“Cut out the pidgin. Your neighbour says you speak English fluently. At Moy’s tea-house restaurant they say that you lived in California for several years.”

“Twelve,” said Ling Foo with a certain dry humour.

“Why didn’t you admit me last night?”

“Shop closed.”

“Where is it?”

“Where is what?” asked the merchant.

“The string of glass beads you found on the floor last night.”

A sense of disaster rolled over the Oriental. Had 69 he been overhasty in ridding himself of the beads? Patience! Wait a bit! Let the stranger open the door to the mystery.

69

“Glass beads?” he repeated, ruminatively.

“I will give you ten gold for them.”

Ha! Now they were getting somewhere. Ten gold! Then those devil beads had some worth outside a jeweller’s computations? Ling Foo smiled and spread his yellow hands.

“I haven’t them.”

“Where are they?”

The Oriental loaded his pipe and fired it.

“Where is the man who stumbled in here last night?” he countered.

“His body is probably in the Yang-tse by now,” returned Cunningham, grimly.

He knew his Oriental. He would have to frighten this Chinaman badly, or engage his cupidity to a point where resistance would be futile.

There was a devil brooding over his head. Ling Foo felt it strangely. His charms were in the far room. He would have to fend off the devil without material aid, and that was generally a hopeless job. With that twist of Oriental thought which will never be understood by the 

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