in his hand?"

"A birdcage, I expect."

"A birdcage?"

"Yes!"

He caught the gleam of her eyes as she looked up at him out of the
shadow.

"Is he, then, a bird-fancier?"

"No, no, I can't explain because I don't understand myself. But Ah Fu
goes to a place in Shadwell regularly and buys young birds, always very
young ones and very little ones."

"For what or for whom?"

"I don't know."

"Have you an aviary in your house?"

"No."

"Do you mean that they disappear, these purchases of Ah Fu's?"

"I often see him carrying a cage of young birds, but we have no birds in
the house."

"How perfectly extraordinary!" muttered Durham.

"I distrust Ah Fu," whispered the girl. "I am glad he did not see me
with you."

"Young birds," murmured Durham absently. "What kind of young birds? Any
particular breed?"

"No; canaries, linnets--all sorts. Isn't it funny?" The girl laughed in
a childish way. "And now I think Ah Fu will have gone in, so I must say
good night."

But when presently Detective Durham found himself walking back along
West India Dock Road, his mind's eye was set upon the slinking figure of
a Chinaman carrying a birdcage.

VI

A HINT OF INCENSE

One Chinaman more or less does not make any very great difference to
the authorities responsible for maintaining law and order in Limehouse.
Asiatic settlers are at liberty to follow their national propensities,
and to knife one another within reason. This is wisdom. Such recreations
are allowed, if not encouraged, by all wise rulers of Eastern peoples.

"Found drowned," too, is a verdict which has covered many a dark mystery
of old Thames, but "Found in the river, death having been due to the
action of some poison unknown," is a finding which even in the case of a
Chinaman is calculated to stimulate the jaded official mind.

New Scotland Yard had given Durham a roving commission, and had been
justified in the fact that the second victim, and this time not a
Chinaman, had been found under almost identical conditions. The link
with the establishment of Huang Chow was incomplete, and Durham fully
recognized that it was up to him to make it sound and incontestable.

Jim Poland was not the only man in the East End who knew that the dead
Chinaman had been in negotiation with Huang Chow. Kerry knew it, and had
passed the information on to Durham.

Some mystery surrounded the life of the old dealer, who was said to be
a mandarin of high rank,