Ever and anon, Tillizinni’s eyes would go up to the little round hole in the roof. He had recognised the head the moment he had seen it, and knew that the python was searching for food in the room above, until, in his desperation, he took the more desperate step of descending the rope. “Soo T’si,” said Tillizinni gently, “you will find it much easier to get into the bottle than, I gather, did Miss Yale.” “It is possible,” said the Chinaman coolly; “but it is not an experiment that I care to make.” “It is an experiment,” said Tillizinni in the same tone, “which I shall ask you to make, for if you do not do as I tell you, I shall most certainly shoot you.” Soo shrugged his shoulders. “You should have been a Chinaman,” he said. “I am of the race,” said Tillizinni carefully, “which produced the Borgias, and some of the most refined torturers of the Holy Inquisition. Enter your bottle, my friend!” he said. “I wish to see you bottled up in reality. You will find the place cramped, but you will probably be able to bear the indignity of it much easier than the delicate and refined English lady whom we have just released.” “I will do anything,” said Soo, “save sacrifice my dignity.” His eyes followed the other to a little aperture in the roof. The head of the python was hanging down now; his hateful eyes surveyed them. “I see your idea,” said Soo pleasantly. “I think I know a better way. A Chinaman must ‘save face,’ you know!” His hands were concealed under his silken jacket. Tillizinni could not see the man searching for the razor-like knife which he carried at his waistband, nor the firm fingers of the suicide feeling for the little place under the heart which, skilfully pierced, brings an easy death. Only he saw the face go suddenly grey. “Au ’voir,” said Soo in French. “I like this way better.” He fell in a heap on the ground, and looked up with a smile. “Pardon--me!” he said, smiling faintly--and died. So Tillizinni left him, with the head of the python looking hungrily down on the quiet figure below. So Tillizinni thinks of this man now, and often sees him at night--a smiling, fearless figure of a villain. And when all the lights are lit upon the Embankment, and Tillizinni leans out of his window watching the dark river and the flaming lamps of London, he looks westward and tries to picture Captain Talham a happy, domesticated man in his Surbiton home, with his motor-cars and his race horses and all the good things of life which the Emperor’s pearls had brought to him. Somehow Tillizinni fails to reconcile those two men. The Talham who held the fort of Hoo Sin against the armed soldiery of Tai Pan come to avenge their lord; the Talham who made the wild flight across China to the link of civilisation which the Siberian railway afforded, with the Talham who now discusses poultry and pigs with such earnestness and volubility.