"Hanged if I know what this means!" muttered Ayscough. "As to who he is--if he's the fellow I gave a card to, he's a young Japanese medical student, one Yada, that was a friend of those Chinese--I called on him tonight, with Rubinstein, to see if we could pick up a bit of information. Of course, I sent in my professional card to him. But--we saw him set off to the East End!" "Bah!" laughed Mirandolet. "He has--what you call done you brown, my friend! He came--here! And he has got away--got a good start--with that diamond in his pocket!" "What the devil do you mean by that?" said Ayscough, hotly. "Diamond! Diamond! Where should he find the diamond--here? In a deadhouse? What are you talking about?" Mirandolet laughed again, and giving the detective a look that was very like one of pitying contempt, turned to the amazed mortuary keeper. "Show us that dead man!" he said. The mortuary keeper, who had allowed his keys to lie on the floor during this strange scene, picked them up, and selecting one, opened, and threw back the door by which he was standing. He turned on the light in the mortuary chamber, and Mirandolet strode in, with Ayscough, sullen and wondering, at his heels. Chen Li lay where the detective had last seen him, still and rigid, the sheet drawn carefully over his yellow face. Without a word Mirandolet drew that sheet aside, and motioning his companion to draw nearer, pointed to a skull-cap of thin blue silk which fitted over the Chinaman's head. "You see that!" he whispered. "You know what's beneath it!--something that no true Chinaman ever parts with, even if he does come to Europe, and does wear English dress and English headgear--his pigtail! Look here!" He quietly moved the skull-cap, and showed the two astonished men a carefully-coiled mass of black hair, wound round and round the back of the head. And into it he slipped his own long, thin fingers--to draw them out again with an exclamation which indicated satisfaction with his own convictions. "Just as I said," he remarked. "Gone! Mr. Detective--that's where Chen Li hid the diamond--and that Japanese man has got it. And now--you'd better be after him--half-an-hour's start to him is as good as a week's would be to you." He drew the sheet over the dead face and strode out, and Ayscough followed, angry, mystified, and by no means convinced. "Look here!" he said, as they reached the ante-room; "that's all very well, Dr. Mirandolet, but it's only supposition on your part!"