When they flung open the door, both figures had disappeared. Carver sprang toward the gate and stumbled. His foot had struck a soft bulk which stretched across the garden path, he turned back, flashing an electric lamp upon the object. It was a man, and for a moment they did not see his face.
“Who are you?” Carver pulled the man over on his back. “Well, I’m—”
The man at his feet was Yeh Ling!
XVIII
The Chinaman was unconscious and Carver looked around for the second visitant. He rushed to the gate, the road was deserted. Flinging himself upon the roadway to secure an artificial skyline, he peered first in one direction and then in the other. Presently he saw his man running swiftly in the cover of the hedges and started in pursuit.
A hundred yards away from the house was a secondary road, and into this the runner turned. As Carver reached the corner he heard a motorcar engine and dimly saw the bulk of a large touring car retreating rapidly.
He came back to the house to find Yeh Ling sitting in Ursula’s room holding his head in his hands.
“This is the second man; it isn’t the wide-awake gentleman,” said Carver. “Now, Yeh Ling, give an account of your actions. How are you feeling?”
“Pretty dizzy,” said Yeh Ling and to Tab’s surprise his tone was that of a cultured man, his English faultless.
He looked up at the girl reproachfully.
“You did not tell me these gentlemen were coming down, Miss Ardfern, when you wrote to me,” he said.
“I hadn’t any idea when I wrote, that they were coming, Yeh Ling,” she answered.
“If I had been here a little earlier I should have seen him,” he said. “As it was, I am afraid I have spoiled your evening, Mr. Carver.” His expressionless brown eyes looked up at the detective.
“I see! You were on guard too, were you?” said Carver good-humouredly. “Yes, we seem to have made a mess of it between us. Did you see the man?”
“I didn’t see him,” said Yeh Ling, “but,” he added, “I felt him,” and he rubbed his head. “I think it must have been his fist. I did not notice any weapon.”
“You didn’t see his face?” persisted Carver.
“No, he had a beard of some kind. I felt it as my hands clutched at him. I am afraid I overestimated my strength,” he said apologetically to the girl, “yet there was a time when I was a star performer at Harvard, in the days when Chinese students were something of a curiosity.”
“Harvard?” said Tab in surprise. “Great Moses—I thought you were a—” he couldn’t very well finish his sentence.
But the other helped him.
“You thought I was a very ordinary Chink?” he said. “Possibly I am. I hope I am,” he said. “Certainly Miss Ardfern knew me when I was a very poor Chink! We lodged in the same house, she will remember, and she placed me under an eternal obligation by saving the life of my son.”
Then Tab remembered the little Chinese boy Ursula had nursed when she herself was little more than a child. Remembering this, a great many things which had been obscure to him, became clear and understandable.
“I had no idea you would come tonight, Yeh Ling, but you begged me if I was in any kind of difficulty to let you know,” she said. “You shouldn’t have taken the trouble.”
“Events seem to prove that,” said the Chinaman drily, “I am merely being consistent, Miss Ardfern. You have been under my personal observation for seven years. Seven years, day and night, either I, or one of my servants have been watching you. You never went—” he stopped and changed the conversation.
“Miss Ardfern never went to Mr. Trasmere’s house but you weren’t watching outside, that is what you were going to say, wasn’t it, Yeh Ling?” smiled Carver. “You need not be reticent, because I know all about it, and Miss Ardfern knows that I know.”
“That was what I was going to say,” said the other. “I usually followed Miss Ardfern from the theatre to her hotel; from her hotel to Trasmere’s house, and home again when she had finished working.”
The reporter and detective exchanged glances. This, then, was the explanation of the mysterious Chinaman who had been seen by Mr. Stott’s servant waiting outside Mayfield smoking a cigar in the cold hours of the morning. It explained, also the appearance of the cyclist in the roadway that morning when the tyres of Ursula Ardfern’s car had burst and Tab had been on hand to render timely assistance.
“I had no idea,” breathed the astonished girl, “is that true, Yeh Ling? Oh, how kind you have been.”
Tab saw tears in her eyes and wished that he, and not this uninteresting Chinaman, had been the person who excited her gratitude.
“Kindness is a relative term,” said Yeh Ling. He had brought his feet up on a chair and was rolling a cigarette; he had asked permission with his eyes and as Ursula nodded, he lit it with a quick flick of his fingers, a match having appeared, as it seemed, out of space, and carefully replaced the stalk in a matchbox. “Was it kindness that you saved the life of one who is to me the light of my eyes and the inspiration of my soul, if you will forgive what may seem to you, a writer, Mr. Holland, a piece of flowery orientalism, but which is to me the quintessence of sincerity.”
Then without preamble he told his story; a story which was only half-known to the girl.
“I was in this peculiar position,” he said, “that I was a rich man or a poor man, whichever way the great law of this country interprets an agreement I made with Shi Soh. Shi Soh you know as ‘Trasmere’ and that, of course, is
