A strange idea seized him: did the portmanteau really belong to the man who had given it to him? Had he been the innocent receiver of stolen goods from some one who wished to escape detection? He recalled now that he had heard stories of robbery of luggage by thieves “Sydney ducks”—on the deserted wharves, and remembered, too,—he could not tell why the thought had escaped him before,—that the man had spoken with an English accent. But the next moment he recalled his frank and open manner, and his mind cleared of all unworthy suspicion. It was more than likely that his benefactor had taken this delicate way of making a free, permanent gift for that temporary service. Yet he smiled faintly at the return of that youthful optimism which had caused him so much suffering.

Nevertheless, something must be done: he must try to find the man; still more important, he must seek work before this dubious loan was further encroached upon. He restrapped the portmanteau and replaced it under the table, locked the door, gave the key to the office clerk, saying that any one who called upon him was to await his return, and sallied forth. A fresh wind and a blue sky of scudding clouds were all that remained of last night’s storm. As he made his way to the fateful wharf, still deserted except by an occasional “wharf-rat,”—as the longshore vagrant or petty thief was called,—he wondered at his own temerity of last night, and the trustfulness of his friend in yielding up his portmanteau to a stranger in such a place. A low drinking saloon, feebly disguised as a junk shop, stood at the corner, with slimy green steps leading to the water.

The wharf was slowly decaying, and here and there were occasional gaps in the planking, as dangerous as the one from which he had escaped the night before. He thought again of the warning he might have given to the stranger; but he reflected that as a seafaring man he must have been familiar with the locality where he had landed. But had he landed there? To Randolph’s astonishment, there was no sign or trace of any late occupation of the wharf, and the ship whose crossyards he had seen dimly through the darkness the night before was no longer there. She might have “warped out” in the early morning, but there was no trace of her in the stream or offing beyond. A bark and brig quite dismantled at an adjacent wharf seemed to accent the loneliness. Beyond, the open channel between him and Verba Buena Island was racing with white-maned seas and sparkling in the shifting sunbeams. The scudding clouds above him drove down the steel-blue sky. The lateen sails of the Italian fishing boats were like shreds of cloud, too, blown over the blue and distant bay. His ears sang, his eyes blinked, his pulses throbbed, with the untiring, fierce activity of a San Francisco day.

With something of its restlessness he hurried back to the hotel. Still the stranger was not there, and no one had called for him. The room had been put in order; the portmanteau, that sole connecting link with his last night’s experience, was under the table. He drew it out again, and again subjected it to a minute examination. A few toilet articles, not of the best quality, which he had overlooked at first, the linen, the buckskin purse, the memorandum book, and the suit of clothes he stood in, still comprised all he knew of his benefactor. He counted the money in the purse; it amounted, with the Bank of England notes, to about seventy dollars, as he could roughly guess. There was a scrap of paper, the torn-off margin of a newspaper, lying in the purse, with an address hastily scribbled in pencil. It gave, however, no name, only a number: “85 California Street.” It might be a clue. He put it, with the purse, carefully in his pocket, and after hurriedly partaking of his forgotten breakfast, again started out.

He presently found himself in the main thoroughfare of last night, which he now knew to be Montgomery Street. It was more thronged than then, but he failed to be impressed, as then, with the selfish activity of the crowd. Yet he was half conscious that his own brighter fortune, more decent attire, and satisfied hunger had something to do with this change, and he glanced hurriedly at the druggist’s broad plate-glass windows, with a faint hope that the young girl whose amused pity he had awakened might be there again. He found California Street quickly, and in a few moments he stood before No. 85. He was a little disturbed to find it a rather large building, and that it bore the inscription “Bank.” Then came the usual shock to his mercurial temperament, and for the first time he began to consider the absurd hopelessness of his clue.

He, however, entered desperately, and approaching the window of the receiving teller, put the question he had formulated in his mind: Could they give him any information concerning a customer or correspondent who had just arrived in San Francisco and was putting up at the Niantic Hotel, room 74? He felt his face flushing, but, to his astonishment, the clerk manifested no surprise. “And you don’t know his name?” said the clerk quietly. “Wait a moment.” He moved away, and Randolph saw him speaking to one of the other clerks, who consulted a large register. In a few minutes he returned. “We don’t have many customers,” he began politely, “who leave only their hotel-room addresses,” when he was interrupted by a mumbling protest from one of the other clerks. “That’s very different,” he replied to his fellow clerk, and then turned to Randolph. “I’m afraid we cannot help you; but I’ll make other inquiries if you’ll come back in ten minutes.” Satisfied to be relieved from the present perils of his questioning, and doubtful of returning, Randolph turned away. But as he left the building he saw a written notice on the swinging door, “Wanted: a Night Porter;” and this one chance of employment determined his return.

