The Devils Admiral | Page 9

to his term in
prison.
"He was on the verge of starvation, and I gave him some money from
my charity fund, which he promptly spent on drink, for he is quite
dissolute. But he took charge of my luggage and attended to some

errands for me, but he fears the police and cannot get out of his habit of
skulking about, and, as the detectives have hounded him, he is
suspicious of everybody, and ready to go into a panic when a stranger
approaches him. It is a pity that he cannot get back to sea, but he has
had the fever, and no master seems to want him, and he has been forced
into vagabondage."
He gave me this history of the little red-headed man in disconnected
sentences while we were at the soup, and I let him run on. As he talked
his eyes were roaming over the room, and he scanned every person that
entered, and peered at me from under his brows when he thought I was
not observing him.
It was plausible enough, but I could not forget that Meeker and the little
sailor were together a great deal, and whenever I had seen them they
were acting suspiciously, and both of them had kept close watch upon
me. Neither had he explained away the fact that he had told me I could
not buy a ticket in the Kut Sang, which I did; nor the fact that he had
his own ticket when he told me that, nor the false telephone message
for the obvious purpose of making me miss the steamer, and then his
getting in my way when I was in pursuit of Petrak, or "Dago Red," as
he called him.
It seemed beyond reason that this chain of events could be nothing but
a combination of coincidences, and, when I analyzed the situation, I
framed what I considered a good theory regarding Petrak's presence
outside my door. It occurred to me that Meeker was the author of the
false message, and that he was really on his way to visit me to learn if I
had discovered the falsity of it when he met me rushing down the stairs.
But he had sent Petrak ahead of him to listen at the door in case I
telephoned the company to verify the first message; Petrak had heard
me ask the company for the sailing time and was about to report to
Meeker when I opened the door upon him.
Meeker was probably at the foot of the stairs and covered the retreat of
his henchman. Petrak may not have been able to stop and report what
he had heard, so Meeker fished for the information from me, ready to
confirm the report that the sailing of the vessel was delayed, or pretend

that he was about to set me right.
Upon my admission that I knew the report was false, he grasped at the
latter alternative, and, seeing that it was impossible to prevent me going
in the Kut Sang, determined to make friends with me and disarm
whatever suspicions I might have regarding him. It seemed a tenable
theory, but I could not account for all this bother on his part because
James Augustus Trenholm, of the Amalgamated Press, took passage in
the Kut Sang.
It seemed absurd to me that Meeker or anybody else would be
concerned because I was leaving Manila for Hong-Kong. It was plain
enough that he, or somebody, had done their best to keep me from
sailing in the Kut Sang. That it was the Rev. Luther Meeker there could
be little doubt, but the mystery lay in what his motives could be, or who
he was acting for, and it was beyond me to say why there should be any
objection to my sailing in the steamer Kut Sang that afternoon.
While I was thinking these things over he was keeping up a running
conversation about trivial matters, and we were well into the curried
lamb and getting along famously when he asked a question which put
me on my guard at once, and set me groping mentally for a solution of
the puzzle.
"Did you deliver your letter?" he asked, casually, but I saw in an instant
that he had been paving the conversational way all along for that very
question.
"What letter?" I asked, although I knew the one he meant.
He looked at me craftily, with what I took for a bit of surprise that I did
not know the letter he referred to, or that he expected me to deceive
him.
"Perhaps I shouldn't mention it, for it may recall our little
unpleasantness this morning," he sent back. "Perhaps it was my fault,
my dear sir, in speaking to you when I