Reasoning back from this link to the next preceding, his room had been entered and ransacked while he was safely out of the way in a carriage on the Bubbling Well Road. Some time had been required to make that careful examination and fit keys to his hand-bag and trunk. Also, he had just now investigated his revolver and discovered that the firing-pin of the hammer had been filed, not enough for the eye to notice it, but sufficiently to cause the impact to fail to explode the primer of the cartridge.
The affable, gilded young gentleman who had invited him to drive on the Bubbling Well Road was the same kind acquaintance who had suggested that he take a ’rickshaw and visit the native city in the morning. The finger of coincidence pointed in the direction of that smartest of compradores, Charley Tong Sin.
“That kind of coincidence is unhealthier than the cholera,” said O’Shea to himself. “Maybe this sport with the college education and the taste for gin cocktails is a good friend of mine, but I will give him no chance to prove it again. I have been on the jump ever since I met him. If he is not crooked he is a hoodoo. And ’tis not impossible, after all, that he is mixed up with this gang of murderers that I am running after. The heart of him is Chinese.”
He would keep these suspicions to himself. They lacked tangible proof, and he held to the view that the business was entirely his own. He had plunged into this befogged maze of circumstances like a boy on a holiday, and it was for him to extricate himself like a man. With the warmest expressions of gratitude he parted from Inspector Burke and the naval lieutenant, and hastened in the direction of the water-front.
Less than an hour later he was inspecting a light-draught steamer called the Whang Ho owned by the China Navigation Company. She was old, sadly in need of repairs, and about as sea-worthy for rough weather as a packing-box. But O’Shea felt confident that she could be nursed along to serve his purpose, and the larger, better vessels available for charter at short notice were not so handy for exploring muddy rivers and strange corners. Having put to sea at one time and another in craft which were held together only by their paint, Captain O’Shea asked no more of the Whang Ho than that her engines should turn over. He dared not examine the machinery too closely lest he might lose confidence in his steamer, but the owners’ agent assured him that she was fit for service and he took his word for it.
“Start her fires going at once,” said O’Shea, “and if enough pressure shows on the gauges to turn her wheel as she lies at her moorings, I will sign the charter-party and insurance papers and slap down the two thousand dollars for a month’s use of the venerable relic.”
“That is fair enough,” replied the agent. “And it is as good as done. You can go ahead with getting your supplies, Captain O’Shea. I take it that you want to do a bit of exploration work for one of the American syndicates? We have done quite a lot of business with your people and their concessions.”
“It may be something like that,” briefly returned O’Shea. “And now will you be kind enough to tell me where to order a hundred and fifty tons of steam coal to be put in the bunkers this very day?”
“Our company will be pleased to let you have it, and I can guarantee prompt delivery from lighters alongside the steamer. Or I presume that Jordan, Margetson will do the same for you.”
“I think I will not deal with Jordan, Margetson,” and O’Shea’s voice was smooth and pleasant. “The comprador is a very able young man.”