"The two look enough alike to be useful ... maybe. Not a physical likeness; it's merely photographic. I never overlook anything. If he takes the journey I have in mind, it may be of use. Photographically, they look enough alike to be twins."
The woman returned the clipping, her eyes somber. She walked slowly over to a window and stared down into the street—without seeing anything of the busy life below.
CHAPTER II
Out San Miguel way there are many two-storied brick villas with Spanish-red tiles. Sometimes there are three or four almost neighborly, then one aloof and alone. In Manila most white folk live up-stairs, the servants down. It permits white folk to talk over their affairs without listeners—and the servants to run away to cock-fights as often as they dare.
One of these isolated villas was walled in, except on the river side, by a wall of rubble coated with whitewash. Rising above the chevaux de frise of broken bottles was a fringe of feathery bamboo. There was an alley of these trees from the gate to the door. There was also a garden; but the precise formality with which it had been laid out was a mute testimony of the absence of womankind.
Two Americans lived there—bachelors. One of them lived there continuously; the other, whenever his ship was in port. They were officers in the United States navy. An odd pair, agreed official and social Manila; and after futile efforts to make friends with them, dismissed them. Odd, because bachelor officers who have incomes outside their pay are generally gay sailormen. Off duty, these two formed an association of hermits. They never went anywhere except officially, and avoided women as other men avoided the plague. One of them was woman-shy; the other hated them, it was said.
Captain Hallowell of the staff would in all probability never go to sea again, actively. An experiment had severely injured one of his eyes, though the defect was not noticeable.
Lieutenant-Commander Mathison was an officer of the line—a fighting sailor. They were as unlike physically as it is possible for two men to be.