He went into his room, brought out a rug and a pillow and threw them on to the broad settee.
“I’d like to say,” said Carver, as Tab was leaving him for the last time, “how surprisingly good you look in evening kit. The difficulties of making a reporter look like a gentleman must be almost insuperable, but you have succeeded beyond my most sanguine expectations.”
Tab chuckled.
“You’re indecently humorous tonight,” he said.
He hadn’t been in bed five minutes before the light went out of the sitting-room. Mr. Carver was apparently settling himself to sleep.
Tab’s dreams were happy, but they were strangely mixed. Within five minutes of his head touching the pillow, he was carrying Ursula through her scented garden and his heart was full of gratitude to providence that this great and wonderful prize had come to him. And then in his dream he began to feel uncomfortable. Glancing over his shoulder he saw the sinister figure of Yeh Ling watching him and he was in the garden no longer, but on the slope of a hill flanked by two huge pillars, and Yeh Ling stood at the entrance of his queer house arrayed in dull gold brocade.
“Bang.... Bang!”
Two shots in rapid succession.
XXX
He woke with a start. There was a rush of feet in the sitting-room and then—crash!