It was a busy night for Captain Talham. The clocks were striking three when he hailed a taxi-cab. Tillizinni joined him as he stood on the edge of the pavement, and the two conversed together for some time. Then they entered a cab, and drove off.
The man who watched them from the opposite side of the road followed. His car waited in a side street at no great distance, and it was a car which readily overtook the cab which carried the two men eastward.
They passed through the stone archway of Scotland Yard, and the pursuing car continued its way along the Embankment, and in obedience to the instructions given through the speaking tube, slowed in Horse Guards Avenue to allow the occupant to alight.
He was dressed irreproachably in the evening dress of civilisation, and carried himself with ease and confidence. He walked back the way the car had come, turned into Scotland Yard without hesitation, and found the constable on duty very ready to carry a message to Tillizinni.
The Italian received him alone, and the visitor favoured him with a ceremonious bow.
Tillizinni took him in from foot to crown in one sweeping and comprehensive bow.
The newcomer was unquestionably Chinese, though he did not wear a queue which distinguished the Manchu before the rebellion. His face was good-looking for a Chinaman, his features clean-cut, his eyes alone betrayed his nationality. His lips, straight and thin, were expressionless, and Tillizinni noticed that this strange man, dressed in the height of fashion, yet with the restraint which marked the gentleman, wore in one eye a gold-rimmed monocle.
When he spoke there was no trace of a foreign accent.
“Mr. Tillizinni?” he said, and the other nodded. “My name is Soo--L’ang T’si Soo--and I am, as you may suppose, a compatriot of the unfortunate man who was murdered to-night.”
Tillizinni nodded again.
“I know the Prince slightly,” said Soo, as he seated himself, “and naturally I am distressed at the tragic news.”
“News travels very fast,” responded Tillizinni dryly. “The Ambassador has not been dead very long.”
Soo inclined his head easily.
“I was passing the Embassy, and I saw a number of distracted servants--one of whom you sent to find a policeman,” he explained. “Naturally the servants being commonplace Chinamen and inveterate gossips, were ready to talk to one of their race.”
This was plausible enough. Tillizinni, at any rate, could find no fault with the explanation. He wondered why this Chinese exquisite should have sought him at three o’clock in the morning.
“It is very sad,” continued L’ang T’si Soo, shaking his head, “that one so learned as his Excellency should have been cut off so ruthlessly.”
“It is sadder to me,” said Tillizinni, “that the ‘Star above the Yamen’ should also have been sacrificed.”
What made him say this he could not understand. There was no reason at all why he should mention the second man.
The effect on his visitor was electrical. He rose instantly and noiselessly from his chair, the monocle dropped from his eye, and the eyelids lowered till the detective saw no more than two straight, glittering slits of black.
“‘Star above the Yamen’?” he repeated. “What do you mean?”
All the suaveness, all the languid drawl had gone out of his voice: it was harsh and metallic. The white-gloved hands were clenched till the delicate kid was stretched to breaking point. He stood erect and tense; there was something animal in his poise, something tigerish in his attitude.
“What I mean,” said Tillizinni slowly, “is just this. In addition to the Ambassador, a man was killed--shot from behind, evidently by his confederates. As I have reconstructed the crime, the murderers were disguised in the livery of the Embassy, and made their escape in the confusion. ‘Star above the Yamen’ was probably killed because his murderers desired something which he had. He has been identified by this.”
The detective took a sheet of paper from his pocket, and handed it across the desk to the other.
Soo looked at the Chinese characters long and earnestly.
“It is copied from the man’s hong, which was given to Captain Talham this afternoon by the man himself.”
With a supreme effort T’si Soo recovered his self-possession. Without a word he handed back the sheet, fixed his eyeglass mechanically and relaxed into his chair.
“That is interesting,” he said calmly. “Once I knew a ‘Star above the Yamen,’ but this is evidently another man. The characters change a little as between North and South China, and my friend does not use this hong.”
Tillizinni’s observant eye saw the tip of the visitor’s tongue pass over the dry lips.
“Doubtless you wonder why I have come,” said the Chinaman, “and it is only fair to you that I should explain who I am. Your companion----”
“My companion?” asked Tillizinni sharply.
