Mr. Krebs was a “runner” for a native compradoring firm. He went out to the ships to “drum up” business for his employers, who supplied anything and everything that a ship could require, from cigarettes to engine-oil. In the old days before the Russian War Mr. Vogel had done a good deal of trade with Mr. Krebs on the short run between Yokohama and Hong-Kong. But the stringent Customs regulations that had ensued upon the increased tariffs imposed after the war had practically killed the business, save so far as concerned a paltry bit of trading with passengers in faked curios, and the occasional disposal of a few imitation gems to homeward-bound tourists when the vessel was west of Colombo.
Opportunities like the return of an Ambassador to Japan did not occur once in a blue moon.
The liner tarried a day and a half over cargo at Singapore, and the Laisang got into Hong-Kong nearly twenty-four hours ahead of her. Mr. Vogel learned the fact the moment the German liner arrived at the big China port, and his heart was filled with sickening apprehension. He had been dreaming of trunks full of cigars—German steel trunks with red bands, and numbered with big white characters—ever since he left Singapore. He had marked off the state-room wherein, until the proper psychological moment, the extra trunks—if any—could be stored safely. He had mentally arranged every other detail in his projected bid for fortune, and had even marked down those of his comrades who should be selected as his accomplices. He had counted over, time and time again, the round thousand marks that would be his personal profit out of every trunk full of cigars he could pass through the Yokohama Customs as the baggage of the returning Ambassador. He did all this while still faithfully, if mechanically, discharging his onerous duties as steward and master of the trombone.
“A NOTE WAS HANDED TO HIM BY A CHINESE MESSENGER.”
It was not until a few hours after the arrival of the steamer in Hong-Kong—hours that felt like ages—that Vogel heard from Krebs. A note was handed to him by a Chinese messenger boy, and Vogel opened it with feverish impatience. Mr. Krebs wrote with that laconic brevity of diction which indicates the resourceful mind. “Will send you one trunk.—O. K.,” it read.
Mr. Vogel pondered for a moment whether “O. K.” meant Oscar Krebs or “All correct” (American fashion); then he heaved a great sigh of relief as he realized that it was all the same.
That evening Mr. Krebs came on board unostentatiously, and a big trunk wrapped in rough sacking came with him, and was temporarily stowed away by Mr. Vogel in one of the state-rooms which held some of the Ambassador’s spare boxes. Thence it was subsequently carried to another cabin, where there were some spare things of Mr. Vogel’s. Had a hypercritical observer subsequently studied all the trunks in the Ambassador’s collection he might have noticed that one of them appeared to be the least trifle newer than the rest, but it would have taken a Sherlock Holmes to detect the circumstance off-hand. The trunk in question was numbered “23.”
In due time the liner arrived at Yokohama, but the mails that had been forwarded overland from Nagasaki reached there a day before her. Thus it came about that when the Ambassador’s baggage was franked through the Custom House and sent up to the Imperial Hotel at Tokio, two friends of Messrs. Krebs and Vogel were installed as guests at the last-named establishment. Thus also it came about that, thanks to ten yen well spent on a porter, the Ambassador’s trunk, No. 23, was whisked away to the nether cellars of the hotel the moment it arrived there, and—as the Ambassador himself did at an earlier stage—it virtually passes out of this story. That is to say, what must have been the ghost of the Ambassador’s trunk vanishes from mortal view; but not so the real article. When the diplomat’s baggage was supposed to be all in, and a count was taken, trunk No. 23 was found to be missing.
The row that ensued was something awful. Telegraphs and telephones were called into requisition, and imperative, not to say drastic, orders were dispatched to the Customs authorities at Yokohama, to the railway authorities at Shimbashi, and to all other authorities everywhere, commanding them to instantly produce his Excellency’s missing trunk.