At the end of the half-hour’s vigil, the door of Mayfield opened and a man came out and joined the other. Together they walked up the road and that was the last Mr. Stott saw of them. “Very remarkable!” said Mr. Stott profoundly. “I’m glad you called me, Eline. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. But you must say nothing about this, Eline--nothing. The Chinese people are very bloodthirsty. They would think no more of putting you into a barrel full of sharp pointed nails and rolling you down a hill, than I should think of--er--lacing my shoes.” So Maple Manor kept its grisly secret and none knew of Yeh Ling’s visit to the house of death or his search for the tiny lacquer box wherein Jesse Trasmere kept a folded sheet of thin paper elegantly inscribed in Chinese characters by Yeh Ling, in his own hand. XII “Ursula Ardfern is leaving the stage and is going to live in the country.” Tab made the announcement one evening when he came home from the office. Rex scarcely seemed interested. “Oh?” said Rex. That was all he said. He seemed as disinclined as Tab to discuss the lady. It was his last night at the Doughty Street flat. He was still suffering from shock, and his doctor had advised a trip abroad. He had suggested that at the end of his vacation he would return to Doughty Street, but on this point Tab was firm. “You have a lot of money, Babe,” he said seriously, “and a man who has a lot of money has also a whole lot of responsibilities. There are about a hundred and forty-five reasons why our little menage should be broken up, and the most important from my point of view is, that I will not be demoralized by living cheek by jowl with a man of millions. You have a certain place to take in society, certain duties to perform, and you can’t keep up the position that you are entitled to keep, in a half-flat in Doughty Street. I don’t suppose you ever want to go to Mayfield to live.” Rex shuddered. “I don’t,” he said with great earnestness. “I shall shut the place up and let it stand for a few years, until the memory of the crime is forgotten, and then perhaps somebody will buy it. I am pretty comfortable here, Tab.” “I am not thinking so much about your comfort as my own,” replied Tab calmly. “It isn’t going to do me a lot of good in any way. Consider yourself ejected.” Rex grinned. He sailed for Naples the next afternoon, and Tab went down to the boat to see him off. No mention of Ursula Ardfern was made until the landing bell was ringing. “I am holding you to your promise, Tab, to introduce me to Miss Ardfern,” he said, and frowned as though at some unhappy recollection. “I wish to heaven she hadn’t been mixed up in the business at all. How on earth do you account for her jewel-case being in poor Uncle Jesse’s vault? By-the-way, the key of that devil room is in my trunk if the police want it. I don’t suppose they will, for they have the other key now.”