“That is a confession which I should not care to make,” he said. “How do you know your luggage had been searched?”

“I have had some experience,” said the other coolly, “and it may interest you to know that, since your search, a more conscientious search-party took away the whole of my baggage and has, so far, failed to replace it.”

Tillizinni was genuinely concerned. This strange man had a tender spot in his heart for the needy and it needed no second glance at the man from China to discover his straitened circumstances.

He drew a chair forward.

“I am interested in this,” he said. “Perhaps I can help you.”

Captain Talham raised a dignified and protesting hand.

“The normal mind,” he said “rejects without hesitation the instinct of rebellion against recognised authority. Undisciplined resentment toward social safeguards imposed by society for its own protection is aluvistic. I appreciate the necessity for the examination you made and regard as admirable the choice of agent which the government has made. Moreover, since I am directly and frankly interested in discovering the location of Mount Li, and came to this country by the same ship as certain documents revealing that location, your suspicion was pardonable.”

He said all this, scarcely pausing to take breath.

Tillizinni’s face, schooled to conceal his emotion, displayed no hint of his sensations. Had this man been listening at the door of the study, that he should take up the threads of the Ambassador’s discourse?

Talham seemed to divine the working of the Italian’s mind, and smiled.

“I gather you have been discussing the matter with Chu-hsi-han. I gather that because you did not make your call till after the publication of his article, and because I have reason for knowing that that article has excited a great deal of interest in circles with which you are probably unacquainted--the Society of Good Intention, for example.”

There was something in his tone which at once interested and nettled Tillizinni. The stranger had put him on his mettle, too, challenged his knowledge of forces. Yet the Italian was too big a man to allow pique to stand in his way of acquiring information. He was not too clever to learn.

“I know nothing whatever about the Society of Good Intention,” he said; “though I gather from its benevolent title that it is a Chinese secret society with a felonious propaganda.”

Talham was tickled. Here was a man after his own heart.

“The Society,” he began, as if to deliver a speech, then changed his mind. “The Society is purely criminal, though it had a political origin. It is an off shoot of the Guild of Honourable Adventurers which flourished in Canton twenty years ago. It has committed more crimes than any other in China, and it has reached a pass where----”

Clear and sharp above the conversation a pistol shot rang out.

It sounded overhead, and simultaneously the two men leapt to their feet. With one accord they darted to the door, across the wide hall, and up the soft-carpeted stairs, Tillizinni leading, an automatic pistol in his hand.

A servant was standing at the door of the Ambassador’s study, vainly twisting the handle.

“It is locked, Excellencies,” he said.

“Out of the way!” cried Talham.

The man obeyed with suspicious alacrity. He flew down the stairs, past the chattering crowd of servants hurrying up.

At the door of the house the Chinaman in the livery of the Embassy was joined by another.

“We will go quickly, brother,” said the first man, “else these people will know that we are not in the Tao-ae’s service.”

They passed through the door and out into the dark street as the sound of a crash told them that Talham had gained admission to the room above.

The room was in darkness, but the observant Tillizinni had noted the mother-of-pearl button switch, and his fingers found it now. Instantly the room was flooded with soft light.

Huddled in his chair was the Ambassador--dead.

There was no wound which the men could see, and Tillizinni, going swiftly to the side of the dead man, uttered an exclamation.

“He has been strangled!” he cried.

Talham leant over the desk, his brows puckered in a frown.

“Strangled! Then who fired that shot?” he asked.

Servants were coming into the room now. The English secretary pushed a way through a crowd of excited Chinamen. He had been writing in his study on the third floor when the shot aroused him.

“Marshall all the servants,” said Tillizinni, and whilst this was being done the detective made an examination of the apartment. The windows were closed and fastened with a catch, for the Ambassador shared with his countrymen a horror of ventilation. There was no possibility of entry from that direction.

Nothing had been disturbed with the exception of a large inlaid bureau which stood against one wall of the room. Here the door had been wrenched open, and a drawer forced and ransacked. Private papers lay scattered on the floor.

Tillizinni picked up a large envelope. It was inscribed in Chinese characters: “The burial-place of the First Emperor.” The seal on the envelope remained intact, but the cover had been slit from end to end, and was empty.

“Look!” said Talham’s voice explosively.

Tillizinni followed the direction of the pointing finger. The bottom of the bureau was formed by one huge drawer, the width and depth of the massive piece of furniture and some eighteen inches high.

From one corner bright red drops were dripping and forming a little pool on the carpet.

The two men grasped the bronze handles of the drawer and pulled.

The body of a man lay in the bottom. He was doubled up so that his knees were under his chin. He had been shot evidently from behind, and was quite dead.

“Do you know him?” asked Tillizinni.

Talham nodded.

“He called himself the ‘Star above the Yamen,’” he said, “and I had an interesting talk with him this afternoon.”

For this poor, inanimate thing had been the spokesman of Hyde Park.