“The gentleman who is waiting in the next room,” said the suave Oriental, “until I have gone. His Excellency Ho-tao, which in our language means the River Mandarin, or as you would call him, Captain Talham, he would know me. I am the son of the Governor of T’si-lu: to all intents and purposes, I am the governor.”
Tillizinni bowed.
He knew something of this man, who was educated at Oxford, rented the most expensive of Piccadilly flats, and was reputedly wealthy.
Soo rose to go.
“I am afraid I have allowed my curiosity and my natural interest in the fate of my countryman to trespass upon your time,” he said. “Here is my address: if I can be of any assistance to you, please command me.”
He put his card upon the table, and with a little bow, withdrew.
Three minutes later he was speeding eastward as fast as his car could go. He swept round from the Embankment to Blackfriars Bridge, and crossed the river. He alighted near the Borough.
“Wait for me!” he said briefly, and the muffled chauffeur answered in Cantonese.
In a tiny thoroughfare leading off Southwark Street were a number of small shops, shuttered and silent at this hour of the morning.
Soo tapped on the shutters of one. It was a gentle tattoo that he beat, yet the door which flanked the windows was instantly opened and he passed in. The shop was evidently a laundry, and a Chinese laundry at that. He passed swiftly across the shop through the living-room at the back, in which one feeble light burned, and without hesitation turned sharply and descended the stairs which led directly from the living-room to the cellars below.
At the bottom of the stairs was a door. Again he knocked, and again the door was opened by a Chinaman in his shirt-sleeves.
The man removed his pipe as Soo entered, and made a profound obeisance.
The cellar was a large one, and its walls were covered with blood-red paper on which were painted crude, black drawings and characters illustrating the “Song of Lament.” There was one table above which an oil-lamp swung, and about were seated half a dozen men in various conditions of dishabille. Despite the coldness of the night, the cellar was uncomfortably hot, for a big charcoal brazier glowed in a wall recess where in some forgotten age had stood a European stove.
The men rose as Soo entered, concealing their hands in their sleeves.
“Where is my brother?” asked Soo quickly.
He addressed a cadaverous old Chinaman who stood nearest the brazier.
“Lord,” said the man, “your illustrious brother has not returned.”
“Where are Yung-ti and Hop-lee?” demanded Soo.
“Lord, they have not returned,” answered the other.
Soo looked at his watch.
“Ming-ya says----” began the old man, but stopped as if he thought better of it.
“Ming-ya says--what?” asked Soo. “Answer me, old fool, quickly!”
The old man bowed.
“The seven blessings of heaven upon your highness,” he said humbly. “But Ming-ya says that neither Yung-ti nor Hop-lee will return.”
Ming-ya, a youthful Cantonese with the dull eye of an opium sot, nodded.
“That is true,” he croaked hoarsely; “for these two men I heard speaking to-night when I was taking my pipe, and they thought I could not hear them--they go to China to-night.”
Soo waited for a time; his head sank on his chest, buried in thought.
Then his eye singled out a thoughtful face which had been turned to him from the moment he entered. It was the face of a young man who stood where the shadow of the lamp fell--for one side of the lamp had been shaded so that no gleam of direct light could be detected from the street above. With a jerk of his head Soo signed for him to follow, and without another word the two men left the cellar, the door closing behind them with a click.
In the shop above T’si Soo turned to his companion.
“Lo-Rang,” he said, “these two men have killed my brother--and yours, for we of the Society of Good Intention are all brothers, having sworn by our ancestors to keep faith. Also they have taken away a certain paper which I sent them to get.”
The younger man inclined his head obediently.
“I sent my brother with them because I feared treachery. He it was--so the foreigners say--who found the paper, and because they needed it for their treachery and could get it no other way, they have killed him.”
“Excellency,” said Lo-Rang meekly, “all this I know. Tell me what I shall do?”
“Find those men,” said Soo, “and shah!”
The young man bowed reverently and turned, disappearing into the back of the shop.
He returned with a tiny bundle of clothes, and a long, narrow-bladed knife.
“This is the knife with which I killed a man in Hoo Sin,” he said proudly, and Soo nodded his acknowledgment.
