ock commenced a muted clangor, for the little hammer
was muffled.

Sin Sin Wa walked slowly across to the counter. Taking up the gleaming
joss, he unscrewed its pedestal. Then, returning to the spot where Mrs.
Sin lay, he coolly detached a leather wallet which she wore beneath her
dress fastened to a girdle. Next he removed her rings, her bangles
and other ornaments. He secreted all in the interior of the joss--his
treasure-chest. He raised his hands and began to unplait his long
pigtail, which, like his "blind" eye, was camouflage--a false queue
attached to his own hair, which he wore but slightly longer than some
Europeans and many Americans. With a small pair of scissors he clipped
off his long, snake-like moustaches....

CHAPTER XLI. THE FINDING OF KAZMAH

At a point just above the sweep of Limehouse Reach a watchful river
police patrol observed a moving speck of light on the right bank of the
Thames. As if in answer to the signal there came a few moments later a
second moving speck at a point not far above the district once notorious
in its possession of Ratcliff Highway. A third light answered from the
Surrey bank, and a fourth shone out yet higher up and on the opposite
side of the Thames.

The tide had just turned. As Chief Inspector Kerry had once observed,
"there are no pleasure parties punting about that stretch," and,
consequently, when George Martin tumbled into his skiff on the Surrey
shore and began lustily to pull up stream, he was observed almost
immediately by the River Police.

Pulling hard against the stream, it took him a long time to reach his
destination--stone stairs near the point from which the second light had
been shown. Rain had ceased and the mist had cleared shortly after
dusk, as often happens at this time of year, and because the night was
comparatively clear the pursuing boats had to be handled with care.

George did not disembark at the stone steps, but after waiting there for
some time he began to drop down on the tide, keeping close inshore.

"He knows we've spotted him," said Sergeant Coombes, who was in one of
the River Police boats. "It was at the stairs that he had to pick up his
man."

Certainly, the tactics of George suggested that he had recognized
surveillance, and, his purpose abandoned, now sought to efface himself
without delay. Taking advantage of every shadow, he resigned his boat
to the gentle current. He had actually come to the entrance of Greenwich
Reac