Theydon expected that Furneaux would flare into anger at this well-deserved rebuke; but, much to his surprise, the detective treated the matter argumentatively.

"Personally, I have looked on you from the outset as an innocent man,"

he said placidly. "But, just to show how circumstantial evidence may be twisted into plausible error, let me point out that nearly all the known facts conspire against you. Have you considered how dexterously a prosecuting counsel would treat your admission that Mrs. Lester was the one person in England who knew of your connection with the revolutionary party in China? And how would you set about convincing a stolid British jury that you were acting in the interests of law and order in concealing your visit to No. 17 on the night of the murder? These fine-drawn speculations, however, are a sheer waste of breath. Suppose we concoct an advertisement for the Times?"

"Do you mean that I am to parley with these ruffians?"

"Of course you are."

"But the Home Secretary agreed with me that no action should be taken until the Chinese Legation had considered the matter."

"And, pray, what can the Legation do?"

"They have their own sources of information. When all is said and done, Orientals are best fitted to deal with Orientals."

Furneaux laughed sarcastically.

"If I remember rightly, the way in which the Chinese Embassy dealt with one of your pet reformers some years ago did not win general approval.

No, Mr. Forbes, we must try and circumvent the wily Chinese by other methods than torture and imprisonment. Of what avail will it be if this fellow, Wong Li Fu, is laid by the heels? Isn't it more than certain that he has plenty of determined helpers? Do you imagine that he killed Mrs. Lester? Not a bit of it. He will be able to produce the clearest proof that he was miles away from Innesmore Mansions on Monday night.

Now, let's see how we can get him to show his hand a little more openly.

How would this be? 'Y. M.--Terms can be arranged. J. C. F.' The terms are, of course, that the whole gang be hanged or sent to penal servitude and deported."

"One moment," struck in Theydon. "I have something to say before you decide on any definite action. I need hardly inflict on you, Mr.

Furneaux, an explanation of my silence hitherto. I don't even apologize for it. Faced by a similar dilemma tomorrow I should probably take the same line. But, to adopt your own simile, now that Mr. Forbes has come out of his shell, and admits his presence here on Monday night, my self-imposed restrictions cease. In the first place, then, Miss Beale came here this morning--"

"Excellent! I wondered who the lady was," put in Furneaux.

"And, secondly, the gray car which pursued me on Monday seems to have been partly identified later. A car resembling it in every detail deposited some one at the Chinese Legation in Portland Place, at an hour which corresponds closely with its presence here."

"Ah, that is important! I like that! I wasn't far wrong when I sensed you as an absolute carrier of clew-germs in this affair," cried Furneaux.

"The Chinese Embassy!" gasped Forbes. "What car? And why should any car pursue you? Do you mean that you were followed on leaving my house?"

It was lamentable to watch the inroad which each successive shock was making on Forbes's physical resources, but Theydon affected to ignore the new fright in his eyes, and told him what had happened. Although he could see that Furneaux was in a fever of impatience to learn the later news, he thought that Forbes should know the facts in view of the remarkable statement that he had visited the Chinese Embassy that morning.

In one respect, the recital was a test of the millionaire's professed readiness to deal candidly with the police. Theydon was half inclined to believe that the other was still wishful to conceal that part of the day's doings. But he was mistaken. When he had finished his own story, and given the taxi-man's version of the gray car's appearance in Portland Place, Forbes threw out his hands in a gesture of despair.

"If the Embassy people are playing me false I do not know whom to trust," he said brokenly; "I have just come from there, and they assure me that if Wong Li Fu and his gang are in London they are absolutely ignorant of the fact."

"Pooh!" cried Furneaux, snapping a thumb and forefinger. "Don't worry about that! Put yourself in the position of the Chinese Ambassador. He can't even guess who may be the ruler of China from one day to another.

Yesterday it was an old woman, today a dictator, tomorrow the mob; who can foretell what shape the lava erupted from a volcano will take? Bet you a new hat, Mr. Forbes, that the minute the embassy heard of Mrs.

Lester's murder they put two and two together and kept a sharp eye on these mansions and on your house. That gray car is nothing more nor less than a red herring accidentally drawn across the trail. Some cute Chinaman said 'Hallo! that murdered woman is the wife of Forbes's agent in Shanghai. Now, let's see what Forbes is doing, and who visits him, and perhaps we'll learn something.' Want a bet?"

Forbes could not help but recover some of his shattered nerve in view of the detective's airy optimism. Still, he was shaken and dubious.

"Don't forget that the Chinese Ambassador has no knowledge whatsoever of my share in the revolution," he said.

"And don't forget that for ways which are dark and tricks which are vain the heathen Chinee is peculiar," retorted Furneaux. "How can you be sure that there is not in the Embassy at this moment a full statement of your payments into the reformers' funds, as well as the list of conspirators which our friend Wong Li Fu is in search of?"

"I think that such a thing is almost impossible."

"Is there anything really impossible? We used to believe that once a man was dead he could not be brought to life again. A Frenchman has just demonstrated that by a judicious application of galvanism to the heart and salt water to the veins any average corpse can be revived."

Evidently Furneaux was enjoying himself. He sat there, absorbing new impressions and irradiating scraps of irrelevant knowledge in a way that would have been full of significance to Winter had he been present.

Furneaux was never so mercurial, never so ready to jump from one subject to another, as when his subtle brain was working at high pressure.

He actually reveled in a crime which lay on the borderland of the exotic and the grotesque. Like the French philosopher in Poe's "Tales of Mystery and Imagination," the savant who read his newspaper in a dingy Paris room, and solved by sheer force of intellect extraordinary criminal problems which baffled the shrewdest official minds, he felt in relation to this particular tragedy that he required only to be brought in touch with certain contingent forces bound up with it--Forbes, for instance, and, in a minor degree, Theydon--and in due course he would be able to go forth and find the master wrongdoer.

Suddenly the millionaire seemed to cast off the cloak of despair which clogged his energies and impaired his brilliant intellect. He rose to his feet and involuntarily squared his shoulders.

"Surely we are wasting valuable hours which should be given to action,"

he cried. "I am going to the city and shall arrange for a prolonged absence from my office. Then I'll hurry home, perfect my defenses, and defy these murderous curs. My wife must come to London. In a crisis like this I must have my loved ones under my own personal supervision. I can still shoot straight and quick, and woe betide any man, white or yellow, who enters my house unbidden. As for this infernal symbol--!"

He raised a clenched fist, and would have pounded into fragments the thin fabric of the ivory skull still lying where he had placed it on the table had not Furneaux snatched it into safety.

"No, no!" protested the detective. "I want that for purposes of comparison. Kindly give me that typed note, too, Mr. Forbes. It may bear finger-marks. You never can tell. The cardboard box in which it was posted also. Thank you. Now, a few more questions before you go. How much money did you provide for the revolutionaries?"

"Two millions sterling."

"As a gift or a loan?"

"If they failed, I lost every farthing, of course. If they succeeded, I was to recoup myself by financing the new government."

"But I gather that they have neither failed nor succeeded. China has a constitution, but the Presidential election was conducted on lines suspiciously akin to those recently adopted in Mexico."

"Nevertheless negotiations are now on foot for a big loan."

"If you died, what would become of the two millions?"

"They would be lost irretrievably."

Furneaux sat back in his chair.

"That gives one furiously to think," he said. "The gray car comes back into the picture."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. But I'll tell you what--the man who first spoke of a Chinese puzzle as a metaphor for something downright bewildering knew what he was talking about."

Forbes put a hand to his forehead in an unconscious gesture of hopelessness.

"My brain is reeling," he muttered. "To think that in the London of today we should live in abject terror of a band of Mongolian ruffians!

Why do you remain here, man? You vaunt the prowess of your department--why are you not scouring every haunt of Chinamen in the East End? Spread your net widely enough, and you will surely get hold of some minor scoundrel who will talk for fear or money. Bribe him to the point where he cannot refuse to speak. Wong Li Fu is the only man I fear. Put him where he can accomplish no mischief, and the rest of his crew will be powerless!"

"When you come to count up the achievements of my friend Winter and myself--in the face of stupid but none the less disheartening obstacles--we have not done so badly in two days," said Furneaux complacently.

"Can I drive you anywhere? My car is waiting."

"No, thanks. The truth is, Mr. Forbes, I look on you as a disturbing influence. A man who can talk as calmly as you about dropping two millions on a crazy project to introduce Western methods into China is not fitted for the phlegmatic and judicial atmosphere of Scotland Yard.

If I want any money I'll come to you. If not, and all goes well at No.