He walked forward until he came to the cab-rank at the foot of St. John's Wood Road, where he bundled Melky into a taxi-cab, and bade the driver get away to University College Hospital at his best pace. There was little delay in carrying out that order, but it was not such an easy task on arrival at their destination to find any one who could give Ayscough the information he wanted. At last, after they had waited some time in a reception room a young member of the house-staff came in and looked an enquiry. "What is it you want to know about these two Chinese students?" he asked a little impatiently, with a glance at Ayscough's card. "Is anything wrong?" "I want to know a good deal!" answered Ayscough. "If not just now, later. You know the two men I mean--Chang Li and Chen Li--brothers, I take it?" "I know them--they've been students here since about last Christmas," answered the young surgeon. "As a matter of fact they're not brothers--though they're very much alike, and both have the same surname--if Li is a surname. They're friends--not brothers, so they told us." "When did you see them last?" asked Ayscough. "Not for some days, now you mention it," replied the surgeon. "Several days. I was remarking on that today--I missed them from a class." "You say they're very much alike," remarked the detective. "I suppose you can tell one from the other?" "Of course! But--what is this? I see you're a detective sergeant. Are they in any bother--trouble?" "The fact of the case," answered Ayscough, "is just this--one of them's lying dead at our mortuary, and I shall be much obliged if you'll step into my cab outside and come and identify him. Listen--it's a case of murder!" Twenty minutes later, Ayscough, leading the young house-surgeon into a grim and silent room, turned aside the sheet from a yellow face. "Which one of 'em is it?" he asked. The house-surgeon started as he saw the wound in the dead man's throat. "This is Chen!" he answered. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT THE L500 BANK NOTE Ayscough drew the sheet over the dead man's face and signed to his companion to follow him outside, to a room where Melky Rubinstein, still gravely meditating over the events of the evening, was awaiting their reappearance. "So that," said Ayscough, jerking his thumb in the direction of the mortuary, "that's Chen Li! You're certain?" "Chen Li! without a doubt!" answered the house-surgeon. "I know him well!" "The younger of the two?" suggested Ayscough. The house-surgeon shook his head. "I can't say as to that," he answered. "It would be difficult to tell which of two Chinese, of about the same age, was the older. But that's Chen. He and the other, Chang Li, are very much alike, but Chen was a somewhat smaller and shorter man." "What do you know of them?" inquired Ayscough. "Can you say what's known at your hospital?"