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Page 56
I glared sternly at the Chinaman, but his impassive countenance
served him well. That he was lying to me I no longer doubted;
for Ah Fu could not have hoped to secure such a price as would
justify his committing murder; furthermore, the presence of the
unfortunate Jewess in the case was not accounted for by the
ingenious narrative of Hi Wing Ho. I was standing staring at him
and wondering what course to adopt, when yet again my restless
door-bell clamoured in the silence.
Hi Wing Ho started nervously, exhibiting the first symptoms of
alarm which I had perceived in him. My mind was made up in an
instant. I took my revolver from the drawer and covered him.
"Be good enough to open the door, Hi Wing Ho," I said coldly.
He shrank from me, pouring forth voluble protestations.
"Open the door!"
I clenched my left fist and advanced upon him. He scuttled away
with his odd Chinese gait and threw open the door. Standing
before me I saw my friend Detective Sergeant Durham, and with him
a remarkably tall and very large-boned man whose square-jawed
face was deeply tanned and whose aspect was dourly Scottish.
When the piercing eyes of this stranger rested upon Hi Wing Ho an
expression which I shall never forget entered into them; an
expression coldly murderous. As for the Chinaman, he literally
crumpled up.
"You rat!" roared the stranger.
Taking one long stride he stooped upon the Chinaman, seized him
by the back of the neck as a terrier might seize a rat, and
lifted him to his feet.
"The mystery of the pigtail, Mr. Knox," said the detective, "is
solved at last."
"Have ye got it?" demanded the Scotsman, turning to me, but
without releasing his hold upon the neck of Hi Wing Ho.
I took the pigtail from my pocket and dangled it before his eyes.
"Suppose you come into my study," I said, "and explain matters."
We entered the room which had been the scene of so many singular
happenings. The detective and I seated ourselves, but the
Scotsman, holding the Chinaman by the neck as though he had been
some inanimate bundle, stood just within the doorway, one of the
most gigantic specimens of manhood I had ever set eyes upon.
"You do the talking, sir," he directed the detective; "ye have
all the facts."
While Durham talked, then, we all listened--excepting the
Chinaman, who was past taking an intelligent interest in
anything, and who, to judge from his starting eyes, was being
slowly strangled.
"The gentleman," said Durham--"Mr. Nicholson--arrived two days
ago from the East. He is a buyer for a big firm of diamond
merchants, and some weeks ago a valuable diamond was stolen from
him------"
"By this!" interrupted the Scotsman, shaking the wretched Hi Wing
Ho terrier fashion.
"By Hi Wing Ho," explained the detective, "whom you see before
you. The theft was a very ingenious one, and the man succeeded
in getting away with his haul. He tried to dispose of the
diamond to a certain Isaac Cohenberg, a Singapore moneylender;
but Isaac Cohenberg was the bigger crook of the two. Hi Wing Ho
only escaped from the establishment of Cohenberg by dint of
sandbagging the moneylender, and quitted the town by a boat which
left the same night. On the voyage he was indiscreet enough to
take the diamond from its hiding-place and surreptitiously to
examine it. Another member of the Chinese crew, one Li Ping--
otherwise Ah Fu, the accredited agent of old Huang Chow!--was
secretly watching our friend, and, knowing that he possessed this
valuable jewel, he also learned where he kept it hidden. At Suez
Ah Fu attacked Hi Wing Ho and secured possession of the diamond.
It was to secure possession of the diamond that Ah Fu had gone
out East. I don't doubt it. He employed Hi Wing Ho--and Hi Wing
Ho tried to double on him!
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