He exposed his hands to open the cash-box and bring out four packages of paper money. These he divided into two, three of the packages to the right and one to the left. The old man took the three packages, which were nearest to him and grunted. “The police came last night and asked to be shown over the houses,” Yeh Ling went on impressively. “They desired to see the cellars, because they think always that Chinamen have smoke-places in their cellars.” “Humph,” said Mr. Trasmere. He was thumbing the money in his hand. “This is good, Yeh Ling.” He slipped the money into a black bag which was on the floor at his feet. Yeh Ling shook his head, thereby indicating his agreement. “Do you remember in Fi Sang a man who worked for me?” “The drinker?” The old man agreed to the appellation. “He is coming to this country,” said Mr. Trasmere, chewing a tooth-pick. He was a hard-faced man between sixty and seventy. A rusty black frock-coat ill fitted his spare form, his old-fashioned collar was frayed at the edge and the black shoe-string tie that encircled his lean throat had been so long in use that it had lost whatever rigidity it had ever possessed, and hung limp in two tangled bunches on either side of the knot. His eyes were a hard granite blue, his face ridged and scaled with callosities until it was lizard-like in its coarseness. “Yes, he is coming to this country. He will come here as soon as he finds his way about town and that will be mighty soon, for Wellington Brown is a traveller! Yeh Ling, this man is troublesome. I should be happy if he were sleeping on the Terraces of the Night.” Again Yeh Ling shook his head. “He cannot be killed--here,” he said. “The illustrious knows that my hands are clean--” “Are you a man-of-wild-mind?” snarled the other. “Do I kill men or ask that they should be killed? Even on the Amur, where life is cheap, I have done no more than put a man to the torture because he stole my gold. No, this Drinker must be made quiet. He smokes the pipe of Pleasant Experience. You have no pipe-room. I would not tolerate such a thing. But you know places.” “I know a hundred and a hundred,” said Yeh Ling, cheerfully for him. He accompanied his master to the door, and when it had closed upon him, he returned swiftly to his parlour and summoned a stunted man of his race. “Go after the old man and see that no harm comes to him,” he said. It seemed from his tone almost as though this guardianship was novel, but in exactly the same words the shuffling Chinaman had received identical instructions every day for six years, when the thud of the closing street-door came to Yeh Ling’s keen ears. Every day except Sunday. He himself never went out after Jesse Trasmere. He had other duties which commenced at eleven and usually kept him busy until the early hours of the morning. II