“I found him sneaking near my door in the hall,” I said.  “Who is this Dago Red?”

“A worthy man,” he replied getting serious.  “I am afraid you have done him an injustice, for I sent him up to see if you were in your room, and after I had given him the errand the clerk informed me that you were in, and I started up myself.”

“He didn’t appear anxious to talk with me when he saw me open the door.”

“You probably startled him by—­”

“But who is he?”

“Petrak, I think his name is, although I am not sure, and my poor old memory cannot hold names long.  He is a sailor who has been shipwrecked, and he became a vagrant here and was sent to Bilibid Prison.  Much of my work is in prisons, and I took charge of him when he got out and sent him to the Sailors’ Home, sure that he would be able to get a ship again.  That was a couple of months ago, and when I arrived to-day he met me and told me that he had left the Home because the keeper was prejudiced against him, owing 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.