When he again presented himself at the window the clerk motioned him to step inside through a lifted rail. Here he found himself confronted by the clerk and another man, distinguished by a certain air of authority, a keen gray eye, and singularly compressed lips set in a closely clipped beard. The clerk indicated him deferentially but briefly—everybody was astonishingly brief and businesslike there—as the president. The president absorbed and possessed Randolph with eyes that never seemed to leave him. Then leaning back against the counter, which he lightly grasped with both hands, he said: “We’ve sent to the Niantic Hotel to inquire about your man. He ordered his room by letter, giving no name. He arrived there on time last night, slept there, and has occupied the room No. 74 ever since. WE don’t know him from Adam, but”—his eyes never left Randolph’s—“from the description the landlord gave our clerk, you’re the man himself.”

For an instant Randolph flushed crimson. The natural mistake of the landlord flashed upon him, his own stupidity in seeking this information, the suspicious predicament in which he was now placed, and the necessity of telling the whole truth. But the president’s eye was at once a threat and an invitation. He felt himself becoming suddenly cool, and, with a business brevity equal to their own, said:—

“I was looking for work last night on the wharf. He employed me to carry his bag to the hotel, saying I was to wait for him. I have waited since nine o’clock last night in his room, and he has not come.”

“What are you in such a d–d hurry for? He’s trusted you; can’t you trust him? You’ve got his bag?” returned the president.

Randolph was silent for a moment. “I want to know what to do with it,” he said.

“Hang on to it. What’s in it?”

“Some clothes and a purse containing about seventy dollars.”

“That ought to pay you for carrying it and storage afterward,” said the president decisively. “What made you come here?”

“I found this address in the purse,” said Randolph, producing it.

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s the only reason you came here, to find an owner for that bag?”

“Yes.”

The president disengaged himself from the counter.

“I’m sorry to have given you so much trouble,” said Randolph concludingly. “Thank you and good-morning.”

“Good-morning.”

As Randolph turned away he remembered the advertisement for the night watchman. He hesitated and turned back. He was a little surprised to find that the president had not gone away, but was looking after him.

“I beg your pardon, but I see you want a night watchman. Could I do?” said Randolph resolutely.

“No. You’re a stranger here, and we want some one who knows the city,—Dewslake,” he returned to the receiving teller, “who’s taken Larkin’s place?”

“No one yet,” returned the teller, “but,” he added parenthetically, “Judge Boompointer, you know, was speaking to you about his son.”

“Yes, I know that.” To Randolph: “Go round to my private room and wait for me. I won’t be as long as your friend last night.” Then he added to a negro porter, “Show him round there.”

He moved away, stopping at one or two desks to give an order to the clerks, and once before the railing to speak to a depositor. Randolph followed the negro into the hall, through a “board room,” and into a handsomely furnished office. He had not to wait long. In a few moments the president appeared with an older man whose gray side whiskers, cut with a certain precision, and whose black and white checked neckerchief, tied in a formal bow, proclaimed the English respectability of the period. At the president’s dictation he took down Randolph’s name, nativity, length of residence, and occupation in California. This concluded, the president, glancing at his companion, said briefly,—

“Well?”

“He had better come to-morrow morning at nine,” was the answer.

“And ask for Mr. Dingwall, the deputy manager,” added the president, with a gesture that was at once an introduction and a dismissal to both.

Randolph had heard before of this startling brevity of San Francisco business detail, yet he lingered until the door closed on Mr. Dingwall. His heart was honestly full.

“You have been very kind, sir,” he stammered.

“I haven’t run half the risks of that chap last night,” said the president grimly, the least tremor of a smile on his set mouth.

“If you would only let me know what I can do to thank you,” persisted Randolph.

“Trust the man that trusts you, and hang on to your trust,” returned the president curtly, with a parting nod.

