Certainly he was far finer-looking than either Hunt or Gawthrop--that is the way her friend interpreted the girl's sigh. "And he's cleverer too," said the older woman acutely, "nevertheless----" And "nevertheless" was very easy to interpret. "Which will it be, I wonder?" said her friend. The solution lay on the knees of the gods, and in the hands of Shanghai Smith. That night Hunt met Gardiner at the club by chance, and stayed with him all the evening. "What are you looking so down about?" asked the newspaper man. "You are drinking too much. Ease up on it." Indeed, Hunt was drinking too much. He drank enough to loosen his tongue. "Damn that Gawthrop," he said. "Ah, I see," cried Gardiner; "is that it?" And Hunt nodded sulkily. Then he wept. "If he was only out of the way," he moaned, "I believe I could work the racket with her." Gardiner shrugged his shoulders. "Ah, well, buck up. Come on. I'm going to the office." They walked into Kearney Street and turned east towards the _Chronicle_ offices. As they passed Bush Street a very hard-looking citizen nodded to Gardiner. "Who's that?" asked Hunt. "Don't you know him? That's Shanghai Smith, the biggest scoundrel unhung. He's a sailors' crimp, and a daylight robber, and a man with a 'pull.'" Certainly Smith had some political power. In the United States it is impossible to avoid politics and the police at the same time, except by lavish bribery. "And why do they call him 'Shanghai'?" asked Hunt. "Because he 'shanghais' men," answered Gardiner, "and nowadays that means drugging a man and putting him aboard some ship. Oh, he's a daisy. He'd ship your dad to New York round the Horn if there was money in it. When a man disappears in this city we look first in the morgue, and then make inquiries at Smith's." "I wish Gawthrop was in the morgue, I do," said Hunt "And here I'll say good-night. You're a good chap, Gardiner, if you are a newspaper man, and it's been a relief to talk to you, so it has." They shook hands and parted, but Gardiner had not walked ten yards before he turned and came back. His eyes glittered curiously. Hunt's were blurred and fishy. He had certainly taken a little too much. Gardiner wondered if he had taken too much to remember in the morning what happened now. "You wish he was in the morgue, eh?" "I do," said Hunt firmly. "I do." "Why not get him shanghaied?" asked Gardiner, and he walked away very swiftly, and did not return when Hunt called to him. "By the Great Horn Spoon and the tail of the Sacred Bull, I'll not give her up," said Gardiner; "certainly not to a man like Hunt, or to a dude like Gawthrop. Sooner than that I'll write to the old man and squeal. He'll rub it in, but after all he is the dad, and she----" Ah, she was everything. "Let the best man win. I'm in the game, after all," said Gardiner. "And to think if she hadn't recognised me to-day I'd have thrown it up!"