“We’ll see about that later. Why did you say that these things are not supposed to get out of Indo-China?”
“Let me ask first, sir, if this ever brought any bad luck to the man who owned it?” He paused and smiled cynically. “I mean the original.”
Derrick nodded. The daring of it was prodigious.
“Does it happen to be the man you spoke of just now?”
“Yes.”
Again the odd smile, and the peddler handed back the image. “It’s a queer thing,” he said slowly, “but I’ve heard tell that the spirit of Buddha doesn’t like these things drifting about. It’s talk of the East, of course, and perhaps it isn’t worth much in England. But there’s something at work in those parts that gets hold of people without their knowing it. It isn’t so long ago that I was in a temple up country where there was something like this, and it just looked at me and dared me to steal it. I reckon I would have tried to if it hadn’t been guarded by about a hundred priests. It was the same size as this, and just as ugly, and carved out of jade, too.
“All round it there were the usual images, but arranged like rows of policemen. Next it was an empty stand, and I guessed that that was where another one just like it had been, but when I asked where it had got to there was a hell of an excitement, because the beggars thought perhaps I had it and had come after its mate. It took me all my time to get them quieted down. Queer sort of game, wasn’t it, sir?”
“Yes,” said Derrick, in a strained voice. “Anything else?”
“We had a lot of talk back and forth but didn’t get anywhere. They seemed to claim that the thing was a sort of link between what one saw and didn’t see, and in a way joined them up to make a kind of general picture. I didn’t take much stock in all that, for Indo-China is stuffed with temples where they palaver about such subjects year after year. So that, sir, is why I happen to be interested in the original of this, and if you could put me in the way of getting it I’d make it worth your while.”
Derrick glanced involuntarily at Martin. On the man’s face had settled a look of utter hopelessness. There was no sullenness now, nothing grim or repellent. His eyes, at times so furtive, held only despair. His figure was slack, the broad shoulders dropped, and the big hands hung inert by his side. As though conscious of his master’s scrutiny, he looked up and pulled himself spasmodically together.