“Yes, yes!” I cried eagerly.
“I take all such things down on the lift to
the vaults at night, sir, under the supervision of
the assistant manager—and I can assure you
that nothing of the kind has been left with us to-day.”
I stepped out of the call-box unsteadily. Indeed,
I clutched at the door for support.
“What is the meaning of Si-Fan?” Detective-sergeant
Fletcher had asked that morning. None of us could
answer him; none of us knew. With a haze seeming
to dance between my eyes and the active life in the
lobby before me, I realized that the Si-Fan—that
unseen, sinister power— had reached out
and plucked my friend from the very midst of this
noisy life about me, into its own mysterious, deathly
silence.
“It’s no easy matter,” said Inspector
Weymouth, “to patrol the vicinity of John Ki’s
Joy-Shop without their getting wind of it. The
entrance, as you’ll see, is a long, narrow rat-hole
of a street running at right angles to the Thames.
There’s no point, so far as I know, from which
the yard can be overlooked; and the back is on a narrow
cutting belonging to a disused mill.”
I paid little attention to his words. Disguised
beyond all chance of recognition even by one intimate
with my appearance, I was all impatience to set out.
I had taken Smith’s place in the night’s
program; for, every possible source of information
having been tapped in vain, I now hoped against hope
that some clue to the fate of my poor friend might
be obtained at the Chinese den which he had designed
to visit with Fletcher.
The latter, who presented a strange picture in his
make-up as a sort of half-caste sailor, stared doubtfully
at the Inspector; then—
“The River Police cutter,” he said, “can
drop down on the tide and lie off under the Surrey
bank. There’s a vacant wharf facing the
end of the street and we can slip through and show
a light there, to let you know we’ve arrived.
You reply in the same way. If there’s any
trouble, I shall blaze away with this”—he
showed the butt of a Service revolver protruding from
his hip pocket—“and you can be ashore
in no time.”
The plan had one thing to commend it, viz., that
no one could devise another. Therefore it was
adopted, and five minutes later a taxi-cab swung out
of the Yard containing Inspector Weymouth and two ruffianly
looking companions—myself and Fletcher.
Any zest with which, at another time, I might have
entered upon such an expedition, was absent now.
I bore with me a gnawing anxiety and sorrow that precluded
all conversation on my part, save monosyllabic replies,
to questions that I comprehended but vaguely.
At the River Police Depot we found Inspector Ryman,
an old acquaintance, awaiting us. Weymouth had
telephoned from Scotland Yard.
“I’ve got a motor-boat at the breakwater,”
said Ryman, nodding to Fletcher, and staring hard
at me.
