. For all
you might know, I might have someone watching you. This time he
couldn't get far. He will have to return to Hong-Kong."

"Not necessarily. There is a railroad."

"He won't be taking that. The only safe place for him is at sea;
and if he had kept to the sea, I shouldn't have found him so
easily. Well, what about it?"

"I accept."

"As an honest Chinaman?"--taking out the offensiveness of the query
by smiling.

"As an honest Chinaman."

O'Higgins produced his wallet. "Fifty now and fifty when I return."

"Agreed. Here are the jade carvers. Would you like to see them at
work?"

"Lead on, Macduff!"

Ah Cum raised the skirt of his fluttering blue silk robe and stored
the bill away in a trouser wallet. It was the beginning and the end
of the transaction. When he finally telegraphed his startling
information to Hong-Kong, it was too late for O'Higgins to act. The
quarry had passed out into the open sea.

* * * * *

From the comatose state, Spurlock passed into that of the babbling
fever; but that guarding instinct which is called subconsciousness
held a stout leash on his secret. He uttered one word over and
over, monotonously:

"Fool! ... Fool!"

But invariably the touch of Ruth's hand quieted him, and his head
would cease to roll from side to side. He hung precariously on the
ragged edge, but he hung there. Three times he uttered a phrase:

"A djinn in a blue-serge coat!"

And each time he would follow it with a chuckle--the chuckle of a
soul in damnation.

Neither the American Express nor Cook's had received mail for
Howard Taber; he was not on either list. This was irregular. A man
might be without relatives, but certainly he would not be without
friends, that is to say, without letters. The affair was thick with
sinister suggestions. And yet, the doctor recalled an expression of
the girl's: that it was not a dissipated face, only troubled.

The whole affair interested him deeply. That was one of the
compensations for having consigned himself to this part of the
world. Over here, there was generally some unusual twist to a case.
He would pull this young fellow back; but later he knew that he
would have to fight the boy's lack of will to live. When he
recovered his mental faculties, he would lie there, neutral; they
could save him or let him die, as they pleased; and the doctor knew
that he would wear himself out forcing his own will to live into
this neutra