He sent for his trunks the following day and made a call upon Carver. Tab heard later that under the personal direction of Rex, all the deed boxes and other movables in the vault had been removed by a gang of workmen and that immediate preparations were being made to wall up this sinister chamber. It was like Rex to take up with enthusiasm some unexpected hobby. Carver told him, when next they met, that Rex haunted the builders’ yard, was having elaborate plans drawn for a new house and was himself entering with enthusiasm into the mysteries of mortar-making and brick-laying. “In fact,” said Tab, “poor Rex is making himself an infernal nuisance. He has these spasms. About three years ago, he decided, in defiance of his Uncle’s intentions, to become a great crime reporter, and spent so much time in the ‘Megaphone’ library, that the news editor kicked. Whenever he wanted a book, Rex had it; whenever he wanted to look up some old and forgotten crime, there was Rex, in the midst of a chaos of cuttings. The present fit will last exactly three weeks; after that, Rex will buy a large hammock and a large bed and spend his time alternately in one or the other!” Tab did not see Ursula Ardfern for a week. He wrote to her once, for he was a little worried, remembering her fainting fit on her last night at the theatre, but he received a reassuring, indeed a flippant message from Stone Cottage. “I have come back here and am entrenched against all mysterious Men in Black with an aged but active butler, who has served in the army and is acquainted with the use of lethal weapons. The late roses are out--won’t you come and see them? They are glorious. And Yeh Ling’s Temple of Peace is roofed with shining red tiles, and the villagers are breathing freely again at the prospect of his queer little labourers leaving the neighborhood. “I drove over there yesterday and found Yeh Ling very sombre and quiet, watching the final touches being put on what looked to be a huge barrel but which I found was the mould in which the second of his great pillars is to be cast. It is the Pillar of Grateful Recollection, or something of the sort, and it is to be dedicated to--me. I feel thrilled. It is hard to believe that all these years Yeh Ling has remembered the trifling services I gave to his son, and isn’t it curious that in all those years, although I have met him many times, for I used to dine regularly at his restaurant (I dined there this week) he has never made one reference to the old days. It is a little eerie, isn’t it?