one far Eastern port and another--a small
vessel. Her list includes a master, or captain, and a crew of
eighteen--I needn't trouble you with their names, except in two
instances, which I'll refer to presently. But here are the names of
Noah Quick, Salter Quick--set down as passengers. Passengers!--not
members of the crew. Nothing in the list of the crew strikes me but
the two names I spoke of, and that I'll now refer to. The first name
will have an interest for Mr. Middlebrook. It's Netherfield."

"Netherfield!" I exclaimed. "The name----"

"That Salter Quick asked you particular questions about when he met
you on the headlands, Mr. Middlebrook," answered Scarterfield, with a
knowing look, "and that he was very anxious to get some news of
William Netherfield, deck-hand, of Blyth, Northumberland--that's the
name on the list of those who were aboard the _Elizabeth Robinson_
when she went out of Hong-Kong--and disappeared forever!"

"Of Blyth?" remarked Mr. Cazalette. "Um!--Blyth lies some miles to the
southward."

"I'm aware of it, sir," said Scarterfield, "and I propose to visit the
place when I have made certain inquiries about this region. But I hope
you appreciate the extraordinary coincidence, gentlemen? In October,
1907, Salter Quick is on a tramp steamer in the Yellow Sea in company,
more or less intimate, with a sailor-man from Blyth, in
Northumberland, whose name is Netherfield: in March, 1912, he is on
the sea-coast near Alnmouth, asking anxiously if anybody knows of a
churchyard or churchyards in these parts where people of the name of
Netherfield are buried? Why? What had the man Netherfield who was with
Salter Quick in Chinese waters in 1907 got to do with Salter Quick's
presence here five years later?"

Nobody attempted to answer these questions, and presently I put one
for myself.

"You spoke of two names on the list as striking you with some
significance," I said. "Netherfield is one. What is the other?"

"That of a Chinaman," he replied promptly, referring to his
documents. "Set down as cook--I'm told most of those coasting steamers
in that part of the world carry Chinamen as cooks. Chuh Fen--that's
the name. And why it's significant to me, when all the rest aren't, is
this--during the course of my inquiries at Lloyds, I learnt that about
three years ago a certain Chinaman, calling himself Chuh Fen, dropped
in at Lloyds and was very anxious to know if the steamer _Elizabeth
Robinson_, which saile