“No,” said the captain, “I ain’t—not altogether. Good morning.”
The soldiers consulted one another with clever glances. The captain whistled easily, for he was quite sure now that they had come to arrest Davydoff. “Good morning,” he repeated.
The pair started down the walk to the gate, but turned to bow. As they did so, the Yankee seemed to see their stoop grow rigid. They gazed over his head to the door of the bungalow. He turned. Behind him in the doorway stood what seemed to be a Jap—a man wooden-shoed, in a gray kimono, a derby hat squashed flat over his ears—Davydoff returned.
“Your boss is pretty obligin’,” called the captain to the soldiers. “Without my askin’ he seems to have telegraphed Ikeda in Seoul to come back and carry my letters. An’ he’s come.”
But the soldiers had started back up the garden walk on a run.
“Hi! Pat,” called the captain, “Sic ’em, Pat, sic ’em!” he shouted.
A chain in the big dog-house rattled, and before the emissaries had paced ten yards, their twin brown gaiters were flying across the garden and swinging over the rail fence, before the galumphing Kuropatkin.
“I hev a great pity fer ye,” imitated the captain. “They expect all lies or all truth,” he observed, turning to the bewildered spy. “Mix ’em, an’ yer ken wig a yeller-belly—if ye hev an intelligent b’ar.”
The youth exclaimed, trembling; “I have heard all. The two Japanese there know me for an informer. It is danger to remain here.”
“It’s a bullet fer ye on the bund tomorrow,” said the captain, thoughtfully eying him, and “jail fer me.”