“’Tis like as if some one had jammed an icicle into the small of me back,” he reflected. “I will not cry before I am hurt, but there’s more to this divertin’ adventure of mine than Johnny Kent and I ever dreamed of on the farm.” Certain conclusions were boldly obvious. His real business in China had been discovered by the same agency which had tried to slay the red-haired sailor and which had murdered McDougal. The paper had been stolen because it was a clinching proof of his active interest and interference, and perhaps also to terrify and intimidate him with the realization that intelligences, hostile and secret, were spying on him. It was futile to try to guess how the knowledge of his purpose had been disclosed. McDougal may have been watched and followed, as O’Shea had already surmised, and they had been seen talking together in Paddy Blake’s place. Some listener may have been unseen during the interview at the headquarters of Inspector Burke. To make complaint, either to the hotel management or to the police, that his room had been entered seemed a silly proceeding. To catch this kind of a thief was as hopeless as chasing a phantom. It was decidedly unpleasant to think of going to sleep in this room, for as Captain Michael O’Shea admitted to himself, with a very serious countenance: “The lad that did that trick is likely to sift in through the key-hole if he takes the notion and chop the brand into me back after slippin’ the knife into me before I can wake up to find out how dead I am. I would like to sleep in the same bed with Inspector Burke and a battery of the Royal Artillery this night, but if I lose me nerve Johnny Kent will disown me entirely.” With this he looked over his defences, like a seasoned campaigner, and assembled the chairs, the crockery, and the large tin bath-tub, together with the heavier articles of his own kit. Two chairs he placed against the door, one balanced on top of the other so that if dislodged they would topple over with a good deal of noise. The cord of the mosquito canopy he cut in twain, and so ingeniously suspended tub and crockery just inside the two windows that the wariest intruder must certainly set in motion a clamorous little avalanche. Then, having tucked his revolver under the pillow, he prudently commended his soul to his Maker and composed himself to slumber of a hair-trigger kind. The night passed without alarm and Captain Michael O’Shea roused himself out soon after daybreak to smoke three strong Manila cigars and organize himself as a strategy board, or one might have said that he was clearing for action. Convinced that the game he played was a genuinely dangerous one, he was in haste to get afloat where he belonged. To dodge the wiles of an ambushed foe was not what he liked. At this kind of warfare the Chinese mind was too nimble for him.