ee 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_"

Perhaps I should have told the policeman about Petrak, when I heard the
cockney say he had seen a red-headed little man in a white navy-cap
running away from the Flagship Bar. But, if I had, I might have been held
as a witness and nothing come of it, for it developed that the cockney
knew nothing about the murder--as he said he had simply seen the little
man running away from the scene.

I had other business beside aiding the police to find the murderer of a
sailor, and that business was to get to Hong-Kong as quickly as I could
in the _Kut Sang_. Even then it was time that I hasten to the dock and
board the steamer. I hailed a _cochero_ and, leaving the Manila police to
settle their own mysteries, got my baggage from the Oriente and rode
through Binondo toward the waterfront.

Now it occurs to me that I must set down in their order the events of
that day in their proper sequence, which compels me to tell of my meeting
with Mr. Trego in the Hong-Kong-Shanghai Bank.

It was not until the whole affair was ended that the significance of that
apparently casual meeting in the bank came upon me with its full force,
and I saw the pattern of what was to become a tangled succession of the
most queer happenings.

There were papers at the bank which I must take with me, and on the way
to the docks I stopped there. As I went in there was a sallow-faced man
standing outside a grated window talking with a teller. He was smoking a
long Russian cigarette, and pulling with nervous fingers at a tiny black
moustache. His malacca cane was leaning against the wall by his side. I
recognized him as the man who had driven the Rev. Luther Meeker out of
the rear room of the bank, when the latter went in to seek alms, as he
said.

He stood aside as I approached the teller's window, and the clerk handed
out the papers to me, with a smile and some trifling remark.

"When are you leaving, Mr. Trenholm?" asked the clerk.

"In an hour in the _Kut Sang_," I said, and the man with the cigarette
turned round and surveyed me with mild surprise. As I stepped to the door
he went up to the window and whispered something to the