“What are they doing now?” asked Tab.
“In a few days we shall cast a second pillar,” said Yeh Ling, “and then the work is finished. You think I am at heart a barbarian?” Yeh Ling seldom smiled, but now his pale lips curled momentarily, “and you will take these pillars as proof?”
“I wouldn’t say that—” began Tab.
“Because you are so polite, Mr. Holland,” said Yeh Ling, “but then you see, we look at things from a different angle. I think your church steeples are ridiculous! Why is it necessary to stick a great stone spike on to a building to emphasise your reverence?”
He searched in his blouse and brought out a gold cigarette case, and offered it to Tab. Then he lit a cigarette himself, inhaled deeply before he sent a blue cloud into the still air.
“My Pillar of Grateful Memories will have a greater significance than all your steeples,” he said, “than all your stained glass windows. It is to me what your War Memorial Crosses are to you, a concrete symbol (literally concrete) of an intangible sentiment.”
“You are a Taoist?” asked Tab interested.
Yeh Ling shrugged his shoulders.
“I am a believer in God,” he said, “in ‘x’ in something beyond definition. Churches and sects, religions of all kinds are monopolies. God is like the water that flows down the mountainside and fills the brooks and the rivers. There come certain men who bottle the waters, some in ugly bottles, some in beautiful bottles, and these bottles they sell, saying that ‘only this water will quench your thirst.’ That it does quench thirst we will not deny, but the water is often a little stale and flat, and the sparkle has gone out of it. You can drink better from the hollow of your hands kneeling by a brook. In China we bottle it with mystic writings and flavour it with cinnamon and spices. Here it is bottled without any regard to the water, but with punctilious care as to the shape of the bottle! I go always to the brook.”
“You are a queer devil,” said Tab surveying the other curiously.
Yeh Ling did not answer for a while, and then he asked:
“Is there any news about the murder of Brown?”
“No,” said Tab, “where was he, Yeh Ling?”
“He was in a smoke house,” said Yeh Ling without hesitation. “I took him there at the request of my patron, Mr. Trasmere. The man had come over to give him trouble and Trasmere wanted me to look after him and see that he didn’t make himself a nuisance. Apparently Brown had these bouts and then recovered, as opium smokers sometimes do, with a distaste for the drug. He must have recovered very suddenly and was gone before I could stop him and before the man who owned the house could let me know. I searched for him, but he disappeared and I heard no more about him until I read in the newspapers that he was dead.”
Tab was thoughtful.
“Had he any friends? You knew him in China?”
Yeh Ling nodded.
“Was there anybody who had a particular grudge against him—or against Trasmere?”
“Many,” said the other, “I, for example, did not like Brown.”
“But apart from you?”
Yeh Ling shook his head.
“Then you have not the slightest idea who was the murderer?”
Again the inscrutable gaze of Yeh Ling met his.
“I have an idea,” he said deliberately, “I know the murderer. I could lay my hands upon him without the slightest difficulty.”
XXVI
Tab gasped.
“You’re not joking?”
“I am not joking,” said Yeh Ling quietly. “I repeat I know the murderer. He has been within reach of me many times.”
“Is he a Chinaman?”
“I repeat he has been within reach of me many times,” said Yeh Ling, “but there are reasons why I should not betray him. There are many reasons why I should kill him,” he added reflectively. “You are going to see Miss Ardfern?” He changed the subject abruptly. “Do not go there in the afternoons, or if you do, approach from the front of the house. Miss Ardfern is taking lessons in revolver shooting and one of my men, who has been watching the house from the lower meadows, has had several narrow escapes.”
Tab laughed and offered his hand.
“You are a strange man, Yeh Ling,” he said, “and I don’t know what to make of you.”
“That is my oriental mystery,” said the Chinaman calmly. “One reads about such things. ‘For ways that are dark and for ways that are strange—’ you know the stanza?”
Tab went away with an amused feeling that Yeh Ling had been laughing at him, but he had been serious enough when he had been talking about the murder; of that Tab was sure.
Long before he reached the house he saw Ursula Ardfern. She was standing in the middle of the road opposite her gate, waving her hand to him, a dainty figure in grey, her flushed face shaded by a large garden hat.
“I’m such an expert shot, now,” she said gaily as he jumped off, “that I thought of putting a few long range ones in your direction to see how you looked when you were scared.”
“I’m glad you didn’t, if Yeh Ling’s uncomplimentary reference to your shooting is justified,” he said as he tucked her hand under his arm.
“Have you seen Yeh Ling? And was he very rude about my marksmanship?”
“He said you are a danger to life and property,” said Tab gravely, and she laughed.
“You would manage your bicycle better if you used both hands,” she said, releasing her own. “I want you to see my heliotrope. I have to keep it in a garden by itself; it is a cannibal plant, it kills all the other flowers. How could you spare time to come down?” she asked, her voice changing, “aren’t you very busy?”
Tab shook his head.
“I have been instructed to
