For a full minute the polishing continued, then face and figure vanished, and Reynolds was left staring in impotent rage at the empty port-hole.

When the room steward appeared in answer to an imperative summons, he was directed to send Tsang Foo to room No. 7 at once.

Tsang came almost immediately, bearing tea and anchovy sandwiches, which he urbanely placed on a camp-stool.

“Where’s my pistol?” demanded Reynolds hotly, holding to the door to steady himself.

Tsang’s eyes, earnest as a dog’s, were lifted to his: 

“He fall overboard,” he explained suavely, “me velly solly.”

Reynolds impulsively lifted his arm to strike, but a second impulse, engulfing the first, made him turn and fling himself upon his berth, struggling to master the heavy sobs that shook him from head to foot.

The Chinaman softly closed the door and slipped the bolt, then he dropped to a sitting posture on the floor and waited.

When the squall had passed, Reynolds addressed his companion from the depths of the pillows in language suited to his comprehension.

“Me belong large fool, Tsang!” he said savagely.  “Have drink too much.  No good.  You go ’long, I’m all right now.”

Tsang’s eye swept the disordered room and returned to the figure on the bed.  “Suppose me go,” he said, “you makee one hole in head?”

“That’s my business,” said Reynolds, his wrath rekindling.  “You go ’long, and get my pistol; there’s a good chap.”

Tsang did not stir; he sat with his hands clasped about his knees, and contemplated space with the abstract look of a Buddha gazing into Nirvana.

Reynolds passed from persuasion to profanity with no satisfactory result.  His language, whether eloquent or fiery, beat upon an unresponsive ear.  But being in that condition that demands sympathy, he found the mere talking a relief, and presently drifted into a recital of his woes.

“I’m up against it, in the hole, you know, much largee trouble,” he amplified with many gestures, sitting on the side of his berth, and pounding out excited, incoherent phrases to the impassive figure opposite.  “Company sent me out to collect money.  My have spent all.  No can go back home.  Suppose my lose face, more better die!”

Tsang shifted his position and nodded gravely.  Out of much that was unintelligible, the last statement loomed clear and incontrovertible.

“I’m a thief!” burst out Reynolds passionately, not to Tsang now, but to the world at large, “a plain, common thief.  And the worst of it is there isn’t a man in that San Francisco office that doesn’t trust me down to the ground.  Then there’s the Governor.  O God!  I can’t face the Governor!”

Tsang sat immovable, lost in thought.  Stray words and phrases helped, but it was by some subtle working of his own complex brain that he was arriving at the truth.

“Father, him no can lend money?” he suggested presently.