Page:Mr. Wu (IA mrwumilnlouisejo00milniala).pdf/170

 A window that led from the balcony to the room beyond was open, and Robert Gregory and his wife were sitting in there, not silent like the two on the verandah, but going together over and over again a dozen sorry theories of their son's disappearance, a dozen feverish plans for his rescue.

The island and the mainland beyond had been well beaten by now. All the Europeans, the Government House, the Civil Service, residents, officials big and small, had tried to help in the search. For Robert Gregory was a power in Hong Kong, and Mrs. Gregory was well liked. And many of the natives were trying, too, to help in the search, or seemed to be.

In the Company's offices on the bund, a light still burned in the manager's room, and Holman and William Simpson sat there in earnest, anxious conclave.

"Nothing could look much blacker," Simpson was saying.

"Nothing."

"The bottom seems about out!"

Holman nodded grimly.

And indeed the affairs of the great Company seemed desperate, and all in the last few weeks, chiefly in the last few days! Strike had followed strike among the dock hands, inexcusably, inexplicably. Demands for increased wages, made when some important contract, already overdelayed, must be fulfilled quickly, or lost, were scarcely acceded to when they were renewed. It looked as if their hands were determined to ruin and shut down the Company by which they all lived and that had treated and paid them well for years. It was one of Robert Gregory's boasts that he believed in keeping his tools bright and his machinery well oiled. The ''Fee Chow'' must not miss the next morning's tide, and yet her