“Just what did you expect to turn up in this pigsty of a settlement?” gloomily inquired Mr. Kittridge, who seemed disappointed that he had not broken a few heads. “Whatever it was, it fell flat.” “It did that,” frankly admitted O’Shea. “’Tis a painful subject, Mr. Kittridge, and we will not discuss it now. But I am not done with the riddle of Wang-Li-Fu.” Three days passed, and singly and in squads the invaders ransacked the village and its suburbs, poking into shops, alleys, dwellings, and court-yards and taking stock of the inmates thereof. That the people were very poor and very industrious was all that one could say of them. And they were no more to be suspected of plotting deeds of violence than so many rabbits. Doggedly persistent, unwilling to confess himself beaten, O’Shea shifted his quest to the open country for miles outside of Wang-Li-Fu. It was a region of green fields gridironed with ditches and rutted paths, and dotted with toilers in blue cotton blouses and straw hats, who tilled their crops from dawn to dark. It was obviously useless to extend the investigation any considerable distance away from this region. If the secret was not to be unearthed in the vicinity of Wang-Li-Fu, then his conclusions had been all wrong. The villagers assured him that this was, in truth, none other than Wang-Li-Fu, and the baffled, perplexed O’Shea could not let go of the opinion that the goal was somewhere near at hand. Otherwise, why all the elaborate stratagems in Shanghai to thwart his voyage to the River of Ten Thousand Evil Smells? He had imagined himself attacking a stronghold of some sort, a headquarters of desperate criminals who must be wiped out. But if that slippery comprador Charley Tong Sin had carried a warning to the men of the Painted Joss, he must have fled elsewhere than to this commonplace, harmless village. At any rate, it seemed absurd to tarry much longer in Wang-Li-Fu with a force of armed retainers. At the end of a fortnight, O’Shea was of the opinion that his loyal legion had better seek to mend its fortunes in some other quarter. He was ashamed to look them in the face. The fiasco cut him to the quick. He had been as mad as poor Bill Maguire. In future he would stick to his trade as a shipmaster. Meanwhile, the malarial poison of the marshes found its way into his blood. He failed to realize that he was ill, and paid no attention to the little flashes of fever that came by night and the creeping, chilly feeling that troubled him in the morning.