eart was beating with painful rapidity. I had not counted on this
warring with a woman; moreover, it was harder than I could have dreamt
of. For some time I had been aware that by the charm of her
personality and the art of her pleading she had brought me down from my
judgment seat--had made it all but impossible for me to give her up to
justice. Now, I was disarmed--but in a quandary. What should I do?
What COULD I do? I turned away from her and walked to the hearth, in
which some paper ash lay and yet emitted a faint smell.

Not more than ten seconds elapsed, I am confident, from the time that I
stepped across the room until I glanced back. But she had gone!

As I leapt to the door the key turned gently from the outside.

"Ma 'alesh!" came her soft whisper; "but I am afraid to trust you--yet.
Be comforted, for there is one near who would have killed you had I
wished it. Remember, I will come to you whenever you will take me and
hide me."

Light footsteps pattered down the stairs. I heard a stifled cry from
Mrs. Dolan as the mysterious visitor ran past her. The front door
opened and closed.

CHAPTER V

"Shen-Yan's is a dope-shop in one of the burrows off the old Ratcliff
Highway," said Inspector Weymouth.

"'Singapore Charlie's,' they call it. It's a center for some of the
Chinese societies, I believe, but all sorts of opium-smokers use it.
There have never been any complaints that I know of. I don't
understand this."

We stood in his room at New Scotland Yard, bending over a sheet of
foolscap upon which were arranged some burned fragments from poor
Cadby's grate, for so hurriedly had the girl done her work that
combustion had not been complete.

"What do we make of this?" said Smith. "'. . . Hunchback . . . lascar
went up . . . unlike others . . . not return . . . till Shen-Yan'
(there is no doubt about the name, I think) 'turned me out . . . booming
sound . . . lascar in . . . mortuary I could ident . . . not for days,
or suspici . . . Tuesday night in a different make . . . snatch
. . . pigtail . . .'"

"The pigtail again!" rapped Weymouth.

"She evidently burned the torn-out pages all together," continued
Smith. "They lay flat, and this was in the middle. I see the hand of
retributive justice in that, Inspector. Now we have a reference to a
hunchback, and what follows amounts to this: A lascar (amongst several
other persons) went up somewhere--presumably upstairs--at Shen-Yan's,