Elated and filled with high hopes as Randolph was, he felt some trepidation in returning to his hotel. He had to face his landlord with some explanation of the bank’s inquiry. The landlord might consider him an impostor, and request him to leave, or, more dreadful still, insist upon keeping the bag. He thought of the parting words of the president, and resolved upon “hanging on to his trust,” whatever happened. But he was agreeably surprised to find that he was received at the office with a certain respect not usually shown to the casual visitor. “Your caller turned up to-day”—Randolph started—“from the Eureka bank,” continued the clerk. “Sorry we could not give your name, but you know you only left a deposit in your letter and sent a messenger for your key yesterday afternoon. When you came you went straight to your room. Perhaps you would like to register now.” Randolph no longer hesitated, reflecting that he could explain it all later to his unknown benefactor, and wrote his name boldly. But he was still more astonished when the clerk continued: “I reckon it was a case of identifying you for a draft—it often happens here—and we’d have been glad to do it for you. But the bank clerk seemed satisfied with out description of you—you’re easily described, you know” (this in a parenthesis, complimentarily intended)—“so it’s all right. We can give you a better room lower down, if you’re going to stay longer.” Not knowing whether to laugh or to be embarrassed at this extraordinary conclusion of the blunder, Randolph answered that he had just come from the bank, adding, with a pardonable touch of youthful pride, that he was entering the bank’s employment the next day.

Another equally agreeable surprise met him on his arrival there the next morning. Without any previous examination or trial he was installed at once as a corresponding clerk in the place of one just promoted to a sub-agency in the interior. His handwriting, his facility of composition, had all been taken for granted, or perhaps predicated upon something the president had discerned in that one quick, absorbing glance. He ventured to express the thought to his neighbor.

“The boss,” said that gentleman, “can size a man in and out, and all through, in about the time it would take you and me to tell the color of his hair. HE don’t make mistakes, you bet; but old Dingy—the dep—you settled with your clothes.”

“My clothes!” echoed Randolph, with a faint flush.

“Yes, English cut—that fetched him.”

And so his work began. His liberal salary, which seemed to him munificent in comparison with his previous earnings in the mines, enabled him to keep the contents of the buckskin purse intact, and presently to return the borrowed suit of clothes to the portmanteau. The mysterious owner should find everything as when he first placed it in his hands. With the quick mobility of youth and his own rather mercurial nature, he had begun to forget, or perhaps to be a little ashamed of his keen emotions and sufferings the night of his arrival, until that night was recalled to him in a singular way.

One Sunday a vague sense of duty to his still missing benefactor impelled him to spend part of his holiday upon the wharves. He had rambled away among the shipping at the newer pier slips, and had gazed curiously upon decks where a few seamen or officers in their Sunday apparel smoked, paced, or idled, trying vainly to recognize the face and figure which had once briefly flashed out under the flickering wharf lamp. Was the stranger a shipmaster who had suddenly transferred himself to another vessel on another voyage? A crowd which had gathered around some landing steps nearer shore presently attracted his attention. He lounged toward it and looked over the shoulders of the bystanders down upon the steps. A boat was lying there, which had just towed in the body of a man found floating on the water. Its features were already swollen and defaced like a hideous mask; its body distended beyond all proportion, even to the bursting of its sodden clothing. A tremulous fascination came over Randolph as he gazed. The bystanders made their brief comments, a few authoritatively and with the air of nautical experts.

“Been in the water about a week, I reckon.”

“‘Bout that time; just rucked up and floated with the tide.”

“Not much chance o’ spottin’ him by his looks, eh?”

“Nor anything else, you bet. Reg’larly cleaned out. Look at his pockets.”

“Wharf-rats or shanghai men?”

“Betwixt and between, I reckon. Man who found him says he’s got an ugly cut just back of his head. Ye can’t see it for his floating hair.”

“Wonder if he got it before or after he got in the water.”

“That’s for the coroner to say.”

“Much he knows or cares,” said another cynically. “It’ll just be a case of ‘Found drowned’ and the regular twenty-five dollars to HIM, and five to the man who found the body. That’s enough for him to know.”

Thrilled with a vague anxiety, Randolph edged forward for a nearer view of the wretched derelict still gently undulating on the towline. The closer he looked the more he was impressed by the idea of some frightful mask that hid a face that refused to be recognized. But his attention became fixed on a man who was giving some advice or orders and examining the body scrutinizingly. Without knowing why, Randolph felt a sudden aversion to him, which was deepened when the man, lifting his head, met Randolph’s eyes with a pair of shifting yet aggressive ones. He bore, nevertheless, an odd, weird likeness to the missing man Randolph was seeking, which strangely troubled him. As the stranger’s eyes followed him and lingered with a singular curiosity on Randolph’s dress, he remembered with a sudden alarm that he was wearing the suit of the missing man. A quick impulse to conceal himself came upon him, but he as quickly conquered it, and returned the man’s cold stare with an anger he could not account for, but which made the stranger avert his eyes. Then the man got into the boat beside the boatman, and the two again towed away the corpse. The head rose and fell with the swell, as if nodding a farewell. But it was still defiant, under its shapeless mask, that even wore a smile, as if triumphant in its hideous secret.