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 “To you,” said Hung scornfully, “I will tell nothing.” He walked up to Mark Drew. “To you—everything,” he said. “Only to-night in this house you spoke of my loyalty, my devotion to your father, and my heart was heavy within me. And why? Because, but a little while before, I had slain both your father and his friend.” He turned to the girl, Mah-li. “All this was to be,” he explained, as though to a child. “Long ago the gods arranged it. And who is man that he should struggle against the gods?” Again he faced Mark Drew. “But because you have believed in me, have trusted me, you must know that I had good and sufficient cause.”

For a moment he was silent while we waited, tense with interest. In the hallway the great clock struck the hour of three.

“Ten years ago,” the Chinaman continued to Drew, “I first saw this woman, Mah-li. In the doorway of her father’s Rh