Page:Mr. Wu (IA mrwumilnlouisejo00milniala).pdf/161

 a great deal of Mandarin Wu since I first came out. He's a gentleman, and every inch a man. There is no one I respect more, and very, very few of my own race I respect as much. We are friends, I tell you. And I think he likes me. I went to beg a great favor of him."

"H'm!" the clerk mused aloud. "And he wouldn't see you?"

"And I couldn't get in. I have never been refused 'come in and welcome' at Wu's before, and I must have been there fifty times. But I couldn't get past the outer gate yesterday. The mandarin didn't refuse to see me; I just couldn't get in."

"Much the same thing"

"Not at all! I was met at the gate and turned away from it with every courtesy. If Wu had wished to avoid me, I might still have been made free of the grounds, as I have been a dozen times when he has been away or too busy to chat. But I was driven—with the utmost politeness—from the gate. Why? Because there was something in there I was not to see—I believe, Basil. And if Basil, Basil alive. A dead Englishman would have been obliterated."

"But could not a living one be hidden beyond your suspicion, even by so astute a Chinaman as Wu Li Chang?"

The clergyman looked puzzled. "Yes—yes—undoubtedly, most probably, but such men as Wu take no chance, and there is always just one chance that any living prisoner may make himself heard or seen. But dead men tell no tales."

Holman shook his head. He was unconvinced.

And Holman was right. Wu Li Chang would, had he chosen to do so, have let all Anglo-Hong Kong stroll through his gardens, and have kept twenty prisoners