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.
There were papers at the bank which I must take with me, and on the way to the docks I stopped there. As I went in there was a sallow-faced man standing outside a grated window talking with a teller. He was smoking a long Russian cigarette, and pulling with nervous fingers at a tiny black moustache. His malacca cane was leaning against the wall by his side. I recognized him as the man who had driven the Rev. Luther Meeker out of the rear room of the bank, when the latter went in to seek alms, as he said.
He stood aside as I approached the teller's window, and the clerk handed out the papers to me, with a smile and some trifling remark.
"When are you leaving, Mr. Trenholm?" asked the clerk.
"In an hour in the Kut Sang," I said, and the man with the cigarette turned round and surveyed me with mild surprise. As I stepped to the door he went up to the window and whispered something to the clerk.