“I say, this is interesting,” exclaimed Inspector Burke. “I am inclined to think that you and I have picked up a warm scent, Captain O’Shea. And here’s another bit of paper we can manage to read.”
They pored over a muddy page of McDougal’s diary and discovered, alas! that it was no more than a fragment of a little Chinese farce called “The Mender of Broken China-ware.” McDougal had picked it up from some troupe of strolling players and jotted down a rough translation of his own, beginning:
“Seeking a livelihood by the work of my hands,
Daily do I traverse the streets of the city.
Well, here I am, a mender of broken jars,
An unfortunate victim of ever-changing plans.
To repair fractured jars is my sole occupation.
’Tis even so. Disconsolate am I, Niu-Chau.”
The two investigators laid this page aside and scanned the remaining scraps of paper. The Chinese writing consisted almost wholly of quotations, lines from the classics, racy proverbs of the common people, and so on. They contained nothing whatever that might throw more light on the mystery of McDougal. In much the same way, what he had written in English concerned itself with his wanderings from port to port and his pitiful failures to hold a position.
“What we want most was lost in the scuffle,” said O’Shea. “The earlier part of this diary may have told the story that you and I are anxious to know.”