He lighted a fresh cigarette and gazed reflectively at the thread of smoke that curled upward from the lighted end. The drink of whisky had cleared his brain, and, alert, feverishly bright-eyed, every nerve in tune, he was now the man who for years had matched wits with the continental police and eluded them at every turn. Sing Tong Fat, well aware of the seriousness of the situation, shuffled his feet uneasily and waited, with an anxious look on his face, for his “master” to speak.
“Sing Tong Fat,” said Deweese, finally, “you and I have been friends and coworkers for many years. We have associated in many dangerous enterprises and I have always been liberal when it came to a division of the spoils. As we have shared the pleasures of our adventures, so too have we shared their dangers. I feel it only fair to tell you, therefore, that our peril has never been so great as it is now. Unless we act quickly we are doomed. You follow me, do you not?”
Sing Tong Fat touched his forehead and gravely nodded.
“It seems as if Fate has been against us from the very beginning in the Q-gas business,” resumed Deweese in an unemotional tone. “The murder of Berjet, while necessary, was unfortunate, and since then we have had one stroke of bad luck after the other. We erred in trying to kill the French detective in the manner we did. He should have been knifed, swiftly, surely, silently. The bat that I instructed you to put in his room failed to accomplish his death and gave him a clue which, if we are not careful, may prove to be our undoing. Most important of all, both of us have been recognized. So you can realize how serious the situation is.”
“I await thy command, O Illustrious Master,” said the Chinaman gravely, in his native tongue.
Deweese, as if he took this for granted, nodded and proceeded:
“Of the two of us you have the most cunning, and you therefore stand the better chance of eluding the police. This is not flattery; it is wisdom I have acquired through the years of my association with you. You are as elusive as a phantom when at large, and, when in the toils, as slippery as an eel. Execution of the plan I have formed, therefore, I am going to entrust to you. It is very doubtful if I could slip through the cordon of police around the house but I think that you may be able to do so, and it is very necessary that one of us should. Here, then, is what I want you to do:
“The soviet agent, No. 29, is waiting in New York for the Q-gas formula. He is stopping at the Alpin Hotel. The formula is locked in a safe-deposit box in the Exporter’s Bank in this city. The box was rented by me under the name of John G. McGlynn. I want you to take the first train to New York and get No. 29 to return to Washington with you. It is too risky for you to try to telegraph him.
“I will give you a paper authorizing him to open the box and remove the formula. The formula is to be replaced with fifty thousand dollars in gold, the second and final installment of the price No. 29 agreed to pay for the secret.
“After the exchange, which must take place in your presence, you are to rejoin me here and we will settle our score with Peret, and then take steps to extricate ourselves from the net he has woven around us. The most important thing now is the formula. Once we have gotten rid of that, we can doubtless make our get-away. We have done so many times in the past under circumstances almost as trying as the present ones, and we can doubtless do so again.