would somehow manage to get to her door. She would probably hand him the glass beads without a word of argument. Then he would play his game with the man who limped. He smiled inwardly as he put his wares back into the carved box. A thousand gold! At any rate, he would press the man into a corner. There was something about this affair that convinced Ling Foo that his noon visitor would pay high for two reasons: one, to recover the glass beads; the other, to keep out of the reach of the police. 51

51

Ling Foo considered that he was playing his advantage honestly. He hadn’t robbed or murdered anybody. A business deal had slipped into his hands and it was only logical to make the most of it. He kotowed several times on the way out of the parlour, conscious, however, of the searching eyes of the man who had balked him.

“Well!” exclaimed Jane. “What in the world do you suppose is going on?”

“Lord knows, but something is going on. You couldn’t buy a jade necklace like that under five hundred in New York. This apple-green seldom runs deep; the colour runs in veins and patches. The bulk of the quarried stone has the colour and greasy look of raw pork. No; I shouldn’t put it on just now, not until you have washed it. You never can tell. I’ll get you a germicide at the English apothecary’s. Glass beads! Humph! Hanged if I can make it out. Glass; Occidental, too; maybe worth five dollars in the States. Put it on again. It’s a great world over here. You’re always stumbling into something unique. I’m coming over to dine with you to-night.”

“Splendid!”

Jane put the jade into her hand-bag, clasped the glass beads round her neck again, and together she and Dennison walked toward the parlour door. As they reached it a tall, vigorous, elderly man 52 with a gray pompadour started to enter. He paused, with an upward tilt of the chin, but the tilt was the result of pure astonishment. Instinctively Jane turned to her escort. His chin was tilted, too, and his expression was a match for the stranger’s. Later, recalling the tableau, which lasted but a moment, it occurred to Jane that two men, suddenly confronted by a bottomless pit, might have expressed their dumfounderment in exactly this fashion.

52

In the lobby she said rather breathlessly: “You knew each other and didn’t speak! Who is he?”

The answer threw her into a hypnotic state.

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