"If you return before I, learn that I go to find the little-little woman," read Tarling in astonishment.
"Then he knows she's gone! Thank God for that!" he said. "I wonder——"
He stopped. He thought he had heard a low moan, and catching the eye of Whiteside, he saw that the Scotland Yard man had detected the same sound.
"Sounds like somebody groaning," he said. "Listen!"
He bent his head and waited, and presently it came again.
In two strides Tarling was at the door of Ling Chu's sleeping place, but it was locked. He stooped to the key-hole and listened, and again heard the moan. With a thrust of his shoulder he had broken the door open and dashed in.
The sight that met his eyes was a remarkable one. There was a man lying on the bed, stripped to the waist. His hands and his legs were bound and a white cloth covered his face. But what Tarling saw before all else was that across the centre of the broad chest were four little red lines, which Tarling recognised. They were "persuaders," by which native Chinese policemen secretly extract confessions from unwilling criminals—light cuts with a sharp knife on the surface of the skin, and after——
He looked around for the "torture bottle," but it was not in sight.
"Who is this?" he asked, and lifted the cloth from the man's face.
It was Milburgh.