eturned with two more glasses. Then,
reseating himself and bending forward again:

"There's one thing I reckon you don't know," he whispered in Cohen's
ear. "I saw that Chink talking to Lala Huang only a week before the time
he was hauled out of Limehouse Reach. I'm wondering, Diamond, if, with
all your cleverness, you may not go the same way."

"Don't try to pull the creep stuff on me, Jim," said Cohen uneasily.
"What are you driving at, anyway?"

"Well," replied Poland, sipping his whisky reflectively, "how did that
Chink get into the river?"

"How the devil do I know?"

"And what killed him? It wasn't drowning, although he was all swelled
up."

"See here, old pal," said Cohen. "I know 'Frisco better than you know
Limehouse. Let me tell you that this little old Chinatown of yours is
pie to me. You're trying to get me figuring on Chinese death traps,
secret poisons, and all that junk. Boy, you're wasting your poetry.
Even if you did see the Chink with Lala, and I doubt it--Oh, don't
get excited, I'm speaking plain--there's no connection that I can see
between the death of said Chink and old Huang Chow."

"Ain't there?" growled Poland huskily. He grasped the other's wrist as
in a vise and bent forward so that his battered face was close to the
pale countenance of the Jew. "I've been covering old Huang for months
and months. Now I'm going to tell you something. Since the death of that
Chink Red Kerry's been covering him, too."

"See here!" Cohen withdrew his arm from the other's grasp angrily. "You
can't freeze me out of this claim with bogey stuff. You're listed, my
lad, and you know it. Chief Inspector Kerry is your pet nightmare.
But if he walked in here right now I could ask him to have a drink. I
wouldn't but I could. You've got the wrong angle, Jim. Lala likes me
fine, and although she doesn't say much, what she does say is straight.
I'll ask her to-night about the Chink."

"Then you'll be a damned fool."

"What's that?"

"I say you'll be a damned fool. I'm warning you, Freddy. There are
Chinks and Chinks. All the boys know old Huang Chow has got a regular
gold mine buried somewhere under the floor. But all the boys don't know
what I know, and it seems that you don't either."

"What is that?"

Jim Poland bent forward more urgently, again seizing Cohen's wrist, and:

"Huang Chow is a mighty big bug amongst the Chinese," he whispered,
glancing cautiously about him. "He's hellish clever and rotten wi