He was an ambitious man, and consequently one who took big
chances. Nothing disturbed the silence; he sat upon the divan
and again pressed the button of his torch, shining it all about
the low-beamed apartment and peering curiously into the weird
shadows of the place. He calculated he was now in the position
which Cohen had occupied during the last moments of his life, and
a sense of the uncanny touched him coldly.
As he thought of the unnatural screams spoken of by Poland, some
strange instinct prompted him to curl up his feet upon the divan
again, as though a secret menace crawled upon the floor amid its
many rugs and carpets.
He must now endeavour to reconstruct the plan upon which the
American cracksman had operated. Poland had a persistent belief
that Cohen had known where the fabled hoard of Huang Chow was
concealed.
Durham began a deliberate inspection of the place. He thought it
unlikely that a wily old Chinaman, assuming that he possessed
hidden wealth, would keep it in so accessible a spot as this. It
was far more probable that he had a fireproof safe in the room
upstairs, perhaps built into the wall. Yet, according to
Poland's account, it was in this room and not in any other that
death came to Diamond Fred.
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