Gregory looked at the open palm oddly, embarrassed, and then looked round anxiously at the window. Then, shrugging his shoulders and trying to speak indifferently, “Why not?” he said, and lifting the pistol, jerked it, and the cartridges fell out onto the desk.

“Thank you,” Wu said genially. “That makes the interesting conversation much more possible.” He began playing with them lightly, throwing and catching them as nimble-fingered boys do jackstones; and Gregory watched the deft, sinewy yellow hand, fascinated. “One—two—three—four—five—beautifully made little things, are they not?” Wu’s voice was dove-like. “Now we can start fair. Pray continue, Mr. Gregory, from the point where you left off.” One yellow hand dropped nonchalantly on to Wu’s knee below the table, two cartridges in the subtle fingers. “But please omit to make any further disrespectful allusion to my ancestors.” He was leaning forward on the desk, both hands beneath it now, and the revolver had slipped from his sleeve. “I do not misunderstand your having made the offensive remark—it was a mere mark of difference of caste and education. But do not repeat it,” he added smilingly, “or in any way allude to my ancestors”—the bullets were in his pistol, and Gregory was putting his emptied weapon irritably into a drawer. “You were asking me, I think, what I knew about the disappearance of your son and of certain commercial catastrophes which, I regret to hear, have lately overtaken you. Well, I will be perfectly frank with you—perfectly frank, Mr. Gregory, perfectly frank. I will conceal nothing.” The yellow hands slipped up quietly on to the desk. “And the first thing I have to say is”—the barrel of the pistol thrust forward—“look at this!”

Robert Gregory sprang up with a smothered oath, and his hand went convulsively towards the bell on the desk, “Ah, no!” Wu said, “don’t move, or it might go off by pure accident.” Gregory shifted out of Wu’s aim and made a foolish furtive attempt to ring. Wu covered him instantly, smiling still. “Don’t move, I say! Sit down! Sit down, Gregory!”

And Robert Gregory very slowly sat down—obedient partly in fear, partly in defeat, and a little in a somewhat hypnotized subjection to a bigger, more skillful man. Then suddenly he pulled the drawer open to look at his own revolver.

“No,” Wu told him, “not sleight of hand. This is not your revolver, but it’s identical——”

“That’s my son’s revolver. I know. I gave it to him myself. Now, damn you, I have got something to go on!”

CHAPTER XXIX
“Will You Visit Sing Kung Yah?”

“QUITE right,” Wu Li Chang said cordially. “This is—or was—your son’s property. My servants found it in my garden, after your son had left there. I intended to give myself pleasure of returning it to you in person”—that was perfectly true—“although I hardly anticipated doing so in so—humorous a manner. Now kindly ring your bell”—his voice stiffened suddenly, still low and easy; it had a new percussive note, and the words came quicker. “When it is answered, merely say to whomever enters, ‘Pray desire Mrs. Gregory to step this way.’ Do nothing more, say nothing more. Because”—the voice grew beautifully soft again—“if you should draw attention to this, or anything of that kind, my hand might tremble so much with fear that it might go off, and that would be too ridiculous, with one of your own cartridges! Please ring.”

At the mention of his wife—by Wu—Robert Gregory drew himself up stiffly. “What do you want with Mrs. Gregory?”