New Scotland Yard had given Durham a roving commission, and had
been justified in the fact that the second victim, and this time
not a Chinaman, had been found under almost identical conditions.
The link with the establishment of Huang Chow was incomplete, and
Durham fully recognized that it was up to him to make it sound
and incontestable.
Jim Poland was not the only man in the East End who knew that the
dead Chinaman had been in negotiation with Huang Chow. Kerry
knew it, and had passed the information on to Durham.
Some mystery surrounded the life of the old dealer, who was said
to be a mandarin of high rank, but his exact association with the
deaths first of the Chinaman Pi Lung, and second of Cohen,
remained to be proved. Certain critics have declared the
Metropolitan detective service to be obsolete and inefficient.
Kerry, as a potential superintendent, resented these criticisms,
and in his protege Durham, perceived a member of the new
generation who was likely in time to produce results calculated
to remove this stigma.
Durham recognized that a greater responsibility rested upon his
shoulders than the actual importance of the case might have
indicated; and now, proceeding warily along the deserted streets,
he found his brain to be extraordinarily active and his
imagination very much alive.
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