, and smiles an instant to
watch it squirm before administering the death-shot.

"You wanchee my?" inquired Peter succinctly.

"You allatime go Hong Kong way?" replied the coolie, his smile becoming
a little more civil, while he measured Peter's length, breadth, and
seemed to estimate his brawn.

It was a foolish question, for the _Persian Gulf_, as everybody in
Batavia knew quite well, made a no-stop run from the Javanese port to
Hong Kong. Peter indicated this fact impatiently.

"No go Hong Kong way?" persisted the coolie, not relaxing that devilish
grin. "_Maskee_ Hong Kong. _Nidzen yang giang_?"

The wheezy old whistle of the _Persian Gulf_ told the world in
unmistakable accents that sailing time was nigh. The _Persian Gulf_
was not a new boat or a fast boat, and she sailed in the intermediate
service south of Java. Yet she was stout, and typhoons meant very
little to her as yet.

"Why not?" demanded Peter in the tones of an interlocutor.

The coolie simply lifted the flap of his blue tunic, and Peter was
given the singular glimpse of a bone-hafted knife, the blade of which
he could guess lay flat against the man's paunch.

Still the Chinese smiled, without avarice. Plainly he was stating the
case as it was known to him, reciting a lesson, as it were, which had
been taught him by one skilled in the ways of killing and of espionage.

The facts of this case were that Peter Moore should immediately
postpone or give up entirely his trip to Hong Kong for reasons best
known to the powers arrayed against him. And strangely enough, Hong
Kong was one of the two cities in China where Peter had pressing
business.

It made him furious, this knowledge that the man of Len Yang had picked
up the trail again.

So Peter glanced up and down the deck to see if there would be any
witness to his act, and there was only one, a passenger. The Chinese
was still smiling, but by degrees that smile was becoming more evil and
sour. He was perplexed at the wireless operator's furtive examination
of the promenade deck. Yet he was not kept in the dark regarding
Peter's intentions much longer than it would have taken him to utter
the Chinese equivalent of Jack Robinson.

With an energetic swoop, Peter seized him by the nearest arm and leg,
and in the next breath the coolie was shooting through an awful void,
tumbling head over heels like a bag of loose rice, straight for the
oily bosom of Batavia's harbor!

So much for P