wn.

"Ling Chu," he said quietly.

"You speak me, Lieh Jen?" said the man, putting down the spoons and
rubber he was handling.

"Where is my revolver?"

"It is gone, Lieh Jen," said the man calmly.

"How long has it been gone?"

"I miss him four days," said Ling Chu calmly;

"Who took it?" demanded Tarling.

"I miss him four days," said the man.

There was an interval of silence, and Tarling nodded his head slowly.

"Very good, Ling Chu," he said, "there is no more to be said."

For all his outward calm, he was distressed in mind.

Was it possible that anybody could have got into the room in Ling Chu's
absence--he could only remember one occasion when they had been out
together, and that was the night he had gone to the girl's flat and Ling
Chu had shadowed him.

What if Ling Chu----?

He dismissed the thought as palpably absurd. What interest could Ling Chu
have in the death of Lyne, whom he had only seen once, the day that
Thornton Lyne had called Tarling into consultation at the Stores?

That thought was too fantastic to entertain, but nevertheless it recurred
again and again to him and in the end he sent his servant away with a
message to Scotland Yard, determined to give even his most fantastic
theory as thorough and impartial an examination as was possible.

The flat consisted of four rooms and a kitchen. There was Tarling's
bedroom communicating with his dining and sitting-room. There was a
spare-room in which he kept his boxes and trunks--it was in this room
that the revolver had been put aside--and there was the small room
occupied by Ling Chu. He gave his attendant time to get out of the
house and well on his journey before he rose from the deep chair where
he had been sitting in puzzled thought and began his inspection.

Ling Chu's room was small and scrupulously clean. Save for the bed and
a plain black-painted box beneath the bed, there was no furniture. The
well-scrubbed boards were covered with a strip of Chinese matting and the
only ornamentation in the room was supplied by a tiny red lacquer vase
which stood on the mantelpiece.

Tarling went back to the outer door of the flat and locked it before
continuing his search. If there was any clue to the mystery of the stolen
revolver it would be found here, in this black box. A Chinaman keeps all
his possessions "within six sides," as the saying goes, and certainly the
box was very well secured. It was ten minutes before he managed to fi