“Did you say there was no letter with it? Perhaps you have kept the packing,” he asked, gravely regarding the jewel as it lay in the palm of his hand.
“Oh, it came from some foreign place,” Mrs. Audley said. “I could not make out the name, but I will fetch the wrapper, perhaps you can tell,” and she darted from her seat.
Feng sat silent, turning the claw over and over in his hand and closely examining it. He seemed to have forgotten me entirely in his abstraction.
A few moments later Mrs. Audley returned with a small box and some peculiar paper in which it had been wrapped. The whole had been rewrapped in brown paper in England and the original address—“Miss Thelma Shaylor, care of Mrs. Shaylor, Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex, England,” was undamaged. It was a queer cramped handwriting, evidently that of a foreigner.
Dr. Feng glanced at it. “This was posted in Pekin,” he said, “Have you any friends out there, Mrs. Audley?”
“No, certainly not,” was the startling reply. “I have never known anyone in China. Are you sure it is from Pekin?”
Dr. Feng smiled. “You forget I am a Chinese, Mrs. Audley,” he said. “You can be quite sure that package came from Pekin. It is wrapped in Chinese rice paper as you will see, and the address was written by a Chinese.”
Mrs. Audley looked puzzled. “Well,” she said at last, “someone who knows me must have gone to China. But it’s very pretty, and I wish I knew who sent it.”
“You must take great care of it,” said Dr. Feng. “It is very valuable, apart from sentimental considerations.”
Then our talk drifted to other topics and the crystal claw, for the moment, was apparently forgotten. But I noticed that Dr. Feng could not keep his eyes off it for long, and he was unusually silent and abstracted during the meal.