I took a pair of pajamas and a few toilet-articles from my bag. He would not let me have my razors, or any of the packets of papers or my money belt. When he had taken my grip he demanded my clothes, and left me in my pajamas and locked the door, with a growl of caution about monkey-business.
"We hain't takin' no chances with gents like ye be," he said. "And mind that ye stick close here, 'cause we've got a watch outside, and the first time we ketch ye up to any didoes we'll have ye below with brass bracelets on with yer pal Petrak, where ye belong."
At this he slammed the heavy oak door and turned the key in the lock.
My first emotions were anger and the sense of humiliation. I was beaten, outwitted, captured by Meeker, and by my own stupidity. But I realized that the battle had but just begun, and my first task must be to attempt some defence, some counter move against the old fraud who had drawn his plot about me for his own mysterious object.
I berated myself for my conceit in imagining that I could play with such a dangerous man as Meeker proved himself to be, especially since I had seen through his disguise almost from the first. One of two things in Manila would have saved me from my position—either I should have told Meeker at once that he was mistaken in thinking me a spy and warned him to keep clear of me, or I should have told the police that I was being annoyed by a suspicious character. I had had grounds enough for making a complaint against Meeker and Petrak when I found the little red-headed man sneaking outside my door in the hotel, and the supposed missionary blocking my pursuit on the stairway.
Even if the police had given me no satisfaction, I could have warned Meeker that I would not submit to his espionage—a hundred ways of protecting myself from the fellow came into my mind as I sat there on my berth and reviewed what had taken place in Manila before I ever went on board the Kut Sang.
But that was all past, and it did me no good to go over the mistakes I had made. I was bitter at myself for allowing Petrak to bring my bag on board, for I had thus given him an opportunity to claim me as an ally in the murder.
The best that I could make of the whole affair was that Meeker took me for a spy, as I had suspected from the first, and in order to prevent me from going to Hong-Kong for some purpose opposed to the plans of his masters, had done his best to keep me out of the steamer.
Then, when he found that he could not block me in going, he did the next best thing and came with me. To further embarrass me and prevent me from accomplishing the object of my supposed mission in Hong-Kong, he had got me involved in a crime from which I knew I would have a great deal of difficulty in getting myself free, especially as Petrak seemed willing enough to testify against me even though he should hang for the murder.
It seemed beyond reason that they should kill Trego simply to have something of which I might be accused; it seemed to me that my own death would have been an easier way to get rid of me.