He felt in the pouch at his waist for a rank black cigar, which he pushed into his mouth and lighted with a sulphur match.

“Who fries the mud fish when he may eat roast duck?” he said, with a harsh cackle that made the Burman start and stare at him.

“Aie!  Aie! I do not understand thy words.”  The Burman’s face grew blank and he went to the door.

“Neither do you need to, son of a chained monkey,” retorted the boy, full of strong liquor and arrogance.  “But I tell thee, I and my mate, Leh Shin, hold more than money between the finger and the thumb,”—­he pinched his forefinger against a mutilated thumb.  “More than money, see, fool; thou understandest nothing, thy brain is left along with thy chains in the Island which is known unto thee.”

“Sleep well,” said the Burman.  “Sleep well, child of the Heavens, I understand thee not at all,” and with a limp shrug of his shoulders, he slid out of the narrow door into the night.

Coryndon gave one glance at the sky; the dawn was still far off, but in spite of this he ran up the deserted colonnade and walked quickly down Paradise Street, which was still awake and would be awake for hours.  Once clear of the lessening crowd and on to the wharf, he ran again; past the business houses, past the long quarter where the Coringyhis and coolie-folk lived, and, lastly, with a slow, lurking step, to the close vicinity of a house standing alone upon high supports.  He skirted round it, but to all appearances it was closed and empty, and he sat down behind a clump of rough elephant-grass and tucked his heels under him.

His original idea, on coming out, had been merely to get into touch with Leh Shin, and make the way clear for his coming to the small, empty house close to the shop of the ineffectual curio dealer, and now he knew, through his fine, sharp instinct, that he was close upon the track of some mystery.  It might have nothing to do with the disappearance of the Christian boy, Absalom, or it might be a thread from the hidden loom, but, in any case, Coryndon determined to wait and see what was going to happen.  He was well used to long waiting, and the Oriental strain in his blood made it a matter of no effort with him.  Someone was hidden in the lonely house, some man who paid heavily for the privacy of the waterside opium den, and Coryndon was determined to discover who that man was.

The night was fair and clear, and the murmur of the tidal river gentle and soothing, and as he sat, well hidden by the clump of grass, he went over the events of the evening and thought of the face of Leh Shin’s assistant.  Hartley had spoken of the bestial creature in tones of disgust, but Hartley had not seen him to the same peculiar advantage.  Line by line, Coryndon committed the face to his indelible memory, looking at it again in the dark, and brooding over it as a lover broods over the face of the woman he loves, but from very different motives.  He was assured that no cruelty or wickedness that mortal brain could imagine would be beyond the act of this man, if opportunity offered, and he was attracted by the psychological interest offered to him in the study of such a mind.