Again Yeh Ling shook his head.
“He cannot be killed—here,” he said. “The illustrious knows that my hands are clean—”
“Are you a man-of-wild-mind?” snarled the other. “Do I kill men or ask that they should be killed? Even on the Amur, where life is cheap, I have done no more than put a man to the torture because he stole my gold. No, this Drinker must be made quiet. He smokes the pipe of Pleasant Experience. You have no pipe-room. I would not tolerate such a thing. But you know places.”
“I know a hundred and a hundred,” said Yeh Ling, cheerfully for him.
He accompanied his master to the door, and when it had closed upon him, he returned swiftly to his parlour and summoned a stunted man of his race.
“Go after the old man and see that no harm comes to him,” he said.
It seemed from his tone almost as though this guardianship was novel, but in exactly the same words the shuffling Chinaman had received identical instructions every day for six years, when the thud of the closing street-door came to Yeh Ling’s keen ears. Every day except Sunday.
He himself never went out after Jesse Trasmere. He had other duties which commenced at eleven and usually kept him busy until the early hours of the morning.
II
Mr. Trasmere walked steadily and at one pace, keeping to the more populous streets. Then at exactly 8.25 he turned into Peak Avenue, that wide and pleasant thoroughfare where his house was situated. A man who had been idling away a wasted half-hour saw him and crossed the road.