“Stop! Who—what are you after?”
The light scuffing descended rapidly. Miles leapt for the black square, plunged through it, and down the twisting stair. The thin scantling shook and buckled under their double weight. He jumped the lower steps, just as the tower door slammed open to let a black figure bound out into the lantern light. A scurrying pair of thick white soles, as he caught up the lantern by the bail, guided his pursuit; he gained on them, and running his hardest to the gully bridge, gripped in his right hand the fluttering fullness of a silken jacket.
“Stop!” he cried. “You—”
The fugitive tugged, wriggled, surrendered, and turned a grinning face.
“No can do,” he panted, nodding and ducking amiably. The felt hat was gone, and his bobbing crown showed a high, shaven forehead, bound with neat black coils of braided hair. “But in pictures they hang down,” thought Miles. “A queue!” He had never before seen a Chinaman.
“What do you want?” he asked severely.
His captive, smiling and nodding, the calmer of the two, repeated,—
“No can do, no can do.”
Plainly, the man’s English went no further. Miles released his grip, and, feeling rather foolish, stepped back to consider. Like a spring released, and with instant, mechanical precision, the Chinaman vaulted the bridge-rail, landed on the steep bank below, and darted upward, crashing into the alders. His escape, like his first appearance, had the facility of acts in a dream.
Flushed and bewildered, Miles was halfway home before he regained the use of reason. At a clap the thought overtook him, What if this were Tony’s “foreign-looking” enemy? “I’d better make sure first,” he told himself; and sitting by the library fire, he kept as thoughtful a silence as his grandfather and the sailor, perched, with intent faces, over their chessmen.