“I bet you twenty to ten,” the sick man insisted. “What’s eatin’ you, anyway?”
“You live, me lose, me pay you,” the steward explained. “You die, I win, you dead; no pay me.”
Still grinning and shaking his head, he went his way.
“Just the same, sir, it’ll be rich testimony,” Davis chuckled. “An’ can’t you see the reporters eatin’ it up?”
The Asiatic clique in the cook’s room has its suspicions about the death of Marinkovich, but will not voice them. Beyond shakings of heads and dark mutterings, I can get nothing out of Wada or the steward. When I talked with the sail-maker, he complained that his injured hand was hurting him and that he would be glad when he could get to the surgeons in Seattle. As for the murder, when pressed by me, he gave me to understand that it was no affair of the Japanese or Chinese on board, and that he was a Japanese.
But Louis, the Chinese half-caste with the Oxford accent, was more frank. I caught him aft from the galley on a trip to the lazarette for provisions.
“We are of a different race, sir, from these men,” he said; “and our safest policy is to leave them alone. We have talked it over, and we have nothing to say, sir, nothing whatever to say. Consider my position. I work for’ard in the galley; I am in constant contact with the sailors; I even sleep in their section of the ship; and I am one man against many. The only other countryman I have on board is the steward, and he sleeps aft. Your servant and the two sail-makers are Japanese. They are only remotely kin to us, though we’ve agreed to stand together and apart from whatever happens.”
“There is Shorty,” I said, remembering Mr. Pike’s diagnosis of his mixed nationality.
“But we do not recognize him, sir,” Louis answered suavely. “He is Portuguese; he is Malay; he is Japanese, true; but he is a mongrel, sir, a mongrel and a bastard. Also, he is a fool. And please, sir, remember that we are very few, and that our position compels us to neutrality.”
“But your outlook is gloomy,” I persisted. “How do you think it will end?”