im.

His original idea, on coming out, had been merely to get into touch with
Leh Shin, and make the way clear for his coming to the small, empty
house close to the shop of the ineffectual curio dealer, and now he
knew, through his fine, sharp instinct, that he was close upon the track
of some mystery. It might have nothing to do with the disappearance of
the Christian boy, Absalom, or it might be a thread from the hidden
loom, but, in any case, Coryndon determined to wait and see what was
going to happen. He was well used to long waiting, and the Oriental
strain in his blood made it a matter of no effort with him. Someone was
hidden in the lonely house, some man who paid heavily for the privacy of
the waterside opium den, and Coryndon was determined to discover who
that man was.

The night was fair and clear, and the murmur of the tidal river gentle
and soothing, and as he sat, well hidden by the clump of grass, he went
over the events of the evening and thought of the face of Leh Shin's
assistant. Hartley had spoken of the bestial creature in tones of
disgust, but Hartley had not seen him to the same peculiar advantage.
Line by line, Coryndon committed the face to his indelible memory,
looking at it again in the dark, and brooding over it as a lover broods
over the face of the woman he loves, but from very different motives. He
was assured that no cruelty or wickedness that mortal brain could
imagine would be beyond the act of this man, if opportunity offered, and
he was attracted by the psychological interest offered to him in the
study of such a mind.

The ripples whispered below him, and, far away, he heard the chiming of
a distant clock striking a single note, but he did not stir; he sat like
a shadow, his eyes on the house, that rose black, silent, and, to all
appearances, deserted, against the starry darkness of the sky. He had
got his facts clear, so far as they went, and his mind wandered out with
the wash of the water, and the mystery of the river flowed over him; the
silent causeway leading to the sea, carrying the living on its bosom,
and bearing the dead beneath its brown, sucking flow, full of its own
life, and eternally restless as the sea tides ebbed and flowed, yet
musical and wild and unchanged by the hand of man. Coryndon loved moving
waters, and he remembered that somewhere, miles away from Mangadone, he
had played along a river bank, little better than the small native
children who played there