feelings as an animal.

The boy reappeared after a pause, bearing a message to the effect that Mhtoon Pah begged an immediate interview upon a subject so pressing that it could not wait.

Hartley listened to the message, swore under his breath, and looked sharply at Mhtoon Pah when he came into the room. Usually the curio dealer had a smile and a suave, pleasant manner, but on this occasion all his suavity was gone, and his eyes, usually so inexpressive and secret, were lighted with a strange, wolfish look of anger and rage that was almost suggestive of insanity.

He bowed before the Head of the Police and began to talk in broken, gasping words, waving his hands as he spoke. His story was confused and rambling, but what he told was to the effect that his boy, Absalom, had disappeared and could not be found.It was the night of the 29th of July, _Thakin_, and I sent him forth upon a business. Next morning he did not return. It was I who opened the shop, it was I who waited upon customers, and Absalom was not there."

"What inquiries have you made?"

"All that may be made, _Thakin_. His mother comes crying to my door, his brothers have searched everywhere. Ah, that I had the body of the man who has done this thing, and held him in the sacred tank, to make food for the fishes."

His dark eyes gleamed, and he showed his teeth like a dog.

"Nonsense, man," said Hartley, quickly. "You seem to suppose that the boy is dead. What reason have you for imagining that there has been foul play?"

"_Seem_ to suppose, _Thakin_?" Mhtoon Pah gasped again, like a drowning man. "And yet the _Thakin_ knows the sewer city, the Chinese quarter, the streets where men laugh horribly in the dark. Houses there, _Thakin_, that crawl with yellow men, who are devils, and who split a man as they would split a fowl--" he broke off, and waved his hands about wildly.

Hartley felt a little sick; there was something so hideous in the way Mhtoon Pah expressed himself that he recoiled a step and summoned his common sense to his aid.

"Who saw Absalom last?"

"Many people must have seen him. I sat myself outside the shop at sunset to watch the street, and had sent Absalom forth upon a business, a private business: he was a good boy. Many saw him go out, but no one saw him return."

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