Guy Boothby
A Crime of the Under-seas
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066237493
Table of Contents
"I sprang to my feet on hearing this. 'Not the first!' I cried."
The Treasure of Sacramento Nick
"A native fruit-hawker came round the corner."
"Then, just as her nose grounded, my eyes caught sight of a big creeper-covered mass."
The Story of Tommy Dodd and "The Rooster"
"One moonlight night ... somebody stepped up beside him."
WORKS BY E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM.
The Master Mummer.
CHAPTER I
There is an old saying that "one half of the world does not know how the other half lives," but how true this is very few of us really understand. In the East, indeed, it amounts almost to the marvellous. There are men engaged in trades there, some of them highly lucrative, of which the world in general has never heard, and which the ordinary stay-at-home Englishman would in all probability refuse to believe, even if the most trustworthy evidence were placed before him. For instance, on the evening from which I date the story I am now about to tell you, three of us were seated chatting together in the verandah of the Grand Oriental Hotel at Colombo. We were all old friends, and we had each of us arrived but recently in Ceylon. McDougall, the big red-haired Scotchman, who was sitting on my right, had put in an appearance from Tuticorin by a British India boat only that morning, and was due to leave again for Burmah the following night. As far as I could gather he earned his living mainly by smuggling dutiable articles into other countries, where the penalty, if one is caught, is a fine of at least one thousand pounds, or the chance of receiving upwards of five years' imprisonment. The man in the big chair next