However, Hopkins himself was apparently confident that he would be taken, for next morning at breakfast he joined their table, quite unasked, and kept forcing his conversation on the Doctor. Now there was one thing the Doctor would never do, and that was, talk at breakfast; not even till he had had his after-breakfast pipe was it safe to address him, and he happened to be especially "livery" that morning. He was boiling over with wrath when the meal was over. "Bad temper, I suppose it is," growled the Doctor, as, later, he jumped into a hansom and drove to the U.S. Legation; "a villainous liver that makes me dislike that fellow. At any rate, if he comes with us we had better know all about him." At the Embassy he managed to get hold of several old navy lists, and found the name Reginald S. Hopkins given as a cadet on board the _Monocacy_ in 1885, but no mention of it in later years. He enquired whether the Naval Attaché was in the building, and, as luck would have it, he was, and could give the Doctor more information. "A naval officer yourself, Doctor?" said the Attaché, looking at his card. "Yes; belong to the ’pirate-catchers’, as we are called, and this man Hopkins is very anxious to join us." "Well, I see by my books that he retired, by permission, from the _Monocacy_ in 1885." "I found that out down below; but you know nothing more about him, I suppose?" "Well, not officially, you know; but three or four years ago I was Flag Lieutenant of our Asiatic squadron, and we heard that he had been mixed up with the China-Japanese war, was in a Chinese ship at the battle of Yalu, and was afterwards said to have made a pile of money by buying the wrecked ships and selling them as old iron. He’d probably be a useful man for you to get hold of, I should think." "I think he would," said the Doctor gravely. "I suppose you never met him?" "No, never; but there were rumours that he led a wild kind of adventurous life among the Chinese with two partners, an Englishman and a German, prospecting for mines or running expeditions against rebellious provincial rebels. They used to be called the ’Mysterious Three’ at the Tientsin Club, if I remember rightly, and were said to be hand in glove with many of the highest officials." "It was a bad temper and a worse liver before," muttered the Doctor, as he drove away and directed the cab to a well-known detective agent, "but after hearing this—whether it’s curiosity or suspicion, I’m going to find out more about that young man."