hich neither
of us seemed disposed to break, we entered the police depot, and
followed an officer who received us into the room where Weymouth waited.

The inspector greeted us briefly, nodding toward the table.

"Poor Cadby, the most promising lad at the Yard," he said; and his
usually gruff voice had softened strangely.

Smith struck his right fist into the palm of his left hand and swore
under his breath, striding up and down the neat little room. No one
spoke for a moment, and in the silence I could hear the whispering of
the Thames outside--of the Thames which had so many strange secrets to
tell, and now was burdened with another.

The body lay prone upon the deal table--this latest of the river's
dead--dressed in rough sailor garb, and, to all outward seeming, a
seaman of nondescript nationality--such as is no stranger in Wapping
and Shadwell. His dark, curly hair clung clammily about the brown
forehead; his skin was stained, they told me. He wore a gold ring in
one ear, and three fingers of the left hand were missing.

"It was almost the same with Mason." The river police inspector was
speaking. "A week ago, on a Wednesday, he went off in his own time on
some funny business down St. George's way--and Thursday night the
ten-o'clock boat got the grapnel on him off Hanover Hole. His first
two fingers on the right hand were clean gone, and his left hand was
mutilated frightfully."

He paused and glanced at Smith.

"That lascar, too," he continued, "that you came down to see, sir; you
remember his hands?"

Smith nodded.

"He was not a lascar," he said shortly. "He was a dacoit."

Silence fell again.

I turned to the array of objects lying on the table--those which had
been found in Cadby's clothing. None of them were noteworthy, except
that which had been found thrust into the loose neck of his shirt.
This last it was which had led the police to send for Nayland Smith,
for it constituted the first clew which had come to light pointing to
the authors of these mysterious tragedies.

It was a Chinese pigtail. That alone was sufficiently remarkable; but
it was rendered more so by the fact that the plaited queue was a false
one being attached to a most ingenious bald wig.

"You're sure it wasn't part of a Chinese make-up?" questioned Weymouth,
his eye on the strange relic. "Cadby was clever at disguise."

Smith snatched the wig from my hands with a certain irritation, and
tried to fit it on the