If put to the test, which would she choose?

She was unable to face that issue, and dropped back upon her pillow, stifling a sob.

Yes, he was a detective.  In some way her father had at last attracted the serious attention of the law.  Rumours of this were flying round Chinatown, to which she had not been entirely deaf.  She thought of a hundred questions, a hundred silences, and grew more and more convinced of the truth.

What did he mean to do?  Before her a ghostly company uprose—­the shadows of some she had known with designs upon her father.  John Hampden’s design was different.  But might he not join that mysterious company?

Now again she suddenly sprang upright, this time because of a definite sound which had reached her ears from within the house:  a very faint, bell-like tinkling which ceased almost immediately.  She had heard it one night before, and quite recently; indeed, on the night before she had met John Hampden.  Cohen—­Cohen, the Jew, had died that night!

She sprang lightly on to the floor, found her slippers, and threw a silk kimono over her nightrobe.  She tiptoed cautiously to the door and opened it.

It was at this very moment that old Huang Chow, asleep in his cell-like apartment, was aroused by the tinkling of a bell set immediately above his head.  He awoke instantly, raised his hand and stopped the bell.  His expression, could anyone have been present to see it, was a thing unpleasant to behold.  Triumph was in it, and cunning cruelty.

His long yellow fingers reached out for his hornrimmed spectacles which lay upon a little table beside him.  Adjusting them, he pulled the curtains aside and shuffled silently across the large room.

Mounting the steps to the raised writing-table, he rested his elbows upon it, and peered down at that curious blotting-pad which had so provoked the curiosity of Durham.  Could Durham have seen it now the mystery must have been solved.  It was an ingenious camera obscura apparatus, and dimly depicted upon its surface appeared a reproduction of part of the storehouse beneath!  The part of it which was visible was that touched by the light of an electric torch, carried by a man crossing the floor in the direction of the lacquered coffin upon the gilded pedestal!

Old Huang Chow chuckled silently, and his yellow fingers clutched the table edge as he moved to peer more closely into the picture.

“Poor fool!” he whispered in Chinese.  “Poor fool!”

It was the man who had come with the introduction from Mr. Isaacs—­a new impostor who sought to rob him, who sought to obtain information from his daughter, who had examined his premises last night, and had even penetrated upstairs, so that he, old Huang Chow, had been compelled to disconnect the apparatus and to feign sleep under the scrutiny of the intruder.

To-night it would be otherwise.  To-night it would be otherwise.