carefully locked and bolted the door, lifted the zinc flap back
from the top of the crate of "Oriental goods," and displayed the
face of the dead Chinaman. Also he pointed to the Chinese
characters on the wooden lid of the crate.

"What does these hen scratches mean?" demanded Scraggs.

"This man is named Ah Ghow and he belongs to the Hop Sing tong."

"How about his pal here?"

"That man is evidently Ng Chong Yip. He is also a Hop Sing man."

Captain Scraggs wrote it down. "All right," he said cheerily;
"much obliged. Now, what I want to know is what the Hop Sing tong
means by shipping the departed brethren by freight? They go to
work an' fix 'em up nice so's they'll keep, packs 'em away in a
zinc coffin, inside a nice plain wood box, labels 'em 'Oriental
goods,' and consigns 'em to the Gin Seng Company, 714 Dupont
Street, San Francisco. Now why are these two countrymen o' yours
shipped by freight--where, by the way, they goes astray, for some
reason that I don't know nothin' about, an' I buys 'em up at a
old horse sale?"

Gin Seng shrugged his shoulders and replied that he didn't
understand.

"You lie," snarled Captain Scraggs. "You savey all right, you fat
old idol, you! It's because if the railroad company knew these
two boxes contained dead corpses they'd a-soaked the relatives,