This brought Fong to the end of his discoveries. Having come upon a matter so much more momentous than he had expected, he was baffled and had brought his perplexities to a higher court. His Oriental subtlety had done its part and he was now prepared to let the Occidental go on from where he had left off. Mark inwardly thanked heaven that the old man had come to him. It insured secrecy, meant a carrying of the investigation to a climax and put him in a position where he could feel himself of use to Lorry. If to the Chinaman George Alston's house was a place set apart and sacred, it was to her undeclared lover a shrine to be kept free at any cost from such an intruder as Mayer. It did not occur to him as strange that Fong should have chosen him to carry on the good work. In the astonished indignation that the story had aroused he saw nothing but the fact that a soiled and sinister presence had entered the home of a girl, young, ignorant and peculiarly unprotected. Neither he nor Fong felt the almost comic unusualness of the situation--an infrequent guest called upon by an old retainer to help run to earth another guest. As they sat side by side at the table each saw only the fundamental thing--from separate angles the interests of both converged to the same central point. At this stage Mark was unwilling to offer advice. They must know more first, and to that end he told Fong to bring Jim to his room the following night at eight. Meantime he would think it over and work out some plan. The next day he sent the phone message to Crowder and that night told him the story over dinner at Philip's Rotisserie. It threw Crowder into tense excitement; he became the journalist on the scent of a sensation. He was so carried away by its possibilities that he forgot Pancha's part in the unfolding drama. It was not till they were walking to Mark's lodging that he remembered and stopped short, exclaiming: "By Ginger, I'd forgotten! Another county heard from; it's coming in from all sides." So Pancha's experience was added to the case against Mayer, and breasting the hills, the young men talked it over, Crowder leaping to quick conclusions, impulsive, imagination running riot, Mark more judicial, confining himself to what facts they had, warning against hasty judgments. The talk finally veered to the Alston's and Mark had a question to ask that he had not liked to put to Fong. He moved to it warily--did Mayer go to the Alston house often, was he a constant visitor? "Well, I don't know how constant, but I do know he goes. I've met him there a few times." "He hasn't been after either of them--his name hasn't been connected with theirs?" "Oh, no--nothing like that. He's just one of the bunch that drops in. I was jollying Chrystie about him the other night and she seemed to dismiss him in an offhand sort of fashion." "He oughtn't to go at all. He oughtn't to be allowed inside their doors."