There
isn't a fragment of evidence to prove that the boy is murdered. I am
sorry for you, Mhtoon Pah, but I warn you that if you let yourself think
of things like that you will be in a lunatic asylum in a week."

He took out a sheet of paper and made careful notes. The boy had been
gone four to five days, and beyond the fact that the Rev. Francis Heath
had seen and spoken to him, no one else was named as having passed along
Paradise Street. The clergyman's evidence was worth nothing at all,
except to prove that the boy had left Mhtoon Pah's shop at the time
mentioned, and Mhtoon Pah explained that the "private business" was to
buy a gold lacquer bowl desired by Mrs. Wilder, who had come to the shop
a day or two before and given the order. Gold lacquer bowls were
difficult to procure, and he had charged the boy to search for it in the
morning and to buy it, if possible, from the opium dealer Leh Shin, who
could be securely trusted to be half-drugged at an early hour.

"It was the morning I spoke of, _Thakin_," said the curio dealer, who
had grown calmer. "But Absalom did not return to his home that night. He
may have gone to Leh Shin; he was a diligent boy, a good boy, always
eager in the pursuit of his duty and advantage."

"I am very sorry for you, Mhtoon Pah," said Hartley again, "and I shall
investigate the matter. I know Leh Shin, and I consider it quite
unlikely that he has had anything to do with it."

When Mhtoon Pah rattled away in the yellow _gharry_, Hartley put the
notes on one side. It was a police matter, and he could trust his staff
to work the subject up carefully under his supervision, and going to the
telephone, he communicated the principal facts to the head office,
mentioning the name of Leh Shin and the story of the gold lacquer bowl,
and giving instructions that Leh Shin was to be tactfully interrogated.

When Hartley hung up the receiver he took his hat and waterproof and
went out into the warm, damp dusk of the evening. There was something
that he did not like about the weather. It was heavy, oppressive,
stifling, and though there was air in plenty, it was the stale air of a
day that seemed never to have got out of bed, but to have lain in a
close room behind the shut windows of Heaven.

He remembered the boy Absalom well, and could recall his dark, eager
face, bulging eyes and protuberant under-lip, and the idea of his having
been decoyed off unto some place of horror haunted him. It was sti