The other exploded into a torrent of Chinese. Garth understood not a word, yet the shrill voice, rising and falling, cried to him a fear and a despair that were tragic.
"Bluff away," he muttered, "though I don't see what good it will do you. Plenty of interpreters at headquarters. Point is, are you coming peaceably, or will I have to wake up a patrolman to get a wagon?"
The Chinaman was on the point of collapse. Garth practically carried him to the corner. He experienced a feeling of remorse, which, however, vanished before the recollection of the queue, glistening, serpent-like.
He was relieved to turn his man over at headquarters. He saw him placed in an empty detention cell.
"Sleep tight," he called as the key turned. "Maybe you'll learn English by morning."
His own sleep was untroubled, save by his persistent uneasiness about Nora.
As soon as he was up the next morning he telephoned the Bureau of Licenses and apparently ran his one clue into a dead wall. The limousine, he found, belonged to Thomas Black, a young man of more than ordinary wealth and position. Garth flushed uncomfortably. He began to suspect that he had been guilty of an indiscretion, for Black, some years ago, had married the sister of Rufus Manford, whose recent selection as head of the Society for Social Justice had set in motion a cumbersome amount of self-satisfied and unusually ill-designed activity against crime. Still Garth knew that Manford was working with the inspector now on some urgent cases about which little was said at headquarters. It was possible, then, that the trail of coins had been arranged by Manford in the society's office for a purpose which his interference might have destroyed.
But the growing day diminished the importance of the whole adventure. That returned to it only when the telephone summoned him as he was about to leave his rooms.
"Hello!" he called.
The voice that answered was gruff, disapproving, almost reproachful, he would have said.