faint, distant click of a
door-latch. Counting the entrances to that one, and sure that he had
made no mistake, he rapped. The near-by clank of the engine-room well
was the reply. He tried the handle. It was immovable. He struck a
match. It was stateroom forty-four.

Peter went to the purser's office. Light rippled through the wrinkled
green, round window, as he had hoped. He tapped lightly, and a voice
bade him to enter.

Blanchard, the purser, dwarfed, perpetually stoop-shouldered, looked up
from a clump of cargo reports and blinked through convex, thick, steel
spectacles at his interrupter. His eyes were red and dim with a
gray-blue, uncertain definition which always reminded Peter of oysters.
Blanchard had been purser of the _Vandalia_ for thirteen years, and
Peter knew that the man possessed the garrulous habits of the oyster as
well.

"Well, well!" observed Blanchard in the crisp, brittle accents of
senility; "so you're back again, eh? Well, well, well." There was no
emphasis laid on the words. They were all struck from the same piece
of ancient metal.

"Here I am!" agreed Peter with mild enthusiasm. "The bad penny!"

"Ha, ha! The bad penny returns!" The exclamation died in a futile
cough. "What are you prowlin' around ship this time o' night for, eh?
After three bells, Sparks. Time for respectable people to be fast
asleep. Or, are you leavin' the radio unwatched?"

"I'm looking for information." Peter drew himself by stiffened arms
upon the purser's single bunk.

"Lookin' for information?" The thin voice suffered the quavery
attrition of surprise. "Funny place to be lookin' for that commodity.
What's on your mind? Eh?"

"Chinamen!"

Blanchard tilted the rusted spectacles to his forehead, and the
motionless gray orbs seemed to glint with a half-dead light.
"Chinamen? What Chinamen?" The spectacles slid back into place.

"One, a woman, came aboard as we were pulling out this afternoon. Who
is she? Where is she? Where's she from? Where's she going? Who's
with her? That's what I want to clear up."

"Is that all?" squeaked Blanchard. His wrinkled, dried lips were
struggling as if with indecision. A veiled, a thinly veiled conflict
of emotions apparently was taking place behind that ancient gray mask.
"What--what for?" was the final outcome in a hesitant half-whisper.

"My private information," smiled Peter. "Just curious, that's all.
Didn't mean to pry open any dark sec