was absolute security. Ling Foo was obliged to keep a safe, for often he had valuable pearls to take care of, sometimes to put new vigour in dying lustre, sometimes to peel a pearl on the chance that under the dull skin lay the gem.

73

He trotted to the front door and locked it; then he trotted into his workshop, planning. If the glass beads were worth five hundred, wasn’t it likely they would be worth a thousand? If this man who limped had stuck to the hundred Ling Foo knew that he would have surrendered eventually. But the ease with which the stranger made the jump from one to five convinced Ling Foo that there could be no harm in boosting five to ten. If there was a taint of crookedness anywhere, that would be on the other side. Ling Foo knew where the beads were, and he would transfer them for one thousand gold. Smart business, nothing more than that. He had the whip hand.

Out of his safe he took a blackwood box, beautifully carved, Cantonese. Headbands, earrings, rings, charms, necklaces, tomb ornaments, some of them royal, all of them nearly as ancient as the hills of Kwanlun, from which most of them had been quarried—jade. He trickled them from palm to palm and one by one returned the objects to the box. In the end he retained two strings of 74 beads so alike that it was difficult to discern any difference. One was Kwanlun jade, royal loot; the other was a copy in Nanshan stone. The first was priceless, worth what any fool collector was ready to pay; the copy was worth perhaps a hundred gold. Held to the light, there was a subtle difference; but only an expert could have told you what this difference was. The royal jade did not catch the light so strongly as the copy; the touch of human warmth had slightly dulled the stone.

74

Ling Foo transferred the copy to a purse he wore attached to his belt under the blue jacket. The young woman would never be able to resist the jade. She would return the glass instantly. A thousand gold, less the cost of the jade! Good business!

But for once his Oriental astuteness overreached, as has been seen. And to add to his discomfiture, he never again saw the copy of the Kwanlun, representing the virtue of the favourite wife.

“I am an honest man,” he said. “The tombs of my ancestors are not neglected. When I say I could not get it I speak the truth. But I believe I can get it later.”

“How?” asked Cunningham. They were in the office, or 

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