I nodded. I remembered perfectly the old chap’s grave look as he spoke the words. I had little suspected their tremendous import.
“Well,” Feng continued, “you and Thelma have to thank the Crystal Claw for the fact that you are alive today. Had I not been at Mürren when it arrived, had I not know its significance, the devilish plot planned by Humphreys must have succeeded.
“I did not know when I arrived at Mürren any of the facts that soon after came into my possession. That I should have been there was one of the wonderful instances of the working of Providence.
“The arrival of the Crystal Claw fairly staggered me. Never before has it been bestowed upon a European. I knew at once that around Mrs. Audley some tremendous story must hang. I am not unknown in the Thu-tseng and I determined to get at the truth. What I learned in reply to my cables both surprised and alarmed me. It showed me that Mrs. Audley was in terrible danger. It put me at once on my guard with reference to Hartley Humphreys. From that time forward he was under almost incessant supervision.
“Now here are the essential facts. Sung-tchun was an extremely wealthy man—how wealthy no one exactly knew. He made a very remarkable will, in which he left the whole of his vast fortune to Miss Thelma Shaylor.”
Thelma started violently. “Left a fortune to me!” she burst out. “Why I never heard a word about it.”
“No,” said Feng, “there was a proviso in the will that except for some grave reason, of which the trustees were to be the judges, you were not to be told until you reached the age of twenty-one. Sung-tchun was anxious that you should not be exposed to the advances of mere fortune-hunters until you were old enough to have had a reasonable experience of the world.
“Now if the will had contained nothing else there would have been no difficulty: you would have been perfectly safe. Unfortunately Sung-tchun added a codicil which was, as events proved, to bring you into terrible peril.
“That codicil provided that if you died childless the vast bulk of Sung-tchun’s wealth should devolve upon a Chinese named Chi-ho who was living in New York. Now here is a crucial fact. Chi-ho was hopelessly in the power of Hartley Humphreys.
“Humphreys learned of the provisions of Sung-tchun’s will. He had lived in China; he knew the country well and he was very wealthy. By the treachery of an official of the Thu-tseng he learned of that fatal codicil. It was an amazing instance of leakage of information for which the history of the Thu-tseng knows no parallel and the offender has expiated his crime by the forfeit of his life.