen the man running away and all that he knew was that he had worn a "funny hat," and he could tell nothing else.
"A little chap it was," volunteered a c.o.c.kney.
"What"s that?" asked the policeman. "Speak up--n.o.body here going to bite you, my man! Did you see him? What did he look like?"
"I didn"t see him do no cuttin", if that"s what you mean, officer. I didn"t see no knife-play, and ye couldn"t hang a man on what I see, and--"
"What did you see?" said the policeman, with a show of asperity. "Never mind what we can do with it. What did you see?"
"Small chap, in a white navy-cap, and "air red as the sun in the Gulf of H"annam."
CHAPTER IV
I GO ABOARD THE "_KUT SANG_"