"Well," replied Fish, "me and Jim Shanks, we went home to dinner—couple o' roast chickens, and a nice bit o' sirloin to follow. And after that we had a nice comfortable sleep for the rest of the afternoon, and then, after a wash-up and a drop o' tea, we went out to look round the town a bit for an evening's diversion, d'ye see. Not to any partic'lar place, but just strolling round, like, as sailor-men will, being ashore and stretching their legs. And it so came about that lateish in the evening we turned into the smoking-room of the Cross Keys, in the Market Place—maybe this here friend o' yours, seeing as he's been in Hull, knows that!"
"I know it, Fish," said I.
"Then you'll know that you goes in at an archway, turns in at your right, and there you are," he said. "Well, Shanks and me, we goes in, casual like, not expecting anything that you wouldn't expect. But we'd no sooner sat us down in that smoking-room and taken an observation that I sees the very man that I'd seen at the Goose and Crane, him that I'd taken for Baxter. There he was, in a corner of the room, and the other smart-dressed man with him, their glasses in front of 'em, and their cigars in their mouths. And with 'em there was something else that I certainly didn't go for to expect to see in that place."
"What?" asked Scarterfield.
"What I seen plenty of, time and again, in various parts o' this here world, and ain't so mighty fond o' seeing," answered Fish, with a scowl. "A chink!"
"A—what?" demanded the detective. "A—chink?"
"He means a Chinaman," I said. "That's it, isn't it, Fish?"
"That's it, guv'nor," assented Fish. "A yellow-skinned, slit-eyed, thin-fingered Chinee, with a face like a image and a voice like silk—which," he added, scowling more than ever, "is pison that I can't abide, nohow, having seen more than enough of."
I looked at Scarterfield. He had been attentive enough all through the course of our visitor's story, but I saw that his attention had redoubled since the last few words.
"A Chinaman!" he said in a low voice. "With—him!"