and floor, and the cigarette stubs were all to
call Keith's attention to the box on the table.

Keith could not but feel a certain sort of admiration for the Chinaman.
The two questions he must answer now were, What was Shan Tung's game?
and What did Shan Tung expect him to do?

Instantly Miriam Kirkstone flashed upon him as the possible motive for
Shan Tung's visit. He recalled her unexpected and embarrassing question
of that evening, in which she had expressed a suspicion and a doubt as
to John Keith's death. He had gone to Miriam's at eight. It must have
been very soon after that, and after she had caught a glimpse of the
face at the window, that Shan Tung had hurried to the Shack.

Slowly but surely the tangled threads of the night's adventure were
unraveling themselves for Keith. The main facts pressed upon him, no
longer smothered in a chaos of theory and supposition. If there had
been no Miriam Kirkstone in the big house on the hill, Shan Tung would
have gone to McDowell, and he would have been in irons at the present
moment. McDowell had been right after all. Miriam Kirkstone was
fighting for something that was more than her existence. The thought of
that "something" made Keith writhe and his hands clench. Shan Tung had
triumphed but not utterly. A part of the fruit of his triumph was still
just out of his reach, and the two--beautiful Miss Kirkstone and the
deadly Shan Tung--were locked in a final struggle for its possession.
In some mysterious way he, John Keith, was to play the winning hand.
How or when he could not understand. But of one thing he was convinced;
in exchange for whatever winning card he held Shan Tung had offered him
his life. Tomorrow he would expect an answer.

That tomorrow had already dawned. It was one o'clock when Keith again
looked at his watch. Twenty hours ago he had cooked his last camp-fire
breakfast. It was only eighteen hours ago that he had filled himself
with the smell of Andy Duggan's bacon, and still more recently that he
had sat in the little barber shop on the corner wondering what his fate
would be when he faced McDowell. It struck him as incongruous and
impossible that only fifteen hours had passed since then. If he
possessed a doubt of the reality of it all, the bed was there to help
convince him. It was a real bed, and he had not slept in a real bed for
a number of years. Wallie had made it ready for him. Its sheets were
snow-white. There was a counterpane with a fri