of
a youth of eighteen.

The man was thick set, with a bright roving eye. The blue jaws
suggested courage and tenacity. It was not a hard face, but it was
resolute. As he balanced the photograph, a humorous twinkle came
into his eyes.

Pure luck! If the boy had grown a moustache or a beard, a needle in
the haystack would have been soft work. To stumble upon the trail
through the agency of a bottle of whisky! Drank queer; so his
bottle had rendered him conspicuous. And now, only twenty-four
hours behind him ... that is, if he wasn't paddling by on the
return route to Hong-Kong or had dropped down to Macao. But that
possibility had been anticipated. He would have to return to
Hong-Kong; and his trail would be picked up the moment he set foot
on the Praya.

Pure luck! But for that bottle of whisky, nobody in the Hong-Kong
Hotel would have been able to identify the photograph; and at this
hour James Boyle O'Higgins would have been on the way to Yokohama,
and the trail lost for ever.

Ho-hum!

CHAPTER IX

The Hong-Kong packet lay alongside the warehouse frontage. Ah Cum
patrolled the length of the boat innumerable times, but never
letting his glance stray far from the gangplank. This was
automatically rather than thoughtfully done; habit. His mind was
busy with a resume of yesterday's unusual events.

The young man desperately ill and the girl taking care of him! Of
course, there could be only one ending to such a bout with liquor,
and that ending had come perhaps suddenly but not surprisingly. But
the girl stood outside the circle of Ah Cum's knowledge--rather
profound--of human impulses. Somehow logic could not explain her.
Why should she trouble herself over that young fool, who was
nothing to her; who, when he eventually sobered up, would not be
able to recognize her, or if he did, as something phantasmagorical?

Perhaps he should not apply the term "fool"; "unfortunate" might be
the more accurate application. Besides, he was a Yale man. He might
be unfortunate, but he would scarcely be a fool. The Yale spirit!
Ah Cum smiled whimsically. After fifteen years, to find that
peculiarly Occidental attribute--college loyalty--still alive in
his heart! A Western idea that had survived; an idea that was
merely the flower of youthful enthusiasm!

With his hands still in his sleeves, his chin down in speculation
over this phenomenon, he continued his patrol.

"Hey, you!"

Ah Cum stopped and turned. Framed i