WEBSTER'S trunk went aboard the steamer early the following morning, and at noon he entered a taxi with his hand baggage and was driven to the levee where La Estrellita lay tugging gently at her mooring lines. Owing to the congestion of freight and traffic the chauffeur stopped his cab a little distance from the gangplank, where Webster discharged him with a liberal tip.

The latter, however, swung his passenger's bag and suitcase to the ground, picked them up and started for the gangplank.

“Never mind my baggage, lad,” Webster called after him. “One of the deck boys will care for it.” The chauffeur turned. “You've been very generous with me, sir,” he answered, “so I think I had better carry your baggage aboard. If you permit a deck boy to handle it, you merely have to give another tip, and that would be sheer wanton waste. Why shouldn't I earn the one you gave me?”

“I hadn't figured it out that way, son, so here's another half dollar for being the only existing specimen of your species in captivity. My stateroom is No. 34, upper deck, port side,” Webster answered, smiling. The man took the tip eagerly and hurried toward the gangplank; the quartermaster on duty shouldered a way for him and he darted aboard?

Webster followed leisurely. At the gangplank the purser's clerk halted him, examined his tickets and punched them.

“Where is the other man?” he asked. “You have two tickets here.”

“Oh, that blamed valet of mine,” Webster answered, and glanced around as if in search of that mythical functionary. “It would be like the stupid fellow to miss the boat,” he added. “When he comes——”

Webster ceased speaking abruptly. He was looking straight into the malevolent orbs of Pucker-eye, who was standing just behind the clerk at the foot of the gangplank.

“I wonder if Popeye's around, also,” Webster thought, and he faced about. Pop-eye was standing in back of him, leaning over the railing of the gangway.

“Which is the valet?” the purser's clerk asked, scanning the names on the tickets.

“Andrew Bowers.”

“All right, Mr. Webster,” the other answered, with that genial camaraderie that seems inseparable from all of his calling. “When Andrew comes I'll send him aboard.”

He started to pass the tickets back to Webster, but a detaining hand rested on his arm, while a dark thumb and forefinger lifted the trailing strips of tickets. Pucker-eye was examining them also.

He sent his elbow backward violently into Pucker-eye's midriff and shook him off roughly.

“What do you mean, you black-and-tan hound?” he demanded. “Since when did you begin to O. K. my work?”

Pucker-eye made no reply to this stern reproof. He accepted the elbow with equanimity, and faced Webster with an evil smile that indicated mutual recognition.

“Bueno,” he said, with such genuine satisfaction that Webster could not help demanding:

“Por que es bueno? (Why is it good?)”

“We meet the senor first in the teeket office. We meet the senor again yesterday morning, no? After, we remember we have meet the senor in the teeket office! Quien sabe? The senor he ees sail on La Estrellita for San Buenaventura, no?”

“So you came nosing around to see about it, eh? Doing a little plain gumshoe work, I see.”

Pucker-eye bowed. By the simple exercise of courage and bad manners he had looked at John Stuart Webster's ticket and was now familiar with his name and destination.

The object of this solicitude had little difficulty in guessing the reason behind it all, and he was not happy. He would have preferred that the incident of their former meeting should not be held against him; he wished most devoutedly that his part in the ruction in Jackson Square on Sunday morning might have been forgotten by all concerned, and this revival of the unpleasant episode was slightly disconcerting.

As a usual thing he was loth to interject himself in the affairs of other people, and had a deep-seated animosity against those who did; he would have preferred to round out his existence without having to take into consideration the presence of a twin Nemesis. However, since the fat was in the fire, so to speak, Webster felt that there was nothing for him to do save brazen things out as best he could, so he glowered darkly at Pucker-eye and said:

“Well, you scoundrelly cutthroat, what are you going to do about it? Try a little of your knife work on me, I suppose?”

Pucker-eye did not answer, but his beady glance wavered and shifted before the cool, contemptuous menace of Webster's blue eyes.

“Listen, hombre,” Webster continued. “I know your kind of people like a nigger knows cologne. I know what you'd like to do to me in exchange for what I did to you yesterday morning, but you take a tip from me and don't try it, or one of these days they'll be walking slow behind you and your companero, and you won't know it!”

