come see Master," observed Ah Chang, addressing space
impersonally. "Heap plenty important business. You see?"

Anything for a change this dreary evening. "Very well," said Lawson,
"I see."

In a moment or two, a tall Chinese shuffled into the room, bowing
repeatedly with hands on knees. After which he passed his long slim
hands up into the sleeves of his satin coat, and waited quietly till
the boy withdrew. He gave a swift look about the room, a glance so
hurried that it seemed impossible he could have satisfied himself that
they were alone, and then began to speak. Lawson recognised him at
once as the keeper of a house he had raided the week before, a big,
crowded place, where the police had captured a score of players and
much money. It was an important haul, a notorious den, that they had
been after for a long time. Only it changed its location so often,
moved from place to place each night, or so it seemed, that Lawson had
spent months trying to find it. It is not easy finding such places in
the crowded, native streets of the Concession, and he had stumbled
upon it by a piece of sheer luck. And the proprietor had been heavily
fined and heavily warned, yet here he stood to-night, silent,
respectful, hands up his sleeves, waiting. For once in his life,
Lawson's imagination worked. He foresaw something portentous looming
in the background of that impenetrable mind, revealed in the steady,
unblinking stare of those slanting Chinese eyes, fixed steadily and
fearlessly and patiently upon his.

"Sit down," he commanded, with a sweep of his hand towards an upright
chair.

* * * * *

After his visitor had departed, Lawson stood lost in thought. He was
not angry, yet he should have been, he realised. Assuredly he should
have been angry, assuredly he should have kicked his visitor
downstairs. But as it was, he remained in deep thought, pondering over
a suggestion that had been made to him. The suggestion, stripped of
certain Oriental qualities of flowery phraseology and translated from
pidgin-English into business English, was the merest, most vague hint
of an exchange of favours. So slight was the hint, but so
overwhelming the possibilities suggested, that, as we have said,
Lawson had not kicked his visitor downstairs, but remained standing
lost in thought for several moments after his departure. As he had
stood earlier in the day, with one foot in the Foreign Concession, and
the other