“Suppose you come into my study,” I said, “and explain matters.”
We entered the room which had been the scene of so many singular
happenings. The detective and I seated ourselves, but the Scotsman,
holding the Chinaman by the neck as though he had been some inanimate
bundle, stood just within the doorway, one of the most gigantic
specimens of manhood I had ever set eyes upon.
“You do the talking, sir,” he directed the detective; “ye have all the
facts.”
While Durham talked, then, we all listened--excepting the Chinaman, who
was past taking an intelligent interest in anything, and who, to judge
from his starting eyes, was being slowly strangled.
“The gentleman,” said Durham--“Mr. Nicholson--arrived two days ago from
the East. He is a buyer for a big firm of diamond merchants, and some
weeks ago a valuable diamond was stolen from him------”
“By this!” interrupted the Scotsman, shaking the wretched Hi Wing Ho
terrier fashion.
“By Hi Wing Ho,” explained the detective, “whom you see before you. The
theft was a very ingenious one, and the man succeeded in getting away
with his haul. He tried to dispose of the diamond to a certain Isaac
Cohenberg, a Singapore moneylender; but Isaac Cohenberg was the bigger
crook of the two. Hi Wing Ho only escaped from the establishment of
Cohenberg by dint of sandbagging the moneylender, and quitted the town
by a boat which left the same night. On the voyage he was indiscreet
enough to take the diamond from its hiding-place and surreptitiously to
examine it. Another member of the Chinese crew, one Li Ping--otherwise
Ah Fu, the accredited agent of old Huang Chow!--was secretly watching
our friend, and, knowing that he possessed this valuable jewel, he also
learned where he kept it hidden. At Suez Ah Fu attacked Hi Wing Ho and
secured possession of the diamond. It was to secure possession of the
diamond that Ah Fu had gone out East. I don't doubt it. He employed Hi
Wing Ho--and Hi Wing Ho tried to double on him!
“We are indebted to you, Mr. Knox, for some of the data upon which
we have reconstructed the foregoing and also for the next link in the
narrative. A fireman ashore from the Jupiter intruded upon the scene at
Suez and deprived Ah Fu of the fruits of his labours. Hi Wing Ho seems
to have been badly damaged in the scuffle, but Ah Fu, the more wily of
the two, evidently followed the fireman, and, deserting from his own
ship, signed on with the Jupiter.”
While this story was enlightening in some respects, it was mystifying in
others. I did not interrupt, however, for Durham immediately resumed:
“The drama was complicated by the presence of a fourth character--the
daughter of Cohenberg. Realizing that a small fortune had slipped
through his fingers, the old moneylender dispatched his daughter in
pursuit of Hi Wing Ho, having learned upon which vessel the latter had
sailed. He had no difficulty in obtaining this information, for he is in
touch with all the crooks of the town. Had he known that the diamond had
been stolen by an agent of Huang Chow, he would no doubt have hesitated.
Huang Chow has an international reputation.
“However, his daughter--a girl of great personal beauty--relied upon her
diplomatic gifts to regain possession of the stone, but, poor creature,
she had not counted with Ah Fu, who was evidently watching your chambers
(while Hi Wing Ho, it seems, was assiduously shadowing Ah Fu!). How she
traced the diamond from point to point of its travels we do not know,
and probably never shall know, but she was undeniably clever and
unscrupulous. Poor girl! She came to a dreadful end. Mr. Nicholson,
here, identified her at Bow Street to-night.”
Now the whole amazing truth burst upon me.
“I understand!” I cried. “This”--and I snatched up the pigtail--
“That my pigtail,” moaned Hi Wing Ho feebly.
Mr. Nicholson pitched him unceremoniously into a corner of the room, and
taking the pigtail in his huge hand, clumsily unfastened it. Out from
the thick part, some two inches below the point at which it had been cut
from the Chinaman's head, a great diamond dropped upon the floor!
For perhaps twenty seconds there was perfect silence in my study. No one
stooped to pick the diamond from the floor--the diamond which now had
blood upon it. No one, so far as my sense informed me, stirred. But
when, following those moments of stupefaction, we all looked up--Hi Wing
Ho, like a phantom, had faded from the room!