When the piercing eyes of this stranger rested upon Hi Wing Ho an expression which I shall never forget entered into them; an expression coldly murderous. As for the Chinaman, he literally crumpled up.
“You rat!” roared the stranger.
Taking one long stride he stooped upon the Chinaman, seized him by the back of the neck as a terrier might seize a rat, and lifted him to his feet.
“The mystery of the pigtail, Mr. Knox,” said the detective, “is solved at last.”
“Have ye got it?” demanded the Scotsman, turning to me, but without releasing his hold upon the neck of Hi Wing Ho.
I took the pigtail from my pocket and dangled it before his eyes.
“Suppose you come into my study,” I said, “and explain matters.”
We entered the room which had been the scene of so many singular happenings. The detective and I seated ourselves, but the Scotsman, holding the Chinaman by the neck as though he had been some inanimate bundle, stood just within the doorway, one of the most gigantic specimens of manhood I had ever set eyes upon.
“You do the talking, sir,” he directed the detective; “ye have all the facts.”
While Durham talked, then, we all listened—excepting the Chinaman, who was past taking an intelligent interest in anything, and who, to judge from his starting eyes, was being slowly strangled.