“I have been almost perfectly blind, Knox,” he said; “but not quite so perfectly blind as you!”

I stared at him in amazement, but he merely laughed and offered no explanation of his words.

Presently, then, I found myself yet again in the familiar room of the golden joss.  Ma Lorenzo, in whom some hidden anxiety seemed to have increased since I had last seen her, stood at the top of the stairs watching us.  Upon what idea my friend was operating and what he intended to do I could not imagine; but without a word to the woman he crossed the room and grasping the great golden idol with both arms he dragged it forward across the floor!

As he did so there was a stifled shriek, and Ma Lorenzo, stumbling down the steps, threw herself on her knees before Harley!  Raising imploring hands: 

“No, no!” she moaned.  “Not until I tell you—­I tell you everything first!”

“To begin with, tell me how to open this thing,” he said sternly.

Momentarily she hesitated, and did not rise from her knees, but: 

“Do you hear me?” he cried.

The woman rose unsteadily and walking slowly round the joss manipulated some hidden fastening, whereupon the entire back of the thing opened like a door!  From what was within she shudderingly averted her face, but Harley, stepping back against the wall, stopped and peered into the cavity.

“Good God!” he muttered.  “Come and look, Knox.”

Prepared by his manner for some gruesome spectacle, I obeyed—­and from that which I saw I recoiled in horror.

“Harley,” I whispered, “Harley! who is it?”

The spectacle had truly sickened me.  Crouched within the narrow space enclosed by the figure of the idol was the body of an old and wrinkled Chinaman!  His knees were drawn up to his chin, and his head so compressed upon them that little of his features could be seen.

“It is Kwen Lung!” murmured Ma Lorenzo, standing with clasped hands and wild eyes over by the window.  “Kwen Lung—­and I am glad he is dead!”

Such a note of hatred came into her voice as I had never heard in the voice of any woman.

“He is vile, a demon, a mocking cruel demon!  Long, long years ago I would have killed him, but always I was afraid.  I tell you everything, everything.  This is how he comes to be dead.  The little one”—­again her voice changed and a note of almost grotesque tenderness came into it—­“the lotus-flower, that is his own daughter’s child, flesh of his flesh, he keeps a prisoner as the women of China are kept, up there”—­she raised one fat finger aloft—­“up above.  He does not know that someone comes to see her—­someone who used to come to smoke but who gave it up because he had looked into the dear one’s eye.  He does not know that she goes with me to see her man.  Ah! we think he does not know!  I—­I arrange it all.  A week ago they were married.  Tuesday night, when Kwen Lung die, I plan for her to steal away for ever, for ever.”