that is, if he wasn't paddling by on the return route to Hong-Kong or had dropped down to Macao.

But that possibility had been anticipated.

He would have to return to Hong-Kong; and his trail would be picked up the moment he set foot on the Praya.
Pure luck! But for that bottle of whisky, nobody in the Hong-Kong Hotel would have been able to identify the photograph; and at this hour James Boyle O'Higgins would have been on the way to Yokohama, and the trail lost for ever.
Ho-hum!.