er. Of a
sudden I seemed to hear the old gnome croaking, "Now that story sounds
to me kind of--"

McCord straightened up and turned to face me.

"What do you know about Bjoernsen?" he demanded.

"Well--only what they had you saying in the papers," I told him.

"Pshaw!" He snapped his fingers, tossing the affair aside. "I found her
log," he announced in quite another voice.

"You did, eh? I judged, from what I read in the paper, that there wasn't
a sign."

"No, no; I happened on this the other night, under the mattress in
there." He jerked his head toward the stateroom. "Wait!" I heard him
knocking things over in the dark and mumbling at them. After a moment he
came out and threw on the table a long, cloth-covered ledger, of the
common commercial sort. It lay open at about the middle, showing close
script running indiscriminately across the column ruling.

"When I said 'log,'" he went on, "I guess I was going it a little
strong. At least, I wouldn't want that sort of log found around _my_
vessel. Let's call it a personal record. Here's his picture,
somewhere--" He shook the book by its back and a common kodak blue-print
fluttered to the table. It was the likeness of a solid man with a
paunch, a huge square beard, small squinting eyes, and a bald head.
"What do you make of him--a writing chap?"

"From the nose down, yes," I estimated. "From the nose up, he will 'tend
to his own business if you will 'tend to yours, strictly."

McCord slapped his thigh. "By gracious! that's the fellow! He hates the
Chinaman. He knows as well as anything he ought not to put down in black
and white how intolerably he hates the Chinaman, and yet he must sneak
off to his cubby-hole and suck his pencil, and--how is it Stevenson has
it?--the 'agony of composition,' you remember. Can you imagine the
fellow, Ridgeway, bundling down here with the fever on him--"

"About the Chinaman," I broke in. "I think you said something about a
Chinaman?"

"Yes. The cook, he must have been. I gather he wasn't the master's pick,
by the reading-matter here. Probably clapped on to him by the
owners--shifted from one of their others at the last moment; a queer
trick. Listen." He picked up the book and, running over the pages with a
selective thumb, read:

"_August second._--First part, moderate southwesterly breeze--

and so forth--er--but here he comes to it:

"Anything can happen to a man at sea, even a funeral. In
special to a Chi