“What is it, Eline—waking me up at this time in the morning?” asked Mr. Stott irritably.
“They are there—the Chinamen. I saw one getting through the window,” said the girl, her teeth chattering to the serious disturbance of Dr. Billbery’s Kure-Ake.
“Wait a moment until I get my stick.”
Mr. Stott kept hanging to his bed-rail, a heavily loaded cane. He had no intention of going nearer to Mayfield than the safe side of his dining-room window, but the holding of the stick gave him the self-confidence of which he was in need.
Cautiously the girl let up the blind of the dining-room window and unfastened the catch. The sash slid up noiselessly and gave them an interrupted view of Mayfield.
“There’s one!” whispered Eline.
Standing in the shadow was a figure. Mr. Stott saw it plainly. They watched in silence for the greater part of half-an-hour. Mr. Stott had an idea that he ought to telephone for the police, but refrained. In the case of ordinary burglars, he would not have hesitated. But these were Chinese, notoriously clannish and vengeful. He had read stories, in which Chinaman had inflicted diabolical injuries upon men who had betrayed them.
At the end of the half-hour’s vigil, the door of Mayfield opened and a man came out and joined the other. Together they walked up the road and that was the last Mr. Stott saw of them.
“Very remarkable!” said Mr. Stott profoundly. “I’m glad you called me, Eline. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. But you must say nothing about this, Eline—nothing. The Chinese people are very bloodthirsty. They would think no more of putting you into a barrel full of sharp pointed nails and rolling you down a hill, than I should think of—er—lacing my shoes.”
So Maple Manor kept its grisly secret and none knew of Yeh Ling’s visit to the house of death or his search for the tiny lacquer box wherein Jesse Trasmere kept a folded sheet of thin paper elegantly inscribed in Chinese characters by Yeh Ling, in his own hand.