l beads, and evil befell any who touched them.

Silently he cursed the soldier's ancestors half a thousand years back. If
the white fool hadn't meddled in the parlour that afternoon!

"Come with me," he said, finally.

The game was played out; the counters had gone back to the basket. He had
no desire to come into contact with police officials. Only it was as
bitter as the gall of chicken, and he purposed to lessen his own
discomfort by making the lame man share it. Oriental humour.

Dennison and the hotel manager followed him curiously. At the end of the
corridor Ling Foo stopped and knocked on a door. It was opened
immediately.

"Ah! Oh!"

The inflections touched Dennison's sense of humour, and he smiled. A
greeting with a snap-back of dismay.

"I'm not surprised," he said. "I had a suspicion I'd find you in this
somewhere."

"Find me in what?" asked Cunningham, his poise recovered. He, too, began
to smile. "Won't you come in?"

"What about these glass beads?"

"Glass beads? Oh, yes. But why?"

"I fancy you'd better come out into the clear, Cunningham," said Dennison,
grimly.

"You wish to know about those beads? Very well, I'll explain, because
something has happened--I know not what. You all look so infernally
serious. Those beads are a key to a code. The British Government is keenly
anxious to recover this key. In the hands of certain Hindus those beads
would constitute bad medicine."

Ling Foo spread his hands relievedly.

"That is the story. I was to receive five hundred gold for their
recovery."

"A code key," said Dennison, musing.

He knew Cunningham was lying. Anthony Cleigh wasn't the man to run across
half the world for a British code key. On the other hand, perhaps it would
be wise to let the hotel manager and the Chinaman continue in the belief
that the affair concerned a British code.

"If I did not know you tolerably well----"

"My dear captain, you don't know me at all," interrupted Cunningham. "Have
you got the beads?"

"I have not. I doubt if you will ever lay eyes on them again."

Something flashed across the handsome face. Ling Foo alone recognized it.
He had glimpsed it, this expression, outside his window the night before.
He recalled the dark stain on the floor of his shop, and he also
recollected a saying of Confucius relative to greed. He wished he was back
in his shop, well out of this muddle. The jade could go, valuable as it
was. With his hands tucked in his sleev