Captain Scraggs took his visitor inside the little cabin, carefully locked and bolted the door, lifted the zinc flap back from the top of the crate of "Oriental goods," and displayed the face of the dead Chinaman. Also he pointed to the Chinese characters on the wooden lid of the crate. "What does these hen scratches mean?" demanded Scraggs. "This man is named Ah Ghow and he belongs to the Hop Sing tong." "How about his pal here?" "That man is evidently Ng Chong Yip. He is also a Hop Sing man." Captain Scraggs wrote it down. "All right," he said cheerily; "much obliged. Now, what I want to know is what the Hop Sing tong means by shipping the departed brethren by freight? They go to work an' fix 'em up nice so's they'll keep, packs 'em away in a zinc coffin, inside a nice plain wood box, labels 'em 'Oriental goods,' and consigns 'em to the Gin Seng Company, 714 Dupont Street, San Francisco. Now why are these two countrymen o' yours shipped by freight--where, by the way, they goes astray, for some reason that I don't know nothin' about, an' I buys 'em up at a old horse sale?" Gin Seng shrugged his shoulders and replied that he didn't understand. "You lie," snarled Captain Scraggs. "You savey all right, you fat old idol, you! It's because if the railroad company knew these two boxes contained dead corpses they'd a-soaked the relatives, which is you, one full fare each from wherever these two dead ones comes from, just the same as though they was alive an' well. But you has 'em shipped by freight, an' aims to spend a dollar an' thirty cents each on 'em, by 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.