“Back, men, all of you. Do you realize what you are doing?” Sydney’s and Phil’s voices were tense with anger and excitement as they pressed the sailors away from their foes. “You, O’Neil, leading this disgraceful row!” Phil cried out accusingly and in tones that at the same time expressed the lad’s bitter disappointment upon seeing the boatswain’s mate involved in what appeared to him to be a disorderly fight against well-intentioned Japanese citizens.
“It wasn’t O’Neil, sir, what started it.” Bill Marley’s voice was raised excitedly. “This is what they was dragging on the stage, sir, wiping their clogs on, and the man what carried it wasn’t no Jap. I can take my oath on that. He ‘beat it’ when he seen there was a row on.”
The midshipmen opened their eyes in amazement as Marley showed the tattered American flag in the defense of which the American sailors from all over the theatre had collected.
“Never mind that now!” Phil waved for silence as several excited voices were raised expressing forcibly the desire to be allowed to clean out the place and revenge the insult to their flag.
“Can’t you see by Marley’s evidence that it was fixed up on you?” Phil exclaimed, grasping at a straw. “The man with the flag was not a Japanese. Who was he? A sneaking, cowardly foreigner, anxious to bring about a conflict between you American sailors and the citizens of Japan.” Phil was eloquent in his anger and mortification. “And you, led into the trap like lambs. Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?”
“What could we’ve done, sir?” An oppressive silence had descended upon the sailors; but a single one mustered up courage to half defend his companions’ actions. “We couldn’t just sit tight and watch; now could we, sir?” This last was said appealingly.
“No. I suppose it was natural,” Phil admitted grudgingly, “but now you know that you’ve been ‘buncoed,’ just turn about there and we will try to smuggle you out without another disturbance.”
Takishima was at a loss to understand the cause of the trouble. His great fear was that it had come about through the general ill feeling being spread broadcast in Japan by the Japanese newspaper, the “Shimbunshi.” As Marley called the midshipmen’s attention to the flag, the lieutenant turned about hastily, his face showing perplexity.
“An American flag,” he exclaimed in English. “I can’t understand. This is a scene from our last war. Could it have been a plot? You say the man who carried it was a foreigner. Yes, it was a plot, devised to bring on a fight between you and our people.”
Meanwhile Impey, as he lay unconscious on the floor of his office with the two men who had endeavored to take from him the stolen document, themselves senseless near him, might, if he had known, felt proud of the plot which had all but succeeded in precipitating a riot. While the events at the theatre were taking place the two defeated secret service men slowly came to consciousness. Impey lay inert, half dead on the floor. They rose defeated, mystified, for neither had seen his assailant. The precious document had gone. They quietly slunk off down the stairs to lay before their chief, Captain Inaba, the sad story of their failure after having the lost paper within their grasp.