“Here’s his cap in here,” said the bartender, and he turned and picked up a watch-cap, and held it so we could see letters wrought in it with gilt cord, and I made out “Kut Sang,” which excited my interest in the case.

“Boatswain he was in the Kut Sang, bound out to-day for Hong-Kong,” said the mariner.

“Jolly long road to Hong-Kong for him now,” said another.

“Who cut him?” demanded the policeman.  “Didn’t you see how this happened?  Are you all deaf and dumb?  You, there in the apron!  Who did this?”

“You can search me,” said the bartender.  “He had a couple of drinks and was going out when somebody slipped a knife in him.  I was at the other end of the bar—­never saw a thing until this one here lets out a yell and goes down.  Somebody cut and run through the door.”

“I see him!  I see him!” cried a boy in kilts who had a hoop, and we all turned, expecting the murderer to be pointed out to us; but the boy meant that he had seen the man running away and all that he knew was that he had worn a “funny hat,” and he could tell nothing else.

“A little chap it was,” volunteered a cockney.

“What’s that?” asked the policeman.  “Speak up—­nobody here going to bite you, my man!  Did you see him?  What did he look like?”

“I didn’t see him do no cuttin’, if that’s what you mean, officer.  I didn’t see no knife-play, and ye couldn’t hang a man on what I see, and—­”

“What did you see?” said the policeman, with a show of asperity.  “Never mind what we can do with it.  What did you see?”

“Small chap, in a white navy-cap, and ’air red as the sun in the Gulf of H’annam.”

CHAPTER IV

I GO ABOARD THE “KUT SANG”

Perhaps I should have told the policeman about Petrak, when I heard the cockney say he had seen a red-headed little man in a white navy-cap running away from the Flagship Bar.  But, if I had, I might have been held as a witness and nothing come of it, for it developed that the cockney knew nothing about the murder—­as he said he had simply seen the little man running away from the scene.

I had other business beside aiding the police to find the murderer of a sailor, and that business was to get to Hong-Kong as quickly as I could in the Kut Sang.  Even then it was time that I hasten to the dock and board the steamer.  I hailed a cochero and, leaving the Manila police to settle their own mysteries, got my baggage from the Oriente and rode through Binondo toward the waterfront.

Now it occurs to me that I must set down in their order the events of that day in their proper sequence, which compels me to tell of my meeting with Mr. Trego in the Hong-Kong-Shanghai Bank.

It was not until the whole affair was ended that the significance of that apparently casual meeting in the bank came upon me with its full force, and I saw the pattern of what was to become a tangled succession of the most queer happenings.