The fellow grinned—the kind of grin that is composed of equal parts of ferocity and knowledge of superior strength. That grin did more to disconcert Webster than the knowledge that he had earned for himself two bloodthirsty and implacable enemies, for Pucker-eye was the first of his breed that Webster had ever seen smile under insult. That cool smile infuriated him.

Pucker-eye took out a cigarette case, selected a cigarette, and presented the case to Webster. His bad manners in selecting his own cigarette first was deliberate, as Webster knew. It was the Latin-American's method of showing his contempt.

“We shall meet again, Meester Webstaire,” he said. “May I offer the senor a cigarette for the—what you Americans call—the keepsake? No?” He smiled brightly and closed his puckered eye in a knowing wink.

Webster took his tickets from the purser, folded them, placed them in his pocket and for a few seconds regarded Pucker-eye contemptuously.

“When we meet again, you scum,” he retorted quietly, “you shall have no difficulty in remembering me. You may keep your cigarette.”

His long, powerful right arm shot out; like a forceps his thumb and forefinger closed over Pucker-eve's rather flat nose; he squeezed, and with a shrill scream of agony Pucker-eye went to his knees.

Still holding the wretch by his proboscis, Webster turned quickly in order that his face might be toward Pop-eye.

“Pop-eye,” he said, “if you take a hand in this, I'll twist your nose, too, and afterward I'll throw you in the river.”

He turned to Pucker-eye.

“Up, thou curious little one,” he said in Spanish, and jerked the unhappy rascal to his feet. The latter clawed ineffectually at the terrible arm which held him, until, presently discovering that the harder he struggled the harder Webster pinched his nose, he ceased his struggles and hung limply, moaning with pain and rage in the grip of the American.

“Good!” Webster announced, slacking his grip a little. With his left hand he deftly extracted a hair from each flank of the screaming little scoundrel's scant moustache, and held them before the latter's tear-filled eyes.

“My friend,” he said gently, “mark how the gringo gives his little dark brother a lesson in deportment. Behold, if I have given thee a souvenir of our meeting, I also have taken one. By this pinched and throbbing nose shall I be remembered when I am gone; by these hairs from thy rat's moustache shall I remember thee. Go, and thrust not that nose into a gringo's business again. It is unsafe.”

He released Pucker-eye, nodded brightly to the purser's clerk and quartermaster, who, spellbound and approving, had watched him mete out retribution according to his code, and went aboard, just as an assistant steward came hurrying along the deck beating a lusty solo on a triangle—the signal for all non-passengers to go ashore.

Webster made his way through the crowd to his room, looked in, saw that his baggage was there, and walked around on the starboard side to join in the general farewell of all on board to the crowd on the levee.

At the shore end of the gangplank Pucker-eye and Pop-eye still waited. The unfortunate Pucker-eye was weeping with pain and futile rage and humiliation, but Webster noticed that Pop-eye's attention was not on his friend but upon each passenger that boarded the ship, of which there were the usual number of late arrivals. As each passenger approached, Pop-eye scanned him with more than casual interest.

Webster smiled. “Looking for that valet they heard me talking about,” he reflected. “Pop-eye, you're a fine, capable lad. I thought you had the brains of the two. You're not going away until you've had a chance to size up the reinforcements at my command, are you?”

Promptly at one o'clock the captain mounted the bridge and ordered the gangplank drawn ashore. The breastline was cast off; with a long-drawn bellow from her siren the wheel of La Estrellita commenced to churn the muddy water and her bow swung gently outboard, while the stern line acted as a spring. With the stern line slackened and cast overboard the vessel pushed slowly out into the stream where the current caught her and swung her in a wide arc. Webster watched Pucker-eye and Pop-eye leave the landing arm in arm. Pop-eye was sporty enough to wave at him, and Webster, not to be outdone in kind, waved back.

He lighted a cigar and leaned over the rail as the steamer, gathering speed, swept down river.

“Good-bye, you golden fizz and chicken gumbo,” he called, as the city receded and the low, wooded shores below the city came into view. He had forgotten Pucker-eye and Pop-eye in the flood of poignant regret that swept over him at the memory of the peerless Antoine!