eter's slight knowledge of jiu-jitsu.

He was angrily at a loss to account for the appearance of this trailer,
for he had been watchful every moment since escaping from the green
walls of that blood-tinted city, and he was positive that he had shaken
off pursuit. Yet somewhere along that trail, which ran from Len Yang
to Bhamo, from Rangoon to Penang, and around the horn of Malacca, his
escape had been betrayed.

The spies of Len Yang's master must have possessed divining rods which
plumbed the very secrets of Peter's soul.

In Batavia Peter attended to a task long deferred. He despatched a
cablegram to Eileen Lorimer in Pasadena, California, advising her that
he was still on top, very much alive, and would some day, he hoped, pay
her a visit.

He wondered what that gray-eyed little creature would say, what she
would do, upon receipt of the message from far-away Java. It had been
many long months since their parting on the rain-soaked bund at
Shanghai. That scene was quite clear in his mind when he turned from
the Batavia cable office to negotiate his plan with the wireless man of
the _Persian Gulf_.

Peter found the man willing, if not positively eager, to negotiate--a
circumstance that Peter forecasted in his mind as soon as his eyes had
dwelt a fleeting moment upon the pudgy white face with its greedy,
small, black eyes. The man was quite willing to lose himself in the
hills behind Batavia until the _Persian Gulf_ was hull down on the
deep-blue horizon, upon a consideration of gold.

Peter could have paid his passage to Hong-Kong, and achieved his ends
quite as handily as in his present role of wireless operator. But his
fingers had begun to itch again for the heavy brass transmission-key,
and his ears were yearning for the drone of radio voices across the
ethereal void.

It was on sailing morning that he was given definite evidence in the
person of the Chinese coolie that his zigzagged trail had been picked
up again by those alert spies of Len Yang's monarch.

He steamed out to the high black side of the steamer in the company's
passenger-launch, gazing back at the drowsy city, quite sure that the
pursuit was off, when he felt the glinting black eyes of the coolie
boring into him from the tiny cabin doorway.

His suspicions kindled slowly, and he admitted them reluctantly. It
was the privilege of any Chinese coolie to stare at him, quite as it
was the privilege of a cat to stare at a king. But the