admission that I knew the report was false, he grasped at the
latter alternative, and, seeing that it was impossible to prevent me
going in the _Kut Sang_, determined to make friends with me and disarm
whatever suspicions I might have regarding him. It seemed a tenable
theory, but I could not account for all this bother on his part because
James Augustus Trenholm, of the Amalgamated Press, took passage in the
_Kut Sang_.

It seemed absurd to me that Meeker or anybody else would be concerned
because I was leaving Manila for Hong-Kong. It was plain enough that
he, or somebody, had done their best to keep me from sailing in the
_Kut Sang_. That it was the Rev. Luther Meeker there could be little
doubt, but the mystery lay in what his motives could be, or who he
was acting for, and it was beyond me to say why there should be any
objection to my sailing in the steamer _Kut Sang_ that afternoon.

While I was thinking these things over he was keeping up a running
conversation about trivial matters, and we were well into the curried
lamb and getting along famously when he asked a question which put me on
my guard at once, and set me groping mentally for a solution of the
puzzle.

"Did you deliver your letter?" he asked, casually, but I saw in an
instant that he had been paving the conversational way all along for that
very question.

"What letter?" I asked, although I knew the one he meant.

He looked at me craftily, with what I took for a bit of surprise that I
did not know the letter he referred to, or that he expected me to deceive
him.

"Perhaps I shouldn't mention it, for it may recall our little
unpleasantness this morning," he sent back. "Perhaps it was my fault, my
dear sir, in speaking to you when I picked it up, and I certainly
want to assure you that I was not put out by your disinclination to begin
an acquaintance with a stranger."

"Haven't the slightest idea of what you are talking about," I said
lightly, and professing ignorance in my puzzled expression.

"The letter you dropped in the bus." He fairly hurled the sentence at me,
although his voice was low and he was pretending to have trouble with the
saltcellar.

"Oh! To be sure, the letter I dropped in the bus, and which you so kindly
picked up for me. I have an idea that I was rather gruff at the time, and
not at all inclined to appreciate the service you performed. I might have
lost it entirely but for you, so I'll thank you now, with an apology."