Tillizinni has never greatly interested himself in Chinese affairs, and though he had been instrumental in bringing many men to their doom, yet, curiously enough, none of these have been inmates of the Celestial Kingdom; so that he welcomed with the welcome which a blasé mind offers to anything in the shape of novelty, the invitation of Scotland Yard to make himself acquainted with the Society of Joyful Intention. The story proper which is set forth here, begins with the surrounding of the China Packet. On the 24th of November, in the year of the great storm, there went aground off the Goodwin Sands the China-Orient liner _Wu-song_. She was a modern steamer of six thousand tons, built by the Fanfield Company in 1900, and she traded between London and the China Sea. On the night in question she was homeward bound and was coming up the Channel at half speed, a precaution taken by her skipper as a result of a slight and patchy fog which lay on the Channel. Off St. Margarets, for some unaccountable reason, she shifted her course, and before anybody seemed to realise what was happening, she was aground. No sea was running at the time, the storm, it will be remembered, occurred a fortnight later, and with the aid of two Dover tugs she was refloated. That would seem rather a matter for the Trinity Masters than for Scotland Yard, but for the fact that in the natural excitement attendant upon the grounding, a very determined attempt was made to force the Stubb safe in the captain’s cabin. Here again Scotland Yard might have dismissed the matter as a mere commonplace attempt to secure the safe’s contents by some person or persons unknown, but for the fact that this was the third attempt which had been made during the voyage. Coming through the Suez Canal the captain had been on the bridge--as is usual when a ship is making progress through the great waterway. He had left his steward in charge of his cabin, with instructions not to leave the apartment until he (the captain) returned. Half way through the Canal, with the ship’s searchlights showing, and a clear stretch of water before him, he had snatched a moment to go to his cabin to get a muffler, for the night was cold. The cabin was on the boat deck and inaccessible to passengers except by invitation. To his surprise he had found the big room in darkness and had put one foot over the weather board to enter the cabin, when two men rushed past him, knocking him over in their hurry. He called for a quarter-master, entered the cabin, and discovered his steward lying gagged and bound on the floor. The man had been sitting reading when he had found himself violently seized and gagged by two men, one of whom had switched out the light the moment the assault was made. The steward struggled, but he was powerless in the hands of his assailants, and for a quarter of an hour he lay upon the floor, his back to the intruders, whilst they attacked the safe.