y towards the door.

"No, you don't!" Follet's foot shot out to trip him. But the Chinaman
melted past the crude interruption.

"I go," he repeated, with ineffable sadness, from the threshold.

The thing was utterly beyond me. I stood stock-still. The two men,
Follet and Stires, faced each other for an instant. Then Follet swung
round and dashed after Ching Po. I saw him clutch the loose black sleeve
and murmur in the flat ear.

Stires seemed to relent towards me now that Follet was gone. "Let 'em
alone," he grunted. "The Chink won't do anything but tell him a few
things. And like as not, he knows 'em already, the--" The word indicated
his passionate opinion of Follet.

"I was called in by Madame Mauer," I explained weakly. "Ching Po wouldn't
leave the road in front of her compound. And--Miss Eva was inside,
having hysterics. Ching Po had been with her earlier. Now you know all
I know, and as I'm not wanted anywhere, I'll go. I assure you I'm very
glad to."

I was not speaking the strictest truth, but I saw no reason to pour out
Madame Mauer's revelations just then upon Stires's heated soul. Nor would
I pursue the subject of Follet.

Stires sank down on something that had once been an office-chair. Thence
he glowered at me. I had no mind to endure his misdirected anger, and I
turned to go. But in the very instant of my turning from him I saw
tragedy pierce through the mask of rage. The man was suffering; he could
no longer hold his eyes and lips to the expression of anger. I spoke to
him very gently.

"Has Miss Eva really anything to fear from that miserable Chinaman?"

Stires bowed his head on his hands. "Not a thing, now. He's done his
damnedest. It only took a minute for him to spit it out."

"Will he spit it out to Follet?"

"You bet he will. But I've got a kind of a hunch Follet knew all along."

"I'm sure he didn't--whatever it is."

"Well, he does by now. They must be nearly back to the ho-tel. I'm kind
of busy this morning"--he waved his hand round that idle scene--"and I
guess--"

"Certainly. I'm going now." I spared him the effort of polishing off his
lie. The man wanted to be alone with his trouble, and that was a state
of mind I understood only too well.

The circumstantial evidence I had before me as I walked back to my own
house led inevitably to one verdict. I could almost reconstruct the
ignoble pidgin-splutter in which Ching Po had told Stires, and was even
now telling Follet. The won