“The third.”
“The same as mine. That falls nicely. Return then at half after ten. You will come to my room for the gold.”
Ling Foo saw his thousand shrink to the original five hundred, but there was no help for it. At half after ten he knocked on the panel of Jane’s door and waited. He knocked again; still the summons was not answered. The third assault was emphatic. Ling Foo heard footsteps, but 76 behind him. He turned. The meddling young officer was striding toward him.
“What are you doing here?” Dennison demanded.
His own appearance in the corridor at this hour might have been subjectable to inquiry. He had left Jane at nine. He had seen her to the lift. Perhaps he had walked the Bund for an hour or two, but worriedly. The thought of the arrival in Shanghai of his father and the rogue Cunningham convinced him that some queer game was afoot, and that it hinged somehow upon those beads.
There was no sighing in regard to his father, for the past that was. An astonishing but purely accidental meeting; to-morrow each would go his separate way again. All that was a closed page. He had long ago readjusted his outlook on the basis that reconciliation was hopeless.
A sudden impulse spun him on his heel, and he hurried back to the Astor. The hour did not matter, or the possibility that Jane might be abed. He would ask permission to become the temporary custodian of the beads. What were they, to have brought his father across the Pacific—if indeed they had? Anyhow, he would end his own anxiety in regard to Jane by assuming the risks, if any, himself. 77
No one questioned him; his uniform was a passport that required no visé.
Ling Foo eyed him blandly.
“I am leaving for the province in the morning, so I had to come for my jade to-night. But the young lady is not in her room.”