Keith, facing the window, was waiting.  The moment the door was opened, he felt Shan Tung’s presence.  Every nerve in his body was keyed to an uncomfortable tension.  The thought that his grip on himself was weakening, and because of a Chinaman, maddened him.  And he must turn.  Not to face Shan Tung now would be but a postponement of the ordeal and a confession of cowardice.  Forcing his hand into Conniston’s little trick of twisting a mustache, he turned slowly, leveling his eyes squarely to meet Shan Tung’s.

To his surprise Shan Tung seemed utterly oblivious of his presence.  He had not, apparently, taken more than a casual glance in his direction.  In a voice which one beyond the door might have mistaken for a woman’s, he was saying to McDowell: 

“I have seen the man you sent me to see, Mr. McDowell.  It is Larsen.  He has changed much in eight years.  He has grown a beard.  He has lost an eye.  His hair has whitened.  But it is Larsen.”  The faultlessness of his speech and the unemotional but perfect inflection of his words made Keith, like the young secretary, shiver where he stood.  In McDowell’s face he saw a flash of exultation.

“He had no suspicion of you, Shan Tung?”

“He did not see me to suspect.  He will be there—­when—­” Slowly he faced Keith. “—­When Mr. Conniston goes to arrest him,” he finished.

He inclined his head as he backed noiselessly toward the door.  His yellow eyes did not leave Keith’s face.  In them Keith fancied that he caught a sinister gleam.  There was the faintest inflection of a new note in his voice, and his fingers were playing again, but not as when he had looked out through the window at Miriam Kirkstone.  And then—­in a flash, it seemed to Keith—­the Chinaman’s eyes closed to narrow slits, and the pupils became points of flame no larger than the sharpened ends of a pair of pencils.  The last that Keith was conscious of seeing of Shan Tung was the oriental’s eyes.  They had seemed to drag his soul half out of his body.

“A queer devil,” said McDowell.  “After he is gone, I always feel as if a snake had been in the room.  He still hates you, Conniston.  Three years have made no difference.  He hates you like poison.  I believe he would kill you, if he had a chance to do it and get away with the Business.  And you—­you blooming idiot—­simply twiddle your mustache and laugh at him!  I’d feel differently if I were in your boots.”

Inwardly Keith was asking himself why it was that Shan Tung had hated Conniston.

McDowell added nothing to enlighten him.  He was gathering up a number of papers scattered on his desk, smiling with a grim satisfaction.  “It’s Larsen all right if Shan Tung says so,” he told Keith.  And then, as if he had only thought of the matter, he said, “You’re going to reenlist, aren’t you, Conniston?”

“I still owe the Service a month or so before my term expires, don’t I?  After that—­yes—­I believe I shall reenlist.”