'To-morrow this Chang shall go. I myself will direct him, and also those who shall set out in pursuit in the opposite direction. Greeting, my friend.'
Tsu-Hi stalked majestically into the room and stood beneath the swaying lantern, his eyes blinking in the light as he searched for the man he had come to visit. He had half-expected him to be there before him, kow-towing to the ground, for this jack-in-office loved humility in those who served him. Then he caught sight of the figure huddled beneath the patched and stained quilt spread over the kang, and chuckled loudly.
'He sleeps, worn out with his efforts to warn us, but he will welcome the deputy-governor. I will rouse him.'
He stepped across to the kang, and touched the figure lying there. He pulled the quilt back with a sharp jerk, disclosing the face of the Tartar under-officer. But even then he did not realise that this was not Chang, the man whom the Tartar had brought so secretly to him that evening. It was only when, hearing the door bang, and turning slowly he discovered the figure of the Tartar who had admitted him advancing swiftly that Tsu-Hi became alarmed.
'Insolence!' he cried. 'What is this? Who bade you follow in here? Begone at once, else——'
Even then he had not penetrated the disguise of the youth before him, though his alarm increased seeing that David did not halt, but came on towards him. But, of a sudden, he grasped the real truth, for a revolver already grinned within two feet of him. He started backward against the kang and fell upon it A second later he was up again, and running towards the door like a startled rabbit, but David stopped him in a manner to which this very important official must have been a stranger since his earliest boyhood. He gripped Tsu-Hi by the shoulder, and with a heave tossed him heavily into the corner. Then he dragged him to his feet again, and pressed the muzzle of his weapon hard against his head.
'Silence! Make a sound and you are a dead man. Strip off your garments.'
How Jong would have giggled had he been able to see what was passing, for he would have enjoyed to the full the terror of this mandarin. Tsu-Hi's eyes indeed threatened to start from his head, while he shook so violently that his limbs would hardly support him. But the revolver gave him some sort of strength, that and the threatening looks of this hated foreign devil. Rapidly, as if he longed to be rid of them, he dragged off his gorgeous garment.
'Boots, too,' commanded David fiercely. 'Now lie down on that kang. You can push the man farther over. Not a sound, mind, or I'll rid this city of a deputy-governor.'
Little more than ten minutes later David emerged from the cell, leaving Tsu-Hi trussed like a fowl, bound hand and foot with strips torn from the quilt, and nicely muzzled with a ball of the same wedged between his teeth and secured in position. He pulled the door to, shot the bolts home, and strode along the passage.