e shook in Nogam's face the half-sheet of notepaper on which the Chinese
phonograms were drawn.

"Sorry, sir, but I 'aven't any hidea. Prince Victor didn't tell me anything
except there would be no answer, and I was to 'urry right back to Frampton
Court." Nogam peered myopically at the paper. "It might be 'Ebrew, sir," he
hazarded, helpfully--"by the looks of it, I mean. I suppose some private
message, 'e thought you'd understand."

"Hebrew, you fool! Damn your impudence! Do you take me for a Jew?"

"Beg pardon, sir--no 'arm meant."

"No," Sturm declared, "it's Chinese."

"Then likely Prince Victor meant you to ask Shaik Tsin to translate it for
you, sir."

"Probably," Sturm muttered. "I'll see."

"Yes, sir. Good-night, sir."

Without acknowledging this civility, Sturm turned back into the house and
slammed the door. Nogam lingered another moment, then shuffled wearily down
the steps and toward the nearest corner.

Across the street the voluntary shadow detached itself from cover in the
areaway, and skulked after him. He paid no heed. But when the shadow
rounded the corner, it saw only a dark and empty street, and pulled up with
a grunt of doubt. Simultaneously something not unlike a thunderbolt for
force and fury was launched, from the dark shelter of a doorway near by, at
its devoted head. And as if by magic the shadow took on form and substance
to receive the onslaught. A fist, that carried twelve stone of bone and
sinew jubilant with realization of the hour for action so long deferred,
found shrewdly the heel of a jawbone, just beneath the ear. Its victim
dropped without a cry, but the impact of the blow was loud in the nocturnal
stillness of that bystreet, and was echoed in magnified volume by the crack
of a skull in collision with a convenient lamppost.

Followed a swift patter of fugitive feet.

Tempered by veils of mist, the lamplight fell upon a face upturned from a
murmurous gutter, a yellow face, wide and flat, with lips grinning back
from locked teeth and eyes frozen in a staring question to which no living
man has ever known the answer.

The pattering footsteps grew faint in distance and died away, the street
was still once more, as still as Death....

In the study of Prince Victor Vassilyevski the man Sturm put an impatient
question:

"Well? What you make of it--hein?"

Shaik Tsin looked up from a paper which he had been silently examining by
the light of the brazen lamp.

"Number One s