“No one else but me, Pong Lee, no. Why you ask?”
“Well,” Bob faltered, his voice lowering to a whisper, “there—there’s someone in there, near the curtain. I don’t know who it is. Looked like they were listening to us.”
Pong Lee was panting. His eyes were wild with fury.
“The rings!” he cried. “It is someone after the rings! They will keel us!”
“Not if we can help it they won’t,” Bob said grimly. “They——”
He stopped suddenly as he noticed a pistol in Pong Lee’s hand. How the man had produced the weapon so quickly he never knew.
“What are you going to do?” asked Joe. “Better not go out there. It isn’t safe.”
The Chinaman, paying no attention to the warning, slipped silently over to the end of the curtain, near the wall. His little mouth was rigid; his eyes glared. The gun he held in readiness.
The curtain he pulled back so slowly that only the movement of the cloth was not noticeable.