Page:The orange-yellow diamond by Fletcher, J. S. (Joseph Smith).djvu/251

 "Bah!" laughed Mirandolet. "He has—what you call done you brown, my friend! He came—here! And he has got away—got a good start—with that diamond in his pocket!"

"What the devil do you mean by that?" said Ayscough, hotly. "Diamond! Diamond! Where should he find the diamond—here? In a deadhouse? What are you talking about?"

Mirandolet laughed again, and giving the detective a look that was very like one of pitying contempt, turned to the amazed mortuary keeper.

"Show us that dead man!" he said.

The mortuary keeper, who had allowed his keys to lie on the floor during this strange scene, picked them up, and selecting one, opened, and threw back the door by which he was standing. He turned on the light in the mortuary chamber, and Mirandolet strode in, with Ayscough, sullen and wondering, at his heels.

Chen Li lay where the detective had last seen him, still and rigid, the sheet drawn carefully over his yellow face. Without a word Mirandolet drew that sheet aside, and motioning his companion to draw nearer, pointed to a skull-cap of thin blue silk which fitted over the Chinaman's head.

"You see that!" he whispered. "You know what's beneath it!—something that no true Chinaman ever parts with, even if he does come to Europe, and does wear English dress and English headgear—his pigtail! Look here!"

He quietly moved the skull-cap, and showed the two astonished men a carefully-coiled mass of black hair,