"Tell me quickly, Pu-Yi, time presses."
"They caught him last night, so they must have been here then."
"Who caught him?"
"He never knew. They were masked, but there were two of them, and from his description we know very well who they were. Sir Thomas, they tortured him for a long time until he spoke, promising him freedom if he did so. His story was disjointed, gasped out with his dying breath, but I can put it together pretty well.
"They made him give an order by telephone from the upper City that, immediately, the staff were to leave here and descend to the ground and await further orders, all but Mulligan, who was to remain at his post until I came to him. This message was delivered in Chinese to the man at the telephone exchange, and the poor boy was forced to counterfeit my voice. He was blindfolded immediately afterwards, but he heard a man speaking, and he said he could not have told the voice from that of Mr. Morse."
In a flash I saw the whole thing, in its devilish ingenuity, its fiendish completeness.
"Then we are absolutely alone, you, I, Mr. Rolston, Mr. Morse and his daughter?"
"And her maid," he answered quietly.
"At the mercy of—"
"That we have yet to prove. We must throw all emotion, all fear aside. That's what we have to do now. It's diamond cut diamond. There's one problem in my mind, and one only."