A gleam of metal from the opened suit-case attracted his eyes. He took up the kris, and with vast approval studied it. The feel of the lotus-bud handle seemed grateful to his palm. Its balance joyed him. The keen, wavy blade, maculated with the rust of blood and brine, and with the groove where lay another stain whose meaning he knew not, held for him a singular fascination. Back, forth he slashed the weapon, whistling it through the air, flashing it under the lamp-light.
“Fine!” he approved, with thickened speech. “Glad I got it—might come handy in a pinch, what?”
He stopped swinging the kris, and once more observed it, more closely still. Tentatively he ran his thumb along the edge, testing it, then scratched with some inchoate curiosity at the poison crystallized in the groove.
“Wonder what that stuff is, anyhow?” said he. “Doesn’t look like the rest. Maybe it’s the blood of some P. I., like McLaughlin. That ought to make a dirty-looking stain, same as this. Maybe it will, some of these days, if he crosses my bows. Maybe it will at that!”
CHAPTER XLI
FATE STRIKES
Hal tossed the kris into the berth, and was just about to reach for the bottle again when a thump-thump-thumping along the hull startled his attention.
“What the devil’s that, now?” he growled, stiffening. The sound of voices, then a scramble of feet on deck, flung him toward the companion-ladder. “Who’s there?”