" suggested Scarterfield.

"Aye, certain, master!" declared Fish. "I've had time to think it
over, and to reckon it all up, and now I'm sure it was him--only he
wasn't going to let out that it was. Now, if I'd only chanced on him
when he was by himself, what?"

"You'd have got just the same answer," said the detective laconically.
"He didn't want to be known. You saw no more of him in Hull, of
course--"

"Yes, I did," answered Fish. "I saw him again that night. And--as
regards one of 'em at any rate, in queerish company."

"What was that?" asked Scarterfield.

"Well," replied Fish, "me and Jim Shanks, we went home to
dinner--couple o' roast chickens, and a nice bit o' sirloin to follow.
And after that we had a nice comfortable sleep for the rest of the
afternoon, and then, after a wash-up and a drop o' tea, we went out to
look round the town a bit for an evening's diversion, d'ye see. Not to
any partic'lar place, but just strolling round, like, as sailor-men
will, being ashore and stretching their legs. And it so came about
that lateish in the evening we turned into the smoking-room of the
Cross Keys, in the Market Place--maybe this here friend o' yours,
seeing as he's been in Hull, knows that!"

"I know it, Fish," said I.

"Then you'll know that you goes in at an archway, turns in at your
right, and there you are," he said. "Well, Shanks and me, we goes in,
casual like, not expecting anything that you wouldn't expect. But we'd
no sooner sat us down in that smoking-room and taken an observation
that I sees the very man that I'd seen at the Goose and Crane, him
that I'd taken for Baxter. There he was, in a corner of the room, and
the other smart-dressed man with him, their glasses in front of 'em,
and their cigars in their mouths. And with 'em there was something
else that I certainly didn't go for to expect to see in that place."

"What?" asked Scarterfield.

"What I seen plenty of, time and again, in various parts o' this here
world, and ain't so mighty fond o' seeing," answered Fish, with a
scowl. "A chink!"

"A--what?" demanded the detective. "A--chink?"

"He means a Chinaman," I said. "That's it, isn't it, Fish?"

"That's it, guv'nor," assented Fish. "A yellow-skinned, slit-eyed,
thin-fingered Chinee, with a face like a image and a voice like
silk--which," he added, scowling more than ever, "is pison that I
can't abide, nohow, having seen more than enough of."

I looked at Scarterfield. He had been