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added hastily.
        "And you promised?" she asked.
        He nodded.
        "And I wasn't drunk when I promised! I've a horrible feeling that I'm sentimental too. He died in Canton—that's where the cable came from. How like Joe to die in Canton!" he said bitterly. "He couldn't even die normally on the Siang-kiang!"
        She was shocked by his callousness.
        "Then what do you expect me to do, now that I know you are only marrying me to keep a promise?" she asked.
        "You can't take advantage of my frankness and sneak out," he said a little gruffly. "I saw old Joe's will after I'd arrived in England, when it was too late to alter it. Your marriage before the end of the year makes a million pounds' difference to Narth."
        "As much as that?" she asked, in amazement.
        For some reason he was astonished.
        "I thought you were going to say 'Is that all?' It is really worth more than a million—or will be in time. The company is enormously rich."
        There followed a period when both were too immersed in their own thoughts to speak, and then:
        "You managed—things for him, didn't you, Mr Lynne?"
        "My best friends call me Cliff," he said, "but if you find that embarrassing you may call me Clifford. Yes, I managed things."
        He offered no further information, and the silence thereafter grew so oppressive that she was glad when the car stopped before the door of Sunni Lodge. Letty, who was on the lawn playing croquet, came across, mallet in hand, with uplifted eyebrows.
        "I thought you were lunching in town, Joan?" she asked disapprovingly. "Really, it's awfully awkward. We've got the Vaseys coming this afternoon, and I know you don't like them."
        And then she saw for the first time the good-looking stranger and lowered her eyes and faltered, for Letty's modesty and confusion in the presence of Man were notoriously part of her charm.
        Joan made no attempt to introduce her companion. She said goodbye to her escort and watched the car glide down the drive.
        "Really, Joan," said Letty petulantly, "you've got the manners of a pig! Why on earth didn't you introduce him?"
        "I didn't think you wanted an introduction; you've been so awfully unpleasant about him since he was here last," said Joan, not without a little malice.
        "But he's never been here before!" protested the girl. "And it's perfectly horrible of you to say that I've said anything unpleasant about anybody. Who is he?"
        "Clifford Lynne," said Joan, and added: "My fiancé!"
        She left Letty open-mouthed and dumbfounded, and went up to her room. The rest of the afternoon she spent in some apprehension as to what Mr Narth would say on his return. When eventually he did come—it was just before dinner—he was surprisingly affable, even paternal, but she detected in his manner a nervousness that she had never noticed before, and wondered whether the cause was Clifford Lynne or the sinister Chinaman of whom she had such bad dreams that night.
     

 
CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
     
        Mr Clifford Lynne had rented a small furnished house in one of those streets in Mayfair which had the advantage, from his point of view, of a back entrance. There was a small garage behind the house, which opened on to a long and very tidy mews made up of other garages, each capped by a tiny flat, wherein the chauffeurs attached to his respectable neighbours had their dwelling.
        Something was puzzling Clifford Lynne—and it was not Fing-Su, or Joan or Mr Narth. A doubt in his mind had blossomed into a suspicion, and was in a fair way to being a conviction.
        All that afternoon he spent reading the China newspapers which had arrived by the mail that day. Just before seven o'clock he saw a paragraph in the North China Herald which brought him to his feet with an oath. It was too late to make inquiries, for, simultaneous with his discovery, the visitor was