After the word “Shanghai” there was the indication of a letter that looked like “L,” faint as if the paint had run out or the fellow who was writing had given up the job, dying maybe, before he could finish it; the board itself was an old piece of white enamelled stuff, torn evidently from some part of a ship’s make-up, the whole thing was roughly done, but the chap, whoever he was, had some education, for there was a punctuation mark after the word “Street.”
We stuck it up on the after bulkhead, and there it hung, giving us food for talk every meal time, and on and off for days. Mallinson said it was the work of some chap who had died and left no will, he was a bit of a sea lawyer and he held that if William Abbott was a sailor and it could be proved he was lost at sea and if some relation of his was to be found at 11 Churles Street, Shanghai, the Law, under the circumstance, would regard the thing as a will.
This seemed to me rubbish, but it gave us something to argue about, and so it went on till the thing dropped from our talk as we raised our latitude, looking in at Los Jardines and then steering for Formosa.
I’d determined to have a look at Japan, so we left Formosa, steering north, and then one day, it was off the Riu Kiu islands, the helm went over and we steered for Shanghai.
The fact of the matter was that beastly board had obsessed me. Though we had ceased talking of it, I hadn’t ceased thinking of it. You know the way a problem gets hold of me. Lying in my bunk at night, I worked that riddle backwards and forwards, and up and down. If William Abbott had written it, what had become of him? Why wasn’t his corpse in the boat? What was the use of writing it? As a legal document, it was useless. The whole thing was a tangle, but one fact stood out, it was a message. Well, to whom? Not to the seagulls or the world at large, but to the first person who should pick it up, and the message was:
“The heir of William Abbott lives at such and such an address.” That was quite plain. Also it was evident that the writer meant that the finder of the message should make use of it by bringing it to or sending it to 11 Churles Street.
Whether some man at the address given could benefit by the message or not was another matter—evidently it was in the mind of the writer that he could.
You see how reasoning had brought me to a point where conscience was awakened. I began to say to myself: “It’s your duty to take that message; here you are a well-to-do idler bound for no port in particular, but just following your own pleasure, you are going to Japan for no earthly reason, just for a whim, Shanghai lies almost on your way and your duty is to stop there,” but I didn’t want to go to Shanghai, I had nothing against the place or the Chinese—I just didn’t want to go; however, that didn’t matter, conscience had taken the wheel and I went.
III
We got to the river before noon one day and picked up a pilot. You don’t know Shanghai? Well, you’re saved the knowledge of the shoals and buoys and lightships and the currents, and the five-mile-long anchorage, to say nothing of the freighters going up and down and the junks out of control. I cursed William Abbott and his heirs before we were berthed, and then, leaving Mallinson in charge, I went ashore to hunt for my man.