When Midwinter had escaped, we found the corpse of poor old Professor Chang, and the whole plan was revealed to us. Pu-Yi had been shot through the heart. His death must have been instantaneous. For several days Morse was in a terrible state of depression and remorse. He said that there was a curse upon him, and it was with the greatest difficulty that Rolston and I could bring him into a more reasonable frame of mind. The long strain had worn down even that iron resolution, but, for Juanita's sake, I knew that I must stand by him to the end.
Accordingly, there was nothing else for it, Rolston and I took entire charge of everything. I had never felt inclined to go back from the very beginning. Now my resolution was firm to see it through to the end.
Rolston pursued his own plans, and London very shortly knew that Gideon Mendoza Morse and his lovely daughter were about to reappear in the world. It gave my little, red-haired friend intense pleasure to organize this mild press campaign from the office of the Evening Special. I placed him in complete control, to the intense joy of Miss Dewsbury and the disgust of the older members of the staff. Be that as it may, the thing was done, and every one knew that Birmingham House had been taken by the millionaire.
It was then, having organized things as perfectly as I could at the City, placing Kwang-Su, the gigantic gate-keeper of the ground inclosure, in charge of the staff, that I myself descended into the world as unobtrusively as possible. For a day or two I remained in seclusion at the "Golden Swan," and during those two days saw no one but the Honest Fool, Mrs. Abbs, my housekeeper, and—Sliddim, the private inquiry agent.
Personally, while I quite appreciated the fellow's skill in his own dirty work, and while indeed I owed him a considerable debt in the matter of Bill Rolston's first disappearance, I disliked him too much ever to have thought of him as a help in the very serious affair on which I was engaged. It was Rolston, as usual, who changed my mind. He saw farther than I did. He realized the essential secrecy and fidelity of the odd creature whom chance had unearthed from among the creeping things of London, and in the end he became an integral part of the plot.
He was told, of course, no more than was necessary. He was not by any means in our full confidence. But he was given a part to play, and promised a reward, if he played it well, that would make him independent for life. Let me say at once that he fulfilled his duty with admirable skill, and, when he received his check from Mr. Morse, vanished forever from our ken. I have no doubt that he is spying somewhere or other on the globe at this moment, but I have no ambition to meet him again.
Mr. Sliddim, considerably furbished up in personal appearance, was made caretaker at Birmingham House in Berkeley Square. He had not been in that responsible position for more than ten days when our fish began to nibble at the bait.
In a certain little public house by some mews at the back of Berkeley Square, a little public house which Mr. Sliddim was instructed—and needed no encouragement—to frequent, he was one day accosted by a tall, middle-aged man with a full, handsome face and a head of curling, gray hair. This man was dressed in a seedy, shabby-genteel style, and soon became intimate with our lure.
Certainly, to give him his due, Sliddim must have been a supreme actor in his way. He did the honest, but intensely stupid caretaker to the life. Mark Antony Midwinter was completely taken in and pumped our human conduit for all he was worth, until he was put in possession of an entirely fictitious set of circumstances, arranged with the greatest care to suit my plans.
I shall not easily forget the evening when Sliddim slunk into my dining-room and described the scene which told us we had made absolutely no mistake and that our fish was definitely hooked. It seems that the good Sliddim had gradually succumbed to the repeated proffer of strong waters on the part of "Mr. Smith," his new friend. He had bragged of his position, only lamenting that some days hence it was to come to an end, when, in the evening, Mr. Mendoza Morse, his daughter, and a staff of servants were to enter the house simultaneously. Sliddim, the most consistent whisky-nipper I have ever seen—and I had some curious side-lights on that question when I was landlord of the "Golden Swan"—was physically almost incapable of drunkenness, but he simulated it so well in the little pub at the back of the Square that Mark Antony Midwinter made no ado about taking the latchkey of Birmingham House area door from his pocket and making a waxen impression of it.