"I will. And now prepare to receive a shock. The will leaving me this fortune was found in the safe discovered among the debris of Chateau d'Uzerche, after the fire?" CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR. A FURTHER TANGLE. Certainly, this was a most remarkable development. I listened without comment. Yet when Faulkner had given me, at the luncheon table, all the details by way of "explanation," as he put it, the tangle seemed even greater than before he had begun. The will, dated three years previously, had been drawn up by a well-known firm of London lawyers. It was quite in order, and the testator's name was Whichelo, Samuel Whichelo, formerly of Mexico City, merchant, but then resident at Wimbledon Common. The testator, who had been unmarried, left a few legacies to friends and servants, but practically the whole of his fortune he bequeathed entirely to Frank Faulkner, "in return for the considerable service he once rendered me." Faulkner had handed me a copy of the will--it was quite a short will. When I came to this sentence I naturally looked up. "Ah!" I said, "then there is a method in the testator's madness. But I thought you told me you had never even heard his name." "Until yesterday I never had heard it." "Then what was this `considerable service' he says you rendered him?" "Well, I'll tell you," he said. "Years ago, when I was knocking about the world--I was then about twenty--I chanced to find myself, one night, in the China Town of San Francisco. I had a friend with me, about my own age. Foolishly, we were exploring at night, alone--that is, without an interpreter or guide of any sort, which is about as risky a thing as any ordinary unarmed European can do in San Francisco, where you may still, I believe, find the scum of all the nations. Suddenly we heard a cry. A man was calling, `_Au secours! Au secours_!' Without stopping to think, I rushed in the direction whence the cry came. It was repeated. It was in a house which I recognised, at a glance, as an establishment of doubtful repute. I must tell you that when I was twenty I was considered a first-rate boxer, and it may have been the confidence I felt in my ability to defend myself that made me rush, without hesitation, into that Chinese den. Cards and chits were scattered about the tables and on the floor, and nine or ten Chinamen were in the room, struggling furiously with a tall, dark man of powerful build, who was being rapidly overcome owing to the number of his assailants. Chinese oaths were flying about freely, and I saw a knife-blade flash suddenly into the air." He paused for a second, then continued--