THE VALLEY OF EYES UNSEEN By GILBERT COLLINS AUTHOR OF "FLOWER OF ASIA." LONDON: DUCKWORTH AND CO. 3, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.2. _First published in 1923._ ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. _Made and printed in Great Britain by The Birmingham Printers, Ltd., 42-44, Hill Street and 82-84, Station Street, Birmingham._ DEDICATION TO BROADER UNDERSTANDING, DEEPER SYMPATHY, AND UNTHREATENED PEACE BETWEEN THE PEOPLES OF EAST AND WEST THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED. THE VALLEY OF EYES UNSEEN PROLOGUE The tale begins in my rooms in Peking, in the north of China, one bitter January morning many years ago. The scene is stamped ineffaceably on my recollection, so that even without the help of certain confirmatory details, such as the overturning of the coffee pot, I am able to say with certainty that the hour of day was breakfast time. The breakfast table was the central point of a triangle, formed by the blazing fire in the grate and two ponderous oil stoves farther out in the room; for this was in the punishing old days before that gift of the gods, the steam-heated radiator, came to soften the arctic rigours of a North China winter. My number-one house boy had brought in the morning paper and laid it on my table, but it was without any lively anticipation of delight that I picked up the straw-blemished, hazily printed sheet. The local press of the time was not of enthralling interest; and what news of the outer world filtered through to our buried corner of Asia in erratic dribbles was apt to be still further marred by the bold but not always illuminating innovations of the Chinese compositors in setting English type. I was idly turning over the spavined issue of this morning when something caught my eye in the middle column of the middle page. A moment later the sheet was fluttering to the floor, and a river of boiling coffee sluiced out over the cloth of the breakfast table. I picked up the fallen newspaper and began to read. The age-yellowed sheet lies before me as I write, and the following, save for numerous typographical errors which I have not copied, is an exact transcript of the report that had given me this sudden start:-- "MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR IN SHANGHAI. "DISTINGUISHED ORIENTALIST DEAD, IS REPORT.