Page:Yellow Claw 1920.djvu/277

 which was near to him; these rapid inquiries dictated the following remark: “You have lived in China, Sir Brian?”

Sir Brian surveyed him with mild surprise.

“Yes,” he replied; “I was for some time at the Embassy in Pekin.”

His guest nodded, blowing a ring of smoke from his lips and tracing its hazy outline with the lighted end of his cigar.

“I, too, have been in China,” he said slowly.

“What, really! I had no idea.”

“Yes—I have been in China…I”…

M. Gaston grew suddenly deathly pale and his fingers began to twitch alarmingly. He stared before him with wide-opened eyes and began to cough and to choke as if suffocating—dying.

Sir Brian Malpas leapt to his feet with an exclamation of concern. His visitor weakly waved him away, gasping: “It is nothing…it will…pass off. Oh! mon dieu!”…

Sir Brian ran and opened one of the windows to admit more air to the apartment. He turned and looked back anxiously at the man in the armchair. M. Gaston, twitching in a pitiful manner and still frightfully pale, was clutching the chair-arms and glaring straight in front of him. Sir Brian started slightly and advanced again to his visitor’s side.

The burning cigar lay upon the carpet beside the chair, and Sir Brian took it up and tossed it into the grate. As he did so he looked searchingly into