“Follow that man who wears a cap. You will see him on the other side of the road, he is walking toward the houses of the noisy women.” A quarter of an hour later the stunted man came back with a story of failure and Yeh Ling was not surprised. But the watcher was neither policeman nor reporter, of this he was sure. XV In the course of his professional duties Tab Holland had been brought into contact with the master of the Golden Roof on two occasions. The first followed a small scandal, which only remotely touched the restaurant (the woman who was the subject of Tab’s investigation had dined there at an important date) and once in connection with a dead-season topic dealing with the nutritive values of food. He had found the Chinaman reserved to a point of taciturnity, monosyllabic in speech; a most unsatisfactory person. Tab knew nothing about him except that he was a successful Chinaman who had gravitated into the restaurant business. He asked Jacques for enlightenment, well knowing that if the news editor could not satisfy his curiosity, it was because Yeh Ling was altogether uninteresting. Jacques was one of those rarities, to whom reference is so frequently made that it might be imagined they were as common as straws in a stable. He was a veritable “mine of information.” The genus occurs sometimes in newspaper offices. Jacques knew everybody and everybody’s wife. He knew why they married. He also knew why stars twinkled and the chemical composition of tears. Quote him a line from any classic and he would give you its predecessor and that which followed. He knew the dates of all important earthquakes and was an authority on the Mogul Emperors. He could sketch you with equal facility the position of Frossard’s second corps at Rezonville on August 17th, 1870, or the military situation at Thermopylæ--and dates. The only serious students of the “Megaphone” reference library were the reporters who went there to confound Jacques. They never succeeded.