In the course of his professional duties Tab Holland had been brought
into contact with the master of the Golden Roof on two occasions.
The first followed a small scandal, which only remotely touched the
restaurant (the woman who was the subject of Tab’s investigation
had dined there at an important date) and once in connection with a
dead-season topic dealing with the nutritive values of food.
He had found the Chinaman reserved to a point of taciturnity,
monosyllabic in speech; a most unsatisfactory person.
Tab knew nothing about him except that he was a successful Chinaman
who had gravitated into the restaurant business. He asked Jacques for
enlightenment, well knowing that if the news editor could not satisfy
his curiosity, it was because Yeh Ling was altogether uninteresting.
Jacques was one of those rarities, to whom reference is so frequently
made that it might be imagined they were as common as straws in a
stable. He was a veritable “mine of information.” The genus occurs
sometimes in newspaper offices. Jacques knew everybody and everybody’s
wife. He knew why they married. He also knew why stars twinkled and the
chemical composition of tears. Quote him a line from any classic and
he would give you its predecessor and that which followed. He knew
the dates