“So Randall, after all, must know something more than he wished to acknowledge about Robert Impey!” was O’Neil’s thought. He stood undecided for the fraction of a minute, thinking quickly and silently. Here was their opportunity to find out about the man in whom the midshipmen appeared to have taken more than a passing interest. It was really too good a chance to lose, at least, without trying. O’Neil was conscious of a half dozen rikishas which had hurriedly disentangled themselves from the score or more others outside Tokyo’s favorite sailor restaurant, and were silently waiting, their shafts lowered, for the sailors to enter. On the other side of the street a victoria was standing, the driver on the box seat, his eyes on the two Americans.
A nod from O’Neil was enough to cause him to snap his reins on the sleepy horses’ backs and in a few more seconds the boatswain’s mate had pushed the obedient Marley in and given a quick order to the mafoo at his side.
At breakneck speed the carriage rattled down the macadam road after the slowly dissolving light of the automobile.
“Bill, there ain’t the ghost of a show of catching those men,” O’Neil confided, “and if we did we’ve got nothing against them.” O’Neil glanced in amused interest at his friend, whose eyes were fairly bulging with excitement at the thought of an interesting chase after a possible criminal.
“I thought by the way you shoved me into this sea-going hack that you’d caught ’em with the goods,” declared the disappointed seaman in an injured tone.
“This gent on the box seat will soon be losing them,” the boatswain’s mate declared quietly while he gazed indifferently ahead.
The streets were crowded with people, many carrying lighted paper lanterns, and through these the carriage was being driven at a most alarming pace in the endeavor to keep the automobile in sight.
O’Neil was correct in his surmise, for presently the carriage slowed to a walk, while the little mafoo had dropped down from his seat by the driver and with many low bows and polite speeches, of which the sailors could only guess the purport, announced that, “The honorable automobile had been swallowed by a dragon, or else vanished into thin air.” At least this would have been the literal translation of the poetic speech if O’Neil and Marley could have correctly translated it into their own language.
O’Neil gave a few quick orders in his sailor Japanese to the mafoo, who nodded his smiling face in sign of understanding, and shortly the carriage turned up a less crowded street, while again the little horses were trotting gayly along, the shrill cry of the mafoo being raised periodically in warning the pedestrians plodding slowly along in the middle of the street; for in some streets in Japan sidewalks as yet are unknown luxuries.
“Why should that fellow Randall tell us he knew nothing of this Mr. Impey’s affairs?” O’Neil said, more as an introspection than with the hope that Marley could explain.