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 picked it up, and I certainly want to assure you that I was not put out by your disinclination to begin an acquaintance with a stranger.”

“Haven’t the slightest idea of what you are talking about,” I said lightly, and professing ignorance in my puzzled expression.

“The letter you dropped in the bus.”  He fairly hurled the sentence at me, although his voice was low and he was pretending to have trouble with the saltcellar.

“Oh!  To be sure, the letter I dropped in the bus, and which you so kindly picked up for me.  I have an idea that I was rather gruff at the time, and not at all inclined to appreciate the service you performed.  I might have lost it entirely but for you, so I’ll thank you now, with an apology.”

“Don’t mention it—­don’t mention it, I assure you.  I trust you delivered it safely.”