My first step must, of course, be to get into communication with Grant. Until I had seen him, and learnt his views, I did not feel free seriously to enter upon the case at all. That he already had it in hand, I had been told by New Scotland Yard, and that he was making progress was clear from the fact that, disguised as a Chinaman, he had contrived to enter the meeting-place of the gang, possibly even to overhear some of their plans. It is not likely that, without very strong actual or presumptive evidence of their guilt, he would have bidden me make my way to the nearest police station, and ask, in his name, that a body of men be sent to make prisoners of the entire gang. Grant was a private detective, not a New Scotland Yard man; but he was perhaps the only private detective whom New Scotland Yard can be said to have recognised. He had been of such frequent assistance to the chiefs of the Criminal Investigation Department, and his relations with them were so friendly, that his standing had come to be in a sense semi-official, and no reasonable request by him was likely to be refused. If, on communicating with him, I found that he had, as seemed probable, the case more or less complete, I should, of course, recognise that his was the prior right, and that any interference on my part, except by his invitation or his permission, would be an impertinence. If, however, as I hoped, he had still links to fill in, before completing the chain, my intention was to ask him to allow me to work in connection with him. It has been said by a great thinker that "the things that are for you, gravitate towards you," and judging by the way in which the Fates had involved me--as by some law of gravitation--into the matter of the opium den mystery, the working out of that mystery to its unravelment seemed to be my destiny. In the meantime, where was Grant? I had left him in the den, disguised as a Chinaman, his identity apparently unsuspected even by the Dumpling. It is, of course, within the bounds of possibility that the Dumpling had all the time known perfectly well that my story of having come to the den merely in search of "copy" was likely to be true, and that the supposed Chinaman upstairs, smoking opium, was in reality Detective Grant. I say, it is within the bounds of possibility that it is so, but in my own mind I was entirely convinced that the identity of Grant with the Chinaman was quite unsuspected. If that were so, the fact that I had made good my escape from the den would cause--and evidently had caused--something like a panic among the members of the gang. It was no doubt because they believed me to be Grant, and knew me to be uninjured and at large, that, within an hour or two of my escape, they had cleared out of the den, taking all their effects with them.