Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/180

 feast-room, with a hushed murmur of silken garments across the polished floor. He indicated that Mark and Alan were to follow him to a small room rich with dim, tarnished, golden filigree. He set aside a tall screen on which a broidered dragon writhed, and revealed, set into the wall, a little red lacquer door.

"It is a place for precious things," he explained.

Then he beckoned Mark to his side and pointed to the old unbroken seal.

"You are Mark Ingram," he said. "Open it."

The sound of his own name in the middle of the Chinese phrase made Mark start violently. He was almost in a dream. Alan, close behind him, was breathing hard.

So Mark bent and took his knife and broke the seals, and the door drifted open. Inside, in the darkness, stood a small lacquer chest, and a paper lay upon it. It was an exact copy of the one in Huen's hand. He laid them side by side, and smiled between his slender black mustachios, and nodded gravely once. He motioned to Mark again, and Mark broke the