Here he read every newspaper which he could procure, and in each journal every line that dealt with the murder. What had Wellington Brown to do with it? The appearance of that man in the case bewildered him. He remembered the visitor from China very well. So he, too, was a fugitive. The knowledge brought him a shade of comfort. It was as though a little of the burden of suspicion had been lifted from himself.
One night when he was taking the air, a Chinaman went pad-padding past him and he recognized Yeh Ling. The proprietor of the Golden Roof was one of the few Chinamen in town who seldom wore European dress, and Walters knew him. Yeh Ling had come to Mayfield on several occasions. He had worn European dress then and had excited no surprise, for Mr. Trasmere’s association with the Far East was well known. Yeh Ling must have seen him, for he had passed at a moment when the light of a street lamp fell upon Walters’ face. But he made no sign of recognition and the fugitive hoped that Yeh Ling had been absorbed in his thoughts. Nevertheless, he hurried home again to sit in his darkened room and start painfully at every sound.
Had he known that Yeh Ling had both seen and identified him, he would not have slept at all that night. The Chinaman pursued his course to the unsavoury end of Reed Street; children who saw him screamed derisively; a frowsy old woman standing in a doorway yelled a crude witticism, but Yeh Ling passed on unmoved. Turning sharply into a narrow alleyway, he stopped before a darkened shop and tapped upon a side door. It was opened at once and he passed into a thick and pungent darkness. A voice hissed a question and he answered in the same dialect. Then, without guide, he made his way up the shaky stairs to a back room.
It was illuminated by the light of four candles. The walls were covered by a cheap paper, its crude design mellowed by age, and the only furniture in the room was a broad divan on which sat a compatriot, a wizened old Chinaman who was engaged in carving a half-shaped block of ivory which he held between his knees.
They greeted one another soberly and the old man uttered a mechanical politeness.
“Yo Len Fo,” said Yeh Ling, “is the man well?”
Yo Len Fo shook his head affirmatively.
“He is well, excellency,” he said. “He has been sleeping all the afternoon and he has just taken three pipes. He has also drunk the whiskey you sent.”
“I will see him,” said Yeh Ling and dropped some money upon the divan.
The old man picked this up, uncurled himself and putting down his ivory carefully, led the way up another flight of stairs. A small oil lamp burnt on the bare mantelpiece of the room into which Yeh Ling walked. On a discoloured mattress lay a man. He wore only shirt and trousers and his feet were bare. By the side of the mattress was a tray on which rested a pipe, a half-emptied glass and a watch.
Mr. Wellington Brown looked up at the visitor, his glazed eyes showing the faintest light of interest.
“ ’Lo, Yeh Ling—come to smoke?”
His language was a queer mixture of Cantonese and English, and it was in the former tongue that Yeh Ling replied.
“I do not smoke, Hsien,” he said and the man chuckled.
“Hsien?—‘The Unemployed One,’ eh—funny how names stick—wasser time?”
“It is late,” said Yeh Ling, and the head of the man drooped.
“See ol’ Jesse tomorrow—” he said drowsily, “got—lot of business—”
Yeh Ling stooped and his slim fingers encircled the man’s wrist. The pulse was weak but regular.
“It is good,” he said, turning to the old carver of ivory. “Every morning there must be air in this room. No other smoker must come, you understand, Yo Len Fo? He must be kept here.”
“This morning he wanted to go out,” said the keeper of the establishment.
“He will stay for a long time. I know him. When he was on the Amur River, he did not leave his house for three months. Let there be one pipe always ready. Obey.”
He went softly down the stairs and into the night.
Only once did he glance back as he made his unhurried way to the side door of the Golden Roof. But that glance was sufficient. The man he had seen loafing at the entrance of the alleyway was watching him. He saw him now walking on the other side of the road, a dim, secretive figure. Yeh Ling slipped into his private door, bent down and raised the flap of a letter-slot. The man had come to a halt on the other side of the road. The reflected light from the blazing signs on the main street illuminated his back, but his face was in shadow.
“It is not a policeman,” said Yeh Ling softly and then as the man strolled back into the darkness, he called his stunted servant.
“Follow that man who wears a cap. You will see him on the other side of the road, he is walking toward the houses of the noisy women.”
A quarter of an hour later the stunted man came back with a story of failure and Yeh Ling was not surprised. But the watcher was neither policeman nor reporter, of this he was sure.
XV
In the course of his professional duties Tab Holland had been brought into contact with the master of the Golden Roof on two occasions. The first followed a small scandal, which only remotely touched the restaurant (the woman who was the subject of Tab’s investigation had dined there at an important date) and once in connection with a dead-season topic dealing with the nutritive values of food.
He had found the Chinaman reserved to a point of taciturnity, monosyllabic in speech;
