That same evening Captain O’Shea remained in his room at the hotel until after nine o’clock. For one thing, he wrote a long letter to Johnny Kent, acquainting that doughty farmer with the encouraging progress of the enterprise, which promised “to deal out enough trouble to satisfy any reasonable man.” Then he took his letter of credit from the leather bill-book and made sundry calculations. After leaving Inspector Burke he had rambled along the water-front and made random inquiries concerning charter prices. Freights were low and the river trade was dull. His funds could stand the strain. Fighting men of the kind he wanted were cheap and he would ship coolies as stokers and deck-hands. However, O’Shea was ready to see the thing through if it took his last penny. What man with blood in him wouldn’t be glad to pay the price of such a picnic as this?
Having jotted down his estimates of the cost of coal, stores, wages, arms, and so on, he cocked an eye at the total and said to himself:
“’Tis the first time I ever backed an expedition of me own, and was not pulling some one else’s irons out of the fire. I feel like the minister of war of a revolutionary government.”
Gathering up his papers, he was about to restore them to the leather wallet when he caught sight of the folded sheet containing the great Chinese character which he had displayed to Inspector Burke. It was not a thing to be carried about carelessly and perhaps exposed to view in the course of his business dealings with banks or shops or shipping agents. Some association with this sinister symbol had cost poor McDougal his life. And Chinese were to be found everywhere in the European settlement. With an unusually prudent impulse, Captain O’Shea thrust the folded paper between the layers of clothing in his trunk and put the key in his pocket.
The night was young, the air warm and close within doors, and he felt not in the least like turning in. Strolling through the wide corridors, he passed into the street and moved idly in the direction of the Bund, attracted by the music of a band which was playing in the park near by. The place was like a lovely garden with wide areas of lawn and a profusion of foliage. The large number of men and women who walked to and fro or chatted in groups were, for the most part, English, American, and German; exiles of a fashionable and prosperous air who appeared to find life in the Far East quite endurable and success in their commercial enterprises not harassingly difficult.
Captain O’Shea found a seat on a rustic bench and watched the passing show. Presently he smiled as he descried the incongruous figure of a wizened little elderly Irishman in a black frock-coat with a rusty tall hat firmly jammed on the back of his head. In this smart company Paddy Blake was a fish out of water, but he had lost not a bit of his brisk, devil-may-care demeanor which dared any one to tread on the tail of the coat aforesaid. O’Shea hailed him, and he halted to cackle cordially:
“I was lookin’ for ye to drop into me place all day. There was a magnum on ice and a brace of cold roast Chinese pheasants that ’ud make a king lick his chops. I had something important to impart to ye in th’ back room.”
“’Twas about McDougal, no doubt,” said O’Shea. “I found him, and dead as a mackerel he was.”
“I had the same news this mornin’,” exclaimed Paddy Blake. “One of me Chinese bar-boys lives in the native city forninst the French Gate. He was bound home last night whin the body was found, but the likes of him ’ud scuttle away and say nawthin’ to the police.”
“Inspector Burke tells me that you were not too free with information yourself,” dryly observed O’Shea.