markin' 'em 'Oriental Goods.'
Helluva way to treat a relation. Now, looky here, you bloody
heathen. It'll cost you just five hundred dollars to recover
these two stiffs, an' close my mouth. If you don't come through
I'll make a belch t' th' newspapers an' they'll keel haul an'
skull-drag th' Chinese Six Companies an' the Hop Sing tong
through the courts for evadin' th' laws o' th' Interstate
Commerce Commission, an' make 'em look like monkeys generally.
An' then th' police'll get wind of it. Savey, policee-man, you
fat old murderer? Th' price I'm askin' is cheap, Charley. How do
I know but what these two poor boys has been murdered in cold
blood? There's somethin' rotten in Denmark, my bully boy, an'
you'll save time an' trouble an' money by diggin' up five hundred
dollars."

Gin Seng said he would go back to Chinatown and consult with his
company. For reasons of his own he was badly frightened.

Scarce had he departed before the watchful eye of Captain Scraggs
observed Mr. Gibney and McGuffey in the offing, a block away.
When they came aboard they found Captain Scraggs on top of the
house, seated on an upturned fire bucket, smoking pensively and
gazing across the bay with an assumption of lamblike innocence on
his fox face.

At the suggestion of Scraggs, Gibney and McGuffey nailed up the
box of "Oriental Goods," set both boxes out on the main deck,
aft, and covered them with a tarpaulin. For about an hour
thereafter all three sat around the little cabin table, talking,
and presently it became evident, to Mr. Gibney's practiced eye,
that Captain Scraggs had something on his mind. Mr. Gibney,
suspecting that it could be nothing honest, was surprised, to say
the least, when Captain Scraggs made a clean breast of his
proposition.

"Gib--an' you, too, McGuffey. I been thinkin' this thing over,
an' as master o' this ship an' the one who does the biddin' in o'
these two Chinks at th' sale, it's up to me t' try an' bring you
both out with a profit, an' I think th' sellin' should be left to
me. I won't hide nothin' from you boys. I'm a-willin' to take a
chance that I can sell them two cadavers to some horsepital f'r
dissection purposes, an' get more outer th' deal than, you can,
Gib, by passin' 'em off as floaters. I'm a-willin' to give you
an' McGuffey a five-dollar profit over an' above your investment,
an' take over th' property myself, just f'r a flyer, an' to
sorter add a sportin' interest to an otherwise humdrum