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Show ton," he said quietly. "No shore leave for anybody and steam tip. I'll only be ashore a few hours, and we'll be away ' from here again, before morning." morn-ing." Captain I.aynton was pulling dubiously dubi-ously at his chin. "Yes; and by morning the customs and quarantine officials, will be looking for the ship that .slipped out without any 'clearance !' " "I hardly think the Monleigh's arrival ar-rival will create much of a furor," replied re-plied Wallen dryly. "I've u few hours' private business ashore, and then we'll get Miss MacKay right across to Sumatra and I don't want a rowdy, drunken crew to do it with." "All right !" said Laynton. "Whatever "What-ever you say, Mr. Wallen." Wallen, with a nod, stepped aft along the deck, entered the smoking room preparatory -to descending the companionway and came face to face with Helen MacKay. "Of course," she said demurely. "I think it's perfectly splendid that you are going to run the ship all the way to Sumatra on account of little me; but X think it's sinfully selfish of you to go ashore all alone this evening when we're only going to be here for a few hours. Please, Mr. Yacht-Captain, won't you take me too?" It was the first time he would have avoided her If he could have done so. "I you that is, well, you see, Miss MacKay I I can't very well. Look here !" cried Wallen impulsively and caught her hands and held them. "I know you're more than half serious, and that you're keenly disappointed at not going ashore. It's true I've been a beast today ; but I I've been worried. This morning I had almost made up my mind to run to Sumatra, and not touch here at all; but there's a little business that I felt I must attend to this evening, and well, that's what I'm going ashore for. You you understand, un-derstand, I'm sure, Miss MacKay." Her eyes widened, partly in merriment merri-ment at this confusion, partly in a puzzled way. "Oh !" there was only bewilderment in her eyes now. "I I'm not quite called out merrily. "Singapore means 'the city of lions,' you know. Don't run your head into one of their mouths;" And with a wave of her hand he was gone. It brought a sudden, premonitory shock to Wallen and then a grim, cohl smile. The city of lions! It was only a joke with her, a little light-hearted light-hearted fling with him. Cod knew 'A might prove a ghastly reality! At first, when he had found that paper on his cabin floor, lie had thought, as lie had told her. that he would take her straight to Sumatra, get her off the ship ; and then second thoughts hail convinced him that the danger which threatened him did not threaten her. She was safe there on board. Put this thing it was not only the personal peril it rose a shuddering, mocking barrier between them! Mocking? Mock-ing? Yes! He or they, the devil or devils who had murdered his father, were playing with him as a cat plays with a mouse! Why had nothing happened to him in i those three days from Pobi, while he ' had been living in a fool's paradise of Imagined security? His lips thinned into a straight line. Well, perhaps they would play too long! He would settle It tonight. When he came back to the ship he would know or there would be one less scoundrel In Singapore! That was what he was going for now to Drink-House Stun of Singapore. Who was it aboard the Monleigh who had put that paper under his cabin door? She had called him grumpy all that day and all that day he had been studying the crew, cataloguing cata-loguing in his mind every man aboard. It could not well be all a plot involving in-volving the whole ship and crew seemed out of the question. Not one of the officers had he any reason to suspect above the others I though it was true, and a little disturbing dis-turbing now, that Captain Laynton, In turning over his father's effects, had not included the fatal pistol that, if the story were true, was obviously his father's property but that might readily have been but an oversight. There was Mott, who had grown more surly every day. x 'Wallen shook his head. Mott's attitude at-titude was easily accounted for the man, as witness the ride at Pobi, if it had not been glaringly evident on board since then, was attentive to Misa MacKay, and resented his, Wallen's, usurpation of what he evidently considered con-sidered his prerogative. What of the crew then? They were a hard lot and a polyglot poly-glot one ! The English and Americans amongst them had every appearance of being the sweepings of the slums of London, Lon-don, Liverpool, New York, and, foi men of their ilk, the more vicious seaports sea-ports of the far East. The rest were of every nationality two of the coal-passers coal-passers were Chinese coolies, the steward stew-ard was from the West Indies, the cook was a Frenchman from Port Said, and two Danes, a Swede, a Kanaka, from the Sandwich islands, and three Japanese completed the roster. ros-ter. Wallen looked up, and fixed his eyes speculatively on his Chinese boatman, They were almost at the landing. "You sabe Drink-House Sam?" he demanded abruptly. The Chinaman smirked knowingly, "Me sabe," he replied. "All right," said Wallen. "You take me there. But first, you take me where the stores are, I want to buy some things, and I don't know my waj about." "Me sabe," said the Chinaitwn again, "All same velly glood guide." He proved to be. Withlfi half ac hour after landing, Wallen had completed com-pleted the purchase of an excellent automatic au-tomatic pistol and ammunition, and I was following the Chinaman back along a dark street near the water- front. Another few minutes of twist-ings twist-ings and turnings, and the Chinaman had halted before an uninviting-looking hostelry in an equally uninviting-looking uninviting-looking neighborhood. "Dlink-House Sam's," announced the guide. "Blim-bly you all same go back ship? Me wait?" "No," said Wallen, as he paid the other. "That's all. Good-night, John !" The Chinaman disappeared. Wallen surveyed the building before be-fore which he stood. It was one oi those i.vasternized-European wooden structures, two stories high, the front rooms on the second story opening directly di-rectly onto the veranda. With the general gen-eral air of being disreputa'bly out at elbows, it bore all the earmarks of a sailor's boarding house of the lowest type. Wallen stepped forward, pushed the bar-room door open, and entered. A bar ran down one side; a score-of score-of small tables occupied the main portion por-tion of the room, and around these were clustered some twenty-five oi thirty rough-looking hands, evidently on shore leave from the harbor's shipping ship-ping and making the most of it. Wallen's visit to "Drink-House "Drink-House Sam's" saloon complicates com-plicates matters. j (TO HE CONTINUED.) - n t A SCRAP OF PAPER. j fiynop.sis fctaci-y Waller), first male of t lie liark Upolo. In the Java Kft.'l, i.4 the sole survivor of the crew, ail victims of yellow fever. Thitf u'ah. Chinese sailor, last man to die. tellH Wallen he and five other Chinamen were sent aboard by "In-lnk-Hoiine Sam," no-torloUH no-torloUH character of Singapore, to kill him. This recalls to Wallen an Incident of tils childhood which Heems ronnceled wth the e-fes-Blon. While delirious, Wallen enters en-ters tn the ship's Iok Hie fact of his death find abandons the vessel tn a small hoat. Wallen's boat drifts to the Island of Arru and a Scottish trader there, MacKnltfht, cares for him. Learning that a ship Is in port on the other side of the Island, twenty miles away, Watlen, thoiiKli unfit for the task, starts to reach It, but falls exhausted on the trail. There he is found by a man and woman who are from the ship he was trying to reach. Mott first male, and Helen MacKay, a passenger. They convey htm to the vessel. The ship proves to be a small tramp steamer, the Monleish, Captain Laynton. Laynton tells Wallen the vessel had been chartered char-tered hy Wallen's father to find him, the father knowing his son to he in grave danger because of a long-standing feud betwfn the elder Wallen and a notorious pirate, Ram Gulab Singh. Laynton also Informs him of the death of his father, explaining that the fatality was believed to be an accident. Wallen instantly associates his father's fa-ther's death with the Chinaman's confession on the Upolo. He takes over the charter of the vessel and sails for Singapore. Helen MacKay explains that she is on a visit to an aunt in Sumatra. Wallen agrees to take her there, just tonchng at Singapore, where he is determined to fathom the mystery of "Drink-House "Drink-House Sam's" enmity. CHAPTER IV Continued. 6 And so they had passed those days, and it was the fourth night now since he had come aboard and tomorrow they would be in Singapore. He lay tossing in his bunk. A tumult of thought kept his brain active and alert. Singapore ! What would Singapore Singa-pore bring him? Who was this Drink-Ilouse Drink-Ilouse Sam? It mattered a great deal now a great deal more than It had mattered before. For before, with a sort of berserk, rage, he had been willing to take a gambler's chance, and, win or lose, stake his life against this devil, whoever who-ever he might be, that had tried to strike hlra down without warnirg. without a chance to defend h'inself; but now his life meant more to him he wanted to live for her. "Thank God," he muttered, "that nt least everything Is all right on hoard here !" He turned over and lay for perhaps ten minutes, trying to compose himself , to sleep but his eyes insisted on remaining re-maining fastened on a queer little white patch by the door. What was it? It wasn't the moonlight through the porthole reflecting on anything. He raised himself up on his elbow several times to make sure of that. Finally, in a fretful way, he got out of his bunk to investigate. It was a piece of paper that had evidently been pushed in under the threshold but whether ten minutes or two hours ago he had no idea. WTallen picked up the paper, switched on the light and suddenly it seemed as though his immediate surroundings had vanished, and he was living again a scene of many years ago. He was standing on the stairway of that grim, gray, lonely house in the dead of night, u trembling child in his nightclothes, and below in the hall, holding a candle, was his father, and Gunga was bending over a form on the floor, and his father's fa-ther's voice was in his ears : "Look again, Gunga. Has he one finger on the left hand?" And then Gunga's answer: "I have looked, sahib, and the hand is whole." Wallen's face was strangely white. On the piece of parchment that he held was crudely traced a human hand, and the fingers, save for the forefinger, had the appearance of having been hacked away. CHAPTER V. Drink-House Sam of Singapore. There are two harbors at Singapore; one opposite the town, which although little more than an open roadstead where the ships discharge by means of lighters, affords a safe and convenient anchorage; the other, land-locked, fringed with wharves and warehouses, lies three miles west. It was already dusk when the Monleigh, Mon-leigh, finding a berth amongst a nest of junks, wiling and steam craft of all descript'tfi'is and all nationalities, dropped anchor In the roadstead at Singapore. Wallen paused for a final word on the threshold of Captain Laynton's cabin.' i "It's understood, then, Captain Layn- "Me Sabe," He Replied. sure I understand. I thought it was quite settled when we left Pobi that we should come here." "Yes, so it was." he acknowledged awkwardly. He bit his lips. He could not tell her that his brain was sick with the effort to grapple with a peril that he knew now beyond ! question lurked aboard the ship, and j that, because it was unseen, because he could not identify it in the form of any one, or two. or all aboard the ship and fight it in the open, had made the hours since that morning like a hideous nightmare ! "I'll I'll explain tomorrow, Miss MacKay," he said hurriedly. "Y'ou mustn't " "I'm not !" she laughed. "I'm only keeping you." And pushing him p'ay-fully p'ay-fully toward the companionway, she ran out onto the deck. A moment later, Wallen. at the foot of the ship's ladder, was running his eye sharply over the half score of shore boats that pushed and bumped against each other and the gangway's platform, and whose occupants at the prospect of a fare were screaming and yelling in a frantic effort to attract at-tract his special and undivided attention. atten-tion. A Malay boatman had the strategic strate-gic position alongside the grating. Wallen unceremoniously flushed the craft away with his foot, and beckoned beck-oned to a Chinaman who was next in line. As he clambered Into the boat he looked up. Helen MacKay was leaning over the rail of the hoat deck. "Take good care of yourself!" she |