Now began his own career of crime. He was just then very hard up. He had spent much more than his allowance--he was in debt at his lodgings and elsewhere. Somewhere, he felt sure, there was, in that house, the money which Chen Li had evidently stolen from old Multenius. He immediately set to work to find it. But he had no difficulty--the bank-notes were in the drawer from which he had seen Chen Li take the gold which he had given to the blackmailer, Parslett. He hurriedly transferred them to his own pocket, and got away from the house by the door at the back of the garden--and it was not until late that night, in the privacy of his own rooms, that he found he had nearly eighty thousand pounds in his possession. For some days, said Yada, he was at a loss what to do with his booty. He was afraid of attempting to change five hundred pound notes. He made cautious enquiries as to how that could be done--and he began to think that the notes were so much waste paper to him. And then Ayscough called on him--and for the first time, he heard the story of the orange-yellow diamond. That gave him an idea. He had a very accurate knowledge of Chinese habits and characteristics, and he felt sure that Chen Li would have hidden that diamond in his pig-tail. So he took advantage of his possession of the detective's card to go to the mortuary, to get a minute or two alone with the body, and to slip his hand underneath the dead man's silk cap. There he found the diamond--and he knew that whether the bank-notes were to be of any value to him or not, the diamond would be if he could only escape to the Continent. But--he wanted funds; wanted them badly. He thereupon conceived the bold idea of getting a reward for his knowledge. He went to the police-station with a merely modest motive in his mind--fifty pounds would carry him to Vienna, where he knew how to dispose of the diamond at once, with no questions asked. But when he found the owners of the diamond and the bank-notes present he decided to play for higher stakes. He got what he asked for--and, if it had not been for that little Jew, he said malevolently, he would have got out of England that eventful afternoon. But--it was not so written--and the game was up. Only--what he had said was true. Now let them do what they could for him--but let them search for Chen Li's murderer. * * * * *