"Is Kwen Lung in?" asked Harley sternly.
The woman shook her head.
"No," she replied; "he sometimes stop away a whole week."
"Does he?" jerked Harley. "Come in, Knox; we'll take another
look round."
A moment later I found myself again in the room of the golden
joss. The red curtain had been removed from before the shattered
window, but otherwise the place looked exactly as it had looked
before. The atmosphere was much less stale, however, but there
was something repellent about the great gilded idol smiling
eternally from his pedestal beside the door.
I stared into the leering face, and it was the face of one who
knew and who might have said: "Yes! this and other things
equally strange have I beheld in many lands as well as England.
Much I could tell. Many things grim and terrible, and some few
joyous; for behold! I smile but am silent."
For a while Harley stared abstractedly at the bloodstains on the
pedestal of the joss and upon the floor beneath from which the
matting had been pulled back. Suddenly he turned to Ma Lorenzo:
"Where have you hidden the body?" he demanded.
Watching her, I thought I saw the woman flinch, but there was
enough of the Oriental in her composition to save her from self-
betrayal.
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