Unmindful of labor and hardship, this contented company slowly journeyed to the head of navigation on the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells and then trudged overland while O’Shea rode in a covered chair and sang old sea-chanties in a mellow voice. When, at length, the English mission station was reached it was stretching the truth to call him an invalid. The senior missionary, a gentle, very wise old man who had lived for thirty years in the back country, heard the tale told by these tanned, ragged travellers and was horrified that such things should have existed. But he had news for them, and it was thus that he supplied a missing fragment of the puzzle of Bill Maguire:
“The man came here and we took care of him. But there was no finding out how he had been so frightfully hurt. He was dumb and stupid. Later I met a native boatman who had found him on the river-bank near Wang-Li-Fu. Evidently he had been thrown into the water as an easy way to get rid of the body. Reviving a little, he splashed his way ashore or the tide left him there. He stayed with us until he was fairly strong and one morning he was gone.”
“And did he set the house afire?” inquired O’Shea.
“Why, there were two accidental fires in the compound at that time, but we laid it to the carelessness of the kitchen coolies,” was the innocent reply.
“It was Bill Maguire, all right,” declared O’Shea. “Now, will ye be good enough to look over the Chinese documents we found hid away under the Painted Joss?”
The missionary pored over the papers for several hours. And his painstaking translation revealed all that O’Shea cared to know concerning the operations of The Sect of the Fatal Obligation. It had worked in secret to remove enemies for a price. If a merchant wished a business rival obliterated, if an official found others in his way, if it was advantageous to create a vacancy in some other quarter, the murder guild directed by the departed Chung would transact the affair, smoothly, without bungling. And those who knew and would have disclosed the secret were frightened into silence by the sight of the brand that was called The Dreadful Messenger of Chung.
“It will interest you to learn, as an American, Captain O’Shea,” said the missionary, “that among these documents is a list of persons proscribed or sentenced to be slain. The most conspicuous name I find to be that of the Chinese ambassador to the United States, His Excellency Hao Su Ting. It is probable that this terrible fate would have awaited him upon his return to his own country.”
“They potted his brother,” exclaimed O’Shea. “And he was sick with fear of the thing, for I talked it over with him meself. Well, he can thank Bill Maguire for letting him die in his bed when his proper time comes.”
Three weeks later Captain O’Shea sat at his ease upon the piazza of the Grand Hotel, that overlooks Yokohama Bay. He was thinner than when he had put to sea in the Whang Ho steamer, but he appeared to find the game of life quite worth while. It was his pleasure to enjoy the tame diversions of a tourist before boarding a mail-boat for the long run home to San Francisco. He smiled as he reread a letter written in the crabbed fist of that zealous agriculturist, Johnny Kent, who had this to say:
Dear Captain Mike: