This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III THE CASE OF THE CURIO DEALER s.s. lolanthe, October 29. I MET a rum sort of customer ashore in 'Frisco to-day. At least, I was the customer, and he, as a matter of fact, was the shopman. It was one of those Chinese curio shops, that have drifted down, somehow, near to the water front. By the look of him, he was half Chinaman, a quarter negro, and the other quarter badly mixed. But his English was quite good, considering. "You go to England, Cap'n?" he asked me. "London Town, my lad," I told him. "But you can't come. We don't carry passengers. Try higher up. There's a passenger packet ahead of my ship; you'll see her with the prettily painted funnel." "I not want to come," he explained. Then he came a step nearer to me, and spoke quieter, taking a look quickly to right and left; but there was no one else in the shop. "Want to send a blox home, Cap'n--a big long blox. Long as you, Cap'n," he told me, almost in a whisper. "How much you take him for? Send him down to-night, when dark?" "Who've you been murdering now?" I said, lighting a cigarette. "I should try the bay, and have a good heavy stone or two in the sack. I'm not in the body-hiding line." The man's yellow dusky face went quite grey, and his eyes set, for an instant, in a look of complete terror. Then some sense of comprehension came into them, and he smiled, in rather a pallid kind of way. "Yo mak-a joke, Cap'n," he said. "I not murder any one. The blox contain a mummy, I have to consign to the town of London." But I had seen the look on his face, when I let off my careless squib about the corpse; and I know when a man's badly frightened. Also, why did he not consign his box of mummy to London in the ordinary way; and why so anxious to send it aboard after dark? In...