I hate to be
beaten."
Twenty minutes later I was sitting in Harley's study, watching
him restlessly promenading up and down before the fire.
"The police searched Kwen Lung's place from foundation to tiles,"
he said. "I was there myself. Old Kwen Lung conveniently kept
out of the way--still playing fan-tan, no doubt! But Ma Lorenzo
was in evidence. She blandly declared that Kwen Lung never had a
daughter! And in the absence of our friend the fireman, who
sailed in the Seahawk, and whose evidence, by the way, is legally
valueless--what could we do? They could find nobody in the
neighbourhood prepared to state that Kwen Lung had a daughter or
that Kwen Lung had no daughter. There are all sorts of fables
about the old fox, but the facts about him are harder to get at."
"But," I explained, "the bloodstains on the joss!"
"Ma Lorenzo stumbled and fell there on the previous night,
striking her skull against the foot of the figure."
"What nonsense!" I cried. "We should have seen the wound last
night."
"We might have done," said Harley musingly; "I don't know when
she inflicted it on herself; but I did see it this morning."
"What!"
"Oh, the gash is there all right, partly covered by her hair.
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