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Rh mate, half-seas over—begging your pardon—and blessed if he didn't turn in to Hawksley’s before we could make a move, and the old spider shut the door on him in a twinkling. I wanted the officers to go right over, but they must needs wait what they called a reasonable time, so it was half an hour before we pounded on the door, which Hawksley promptly opened, picking his teeth, as usual, and smiling his hyena smile. We asked for the sailor.

"'You're quite mistaken, gentlemen," said Hawksley. "No sailor—no customer at all—has come in this evening.'

"Of course, this bare-faced lie made the constables mad, and they went in at once after the man they had seen disappear, while Hawksley smoked a pipe on the doorstep. Well, they found nothing, but their report to the city marshal made him almost as mad as the rest of us. He's promised to do something by ten o'clock this morning—and if he doesn't the citizens will; there's lamp-posts handy. There, Burke, that's the story, up to date."

It was only half-past eight, as you would say ashore, we having made port by dawn, and suddenly I said to Higham:

"Lend me your pistol."

"Don't do it, Burke," he said, "don't go in there alone!"

But I was determined, and he let me have the pistol, and I crossed the street, banged the chemist's door behind me, and pocketed the key. Hawksley looked astonished, but not alarmed. When I pointed the pistol at him he even smiled, but he said nothing.

I was feeling ugly, and meant every word when I said: "Hawksley, if you don't within ten seconds tell what's become of these people, and especially my father, I'll shoot you dead, and take the consequences!"

"I wouldn't," he answered, calm as a summer sea.

"Why not?"

"Because you would be a murderer."

"It's no murder to kill a shark," I retorted.

"Ah, but your bullet would take five lives besides my own, including your father's!"

I felt obliged to lean against the locked door.

"Then he's alive?" I exclaimed.

Hawksley shrugged his shoulders and thrust his hands out