Coryndon was subject to the ordinary prejudices of any man who makes human personality a study, and he was more than half disposed to go back to the Bazaar and hear whatever evidence Shiraz had been able to collect during his absence.  Two reasons prevented his doing this.  One was that he would have to wait until it was dark enough to leave Hartley’s bungalow without being watched, and possibly followed, and the other that there was still one name on the list that required attention, and he began to feel that it required immediate attention.  A toss of a coin lay between which course he should adopt first, and he sat very still to consider the thing carefully.

In the service of which he was a member, he had learnt that much depends upon getting facts in their chronological order, and that if there is the least disunion in the fusing of events, deduction may hammer its head eternally against a stone wall.  He did not know positively that Leh Shin had decoyed the boy away by means of his assistant, but he was inclined to believe that such was the case.  The blood-stained rag looked like a piece of impudent bravado more than likely to have emanated from the brain of the young Chinaman.  His mental fingers opened to catch Leh Shin and lay hold on him, but they unclosed again, and Coryndon felt about him in the darkness that separates mind from mind.  He knew the pitfall that a too evident chain of circumstances digs for the unwary, and he fell back from his own conviction, testing each link of the chain, still uncertain and still doubtful of what course he should pursue.

He had another object in view, an object that entailed a troublesome interview, and he turned his thoughts towards its possible issue.  Information might be at hand in the safe keeping of his servant Shiraz, but he considered that he must argue his own conclusions apart from anything Shiraz had discovered.  Narrowing his eyes and sitting forward on the edge of his bed, he thought out the whole progress of his scheme.  Coryndon was an essentially quiet man, but as he thought he struck his hands together and came to a sudden decision.

If life offers a few exciting moments, the man who refuses them is no adventurer, and Coryndon saw a chance for personal skill and definite action.  He felt the call of excitement, the call that pits will against will and subtlety against force, and that is irresistible to the man of action.  Probably it was just that human touch that decided him.  One course was easy; a mere matter of reassuming a disguise and slipping back into the life of the people, which was as natural to him as his own life.  A tame ending, rounded off by hearing a story from Shiraz, and laying the whole matter in the hands of Hartley.  The proof against the assistant was almost conclusive, and if Shiraz had burrowed into the heart of the motive, it gave sufficient evidence to deliver over the case almost entire to the man who added the last word to the whole drama before the curtain fell.