The constable, who had read out the information in an official voice, now looked at me, as I stood there stupefied.

“It is,” I said blankly.  “I’ll come at once.”  It would seem that I had misjudged my unfortunate visitor:  her story of the yellow man on the stair had apparently been not a fabrication, but a gruesome fact!

III

HOW I REGAINED IT

My ghastly duty was performed; I had identified the dreadful thing, which less than an hour before had been a strikingly beautiful woman, as my mysterious visitor.  The police were palpably disappointed at the sparsity of my knowledge respecting her.  In fact, had it not chanced that Detective Sergeant Durham was in the station, I think they would have doubted the accuracy of my story.

As a man of some experience in such matters, I fully recognized its improbability, but beyond relating the circumstances leading up to my possession of the pigtail and the events which had ensued, I could do no more in the matter.  The weird relic had not been found on the dead woman, nor in the cab.

Now the unsavoury business was finished, and I walked along Bow Street, racking my mind for the master-key to this mystery in which I was become enmeshed.  How I longed to rush off to Harley’s rooms in Chancery Lane and to tell him the whole story!  But my friend was a thousand miles away—­and I had to see the thing out alone.

That the pigtail was some sacred relic stolen from a Chinese temple and sought for by its fanatical custodians was a theory which persistently intruded itself.  But I could find no place in that hypothesis for the beautiful Jewess; and that she was intimately concerned I did not doubt.  A cool survey of the facts rendered it fairly evident that it was she and none other who had stolen the pigtail from my rooms.  Some third party—­possibly the “yellow man” of whom she had spoken—­had in turn stolen it from her, strangling her in the process.

The police theory of the murder (and I was prepared to accept it) was that the assassin had been crouching in hiding behind or beside the cab—­or even within the dark interior.  He had leaped in and attacked the woman at the moment that the taxi-man had started his engine; if already inside, the deed had proven even easier.  Then, during some block in the traffic, he had slipped out unseen, leaving the body of the victim to be discovered when the cab pulled up at the hotel.

I knew of only one place in London where I might hope to obtain useful information, and for that place I was making now.  It was Malay Jack’s, whence I had been bound on the previous night when my strange meeting with the seaman who then possessed the pigtail had led to a change of plan.  The scum of the Asiatic population always come at one time or another to Jack’s, and I hoped by dint of a little patience to achieve what the police had now apparently despaired of achieving—­the discovery of the assassin.