"Seventeen Manchus. The rest are--paid men--of no account."

"Queer," muttered Furneaux, almost to himself. "The story begins and ends with the number 17!"

Again did Winter strive to pierce his colleague with a look from those bulging eyes, but the little man was far too occupied with a singular numerical coincidence to pay any heed to him.

"Well, go on!" he said impatiently, glaring at the Chinaman.

"We went to the big room at the back," continued Li Chang quietly, uttering each word separately, and evidently weighing it in his mind to test its accuracy before use, "and found Wong Li Fu. Him we bound quickly, and very securely. The others we tied in twos and threes. Of course, we brought the two doorkeepers to the same room, so that you should experience no difficulty, but take them all together."

Here Mr. Won Lung Foo broke in. Evidently he could follow English better than speak it.

"Yes," he said. "We wantee you catchee Chineemans all togeller--muchee wantee!"

Then he smiled blandly, and his tongue rolled over his lips as though some fruit or sweetmeat had left a pleasant taste there.

"Then, if your surprise was so successful, what caused the fire?" said Winter, affecting a magnificent disregard of the plain facts.

Li Chang, for once, permitted his immobile features to show some semblance of anxious uncertainty.

"That," he said, "is a mystery which can, perhaps, never be solved. But it saves your Government much trouble."

In those few words he expressed quite clearly the line he adhered to throughout a long cross-examination. Neither Winter nor the commissioner could shake him. The fire was an accident--the outcome of an extraordinary chance. He knew nothing whatsoever of its origin.

After a protracted debate in private between the two heads of the Criminal Investigation Department, the names and addresses of the prisoners were recorded and they were set at liberty.

Before Li Chang went away Furneaux demanded the return of the three ivory skulls, which were promptly handed over.

"One word in your ear," murmured the detective, _sotto voce_. "Did Wong Li Fu recognize you?"

"Oh, yes," said the Chinaman.

"And you spoke to him?"

"Oh, yes."

The eyes of the two clashed. For once, Furneaux peered deep into the mind of an Oriental, and what he saw there kept him quiet, but he knew, just as surely as if he had been present, exactly what Li Chang said to Wong Li Fu. He delivered a message from two graves in far-off China.

And that is all--or nearly all.

The "Charlotte Street Fire" caused only a slight sensation. It became known that No. 412 was a resort of Chinese opium fiends, and the loss of the den and its frequenters was not treated as a National calamity. The shooting at No. 11 Fortescue Square was regarded much more seriously, and the newspapers were full of it all next day.

Thenceforth, however, interest flagged. Mr. Forbes and his family and servants left London for Scotland, and the Amateur Golf Championship came along, so the escapades of a few Chinese fanatics in London were quickly forgotten.

They were forgotten, that is, by most people; but one man, Frank Theydon, went back to his flat in Innesmore Mansions to plunge into work and strive vainly to obliterate those pages of his memory charged with bitter-sweet day-dreams.

Strive as he would, and did, to bury the past under the duties and cares of the present, the radiant vision of Evelyn Forbes remained ineffaceable and entrancing.

But he was built of tough fiber, and resolutely refused an invitation to visit the Sutherlandshire glen in which Forbes and his daughter were sedulously nursing to health and strength the dear wife and mother whose nervous system had suffered far more than she permitted to become known under the stress and strain of the kidnaping experience.

Even when Evelyn herself wrote, seconding her father's most friendly note, Theydon pleaded the exigencies of his profession and filled a letter with an amusing account of Bates's chagrin because he had failed to "bag a Chinaman on his own account," having actually purchased a pistol and fixed it in position before he and his wife quitted the flat.

Three months passed. On August 9, a broiling morning, Theydon was dejectedly reading of preparations for the "Twelfth," when a telegram reached him. It read:

"Handyside has arrived here in his car. Come for the gathering of the clan. We take no refusal. Forbes."

Theydon traveled north that night. He reached the glen in time for dinner next evening and passed a few delightfully miserable days in Evelyn's company.

At last, feeling that he was losing grip and might act foolishly, he announced to Forbes, one night when a glorious moon was shining, and he knew that Evelyn was awaiting him in the garden, that he must leave for London next day.

"Why?" inquired his host. "Has something unforeseen happened? I thought you meant remaining here till the end of the month at the earliest."

"I'm sorry," said Theydon, chewing a cigar viciously as a means toward maintaining his self-control. "I'm sorry, but I must go."

There was a slight pause. Forbes looked at his young friend with those earnest, deep-seeing eyes of his.

"Is it a personal matter?" he went on.

"Yes."

Again there was a pause. Theydon was well aware that he risked a grave misunderstanding, but that could not be avoided. It might be even better so. And then his blood ran cold, because Forbes was saying:

"Are you leaving us because of anything Evelyn has said or done?"

"No, no!" came the frenzied answer. "Heaven help me, why do you ask that?"

"Heaven helps those who help themselves," said the older man. "That is a trite saying, but it meets the case. I think I diagnose your trouble, my boy. You are in love with Evelyn, and dare not tell her so, because I happen to be a rich man. Really I didn't think you had so poor an opinion of me as to believe that money or rank would count against my daughter's happiness."

He said other things--kindly, wise, appreciative--but Frank Theydon never knew what they were. He managed to stammer out some words of gratitude and then went to find Evelyn.

She had crossed a sloping lawn and was standing by the side of a little stream that gargled and bubbled in joyous career to the nearby loch. She had thrown a white shawl over her head and shoulders, and looked adorably sylphlike as she turned on hearing his footsteps; the moonlight shone on her face and was reflected in her eyes.

"Oh, you're here at last!" she cried gaily. "The next time I ask any cavalier to escort me he will come more quickly, I imagine."

He stood in front of her, and stretched out both hands.

"Evelyn," he said, "here is one cavalier, at any rate, who offers himself as an escort for life."

The merriment died out of her eyes, and the quip on her tongue failed her. Greatly daring, her lover took her in his arms. Through the open windows of the drawing room floated the tender refrain of a ballad. Mrs.

Forbes was singing, and sweet words blended with sweet music in the still air.

Then their lips met, and the dark glen became an earthly Paradise.

THE END