"Well," said the reporter, "when it comes time to roll them clouds away, don't forget me."
"Impossibility," protested Chan. "Good night."
They left Mayberry bending over his typewriter, and at Chan's suggestion went to the All American Restaurant, where the Chinaman ordered two cups of "your inspeakable coffee." While they waited to be served, he spread out on the table his complete copy of the newspaper, and laying the torn page on its counterpart, carefully removed the upper right-hand corner.
"The missing fragment," he explained. For a time he studied it thoughtfully, and finally shook his head. "I apprehend nothing to startle," he admitted. He handed it across the table. "If you will condescend greatly—"
John Quincy took the bit of newspaper. On one side was the advertisement of a Japanese dealer in shirtings who wrote his own publicity. Any one might carry off, he said, six yards for the price of five. And in case the buyer cried loudly in amaze, how can do, it was a matter he was happy to explain. John Quincy laughed aloud.
"Ah," said Chan, "you are by rights mirthful. Kiku-chi, purveyor of shirting cloth, seize on grand English language and make it into idiotic jumble. On that side are nothing to detain us. But humbly hinting you reverse the fragment—"
John Quincy reversed it. The other side was a part of the shipping page. He read it carefully, news of sailings and arrivals, there would be places for five passengers to the Orient on the Shinyo Maru, leaving Wednesday, the Wilhelmina was six hundred and forty miles east of Makupuu Point, the brig Mary Jane from the Treaty Ports——
John Quincy started, and caught his breath. A small item in tiny print had met his eye.
"Among the passengers who will arrive here on the Sonoma from Australia a week from Saturday are: Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Macan Brade, of Calcutta—"
John Quincy sat staring at the unwashed window of the All American Restaurant. His mind went back to the deck of the President Tyler, to a lean old missionary telling a tale of a bright morning on Apiang, a grave under a palm tree. "Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Macan Brade, of Calcutta." He heard again the missionary's high-pitched voice. "A callous brute, a pirate and adventurer. Tom Brade, the blackbirder."