He sent one of the helpers to his cabin for a parcel and he put it into my hands.
“It’ll be handier than sending it by express to Dod,” he said. “It’s a skull I found in the dock. Tell him to make up a pirate yarn to go with it.”
Being thus equipped with full credentials as to my continued comfortable standing with Jodrey Vose, for the purposes of my further intimacy with Dodovah Vose, I started up the wharf in excellent spirits, my thoughts on my home-going.
And half-way to the street I fairly bumped into Anson C. Doughty. It was no coincidence—I ought to have reckoned on that meeting—the manager was regularly up and down the wharf at all hours of the day. But, as I have said, I had lost my caution. I had met him once face to face, and had not been recognized. But I was no longer wearing that mustache.
He swore a blue streak and danced back and forth in front of me, waving his hairy hands to shoo me back. He looked just as much like a cockroach as ever.
“You belong in State prison and you’re going there,” he snarled.
There were two wharf loafers near by, the only men in sight. He called to them, and they came to us, a couple of husky stevedores.
“You know me!” shouted Doughty. “You two men hold this sucker till I can fetch a cop. Hold him! Don’t let him get away!”
He ran off toward the street.
I had not a chance to get away from those big chaps on that narrow wharf—and it was plain that they knew Anson C. Doughty and recognized his authority in those quarters.