They were come now to the narrow street communicating with the courtway in which the great treasure-house of Huang Chow was situated, and Lala stopped at the corner.
“It was nice of you to walk along with me,” she said. “Do you live in Limehouse?”
“No,” replied Durham, “I don't. As a matter of fact, I came down here to-night in the hope of seeing you again.”
“Did you?”
The girl glanced up at him doubtfully, and his distaste for the task set him by his superior increased with the passing of every moment. He was a man of some imagination, a great reader, and ambitious professionally. He appreciated the fact that Chief Inspector Kerry looked for great things from him, but for this type of work he had little inclination.
There was too much chivalry in his make-up to enable him to play upon a woman's sentiments, even in the interests of justice. By whatever means the man Cohen had met his death, and whether or no the Chinaman Pi Lung had died by the same hand, Lala Huang was innocent of any complicity in these matters, he was perfectly well assured.
Doubts were to come later when he was away from her, when he had had leisure to consider that she might regard him in the light of a third potential rifler of her father's treasure-house. But at the moment, looking down into her dark eyes, he reproached himself and wondered where his true duty lay.
“It is so gray and dull and sordid here,” said the girl, looking down the darkened street. “There is no one much to talk to.”
“But you have your business interests to keep you employed during the day, after all.”
“I hate it all. I hate it all.”