The liner tarried a day and a half over cargo at Singapore, and the _Laisang_ got into Hong-Kong nearly twenty-four hours ahead of her. Mr. Vogel learned the fact the moment the German liner arrived at the big China port, and his heart was filled with sickening apprehension. He had been dreaming of trunks full of cigars--German steel trunks with red bands, and numbered with big white characters--ever since he left Singapore. He had marked off the state-room wherein, until the proper psychological moment, the extra trunks--if any--could be stored safely. He had mentally arranged every other detail in his projected bid for fortune, and had even marked down those of his comrades who should be selected as his accomplices. He had counted over, time and time again, the round thousand marks that would be his personal profit out of every trunk full of cigars he could pass through the Yokohama Customs as the baggage of the returning Ambassador. He did all this while still faithfully, if mechanically, discharging his onerous duties as steward and master of the trombone. [Illustration: “A NOTE WAS HANDED TO HIM BY A CHINESE MESSENGER.”] It was not until a few hours after the arrival of the steamer in Hong-Kong--hours that felt like ages--that Vogel heard from Krebs. A note was handed to him by a Chinese messenger boy, and Vogel opened it with feverish impatience. Mr. Krebs wrote with that laconic brevity of diction which indicates the resourceful mind. “Will send you one trunk.--O. K.,” it read. Mr. Vogel pondered for a moment whether “O. K.” meant Oscar Krebs or “All correct” (American fashion); then he heaved a great sigh of relief as he realized that it was all the same. That evening Mr. Krebs came on board unostentatiously, and a big trunk wrapped in rough sacking came with him, and was temporarily stowed away by Mr. Vogel in one of the state-rooms which held some of the Ambassador’s spare boxes. Thence it was subsequently carried to another cabin, where there were some spare things of Mr. Vogel’s. Had a hypercritical observer subsequently studied all the trunks in the Ambassador’s collection he might have noticed that one of them appeared to be the least trifle newer than the rest, but it would have taken a Sherlock Holmes to detect the circumstance off-hand. The trunk in question was numbered “23.”