"'Now, by God! this is the end. My gun's gone, too; right out from under lock and key, by God! I been talking with Bach this morning. Not to let on, I had him in to clean my lamp. There's more ways than one, he says, and so do I.'" McCord closed the book and dropped it on the table. "Finis," he said. "The rest is blank paper." "Well!" I will confess I felt much better than I had for some time past. "There's _one_ 'mystery of the sea' gone to pot, at any rate. And now, if you don't mind, I think I'll have another of your nips, McCord." He pushed my glass across the table and got up, and behind his back his shoulder rose to scour the corners of the room, like an incorruptible sentinel. I forgot to take up my gin, watching him. After an uneasy minute or so he came back to the table and pressed the tip of a forefinger on the book. "Ridgeway," he said, "you don't seem to understand. This particular 'mystery of the sea' hasn't been scratched yet--not even _scratched_, Ridgeway." He sat down and leaned forward, fixing me with a didactic finger. "What happened?" "Well, I have an idea the 'barbarian' got them, when it came to the pinch." "And let the--remains over the side?" "I should say." "And then they came back and got the 'barbarian' and let _him_ over the side, eh? There were none left, you remember." "Oh, good Lord, I don't know!" I flared with a childish resentment at this catechising of his. But his finger remained there, challenging. "I do," he announced. "The Chinaman put them over the side, as we have said. And then, after that, he died--of wounds about the head." "So?" I had still sarcasm. "You will remember," he went on, "that the skipper did not happen to mention a cat, a _yellow_ cat, in his confessions." "McCord," I begged him, "please drop it. Why in thunder _should_ he mention a cat?" "True. Why _should_ he mention a cat? I think one of the reasons why he should _not_ mention a cat is because there did not happen to be a cat aboard at that time." "Oh, all right!" I reached out and pulled the bottle to my side of the table. Then I took out my watch. "If you don't mind," I suggested, "I think we'd better be going ashore. I've got to get to my office rather early in the morning. What do you say?" He said nothing for the moment, but his finger had dropped. He leaned back and stared straight into the core of the light above, his eyes squinting. "He would have been from the south of China, probably." He seemed to be talking to himself. "There's a considerable sprinkling of the belief down there, I've heard. It's an uncanny business--this transmigration of souls--" Personally, I had had enough of it. McCord's fingers came groping across the table for the bottle. I picked it up hastily and let it go through the open companionway, where it died with a faint gurgle, out somewhere on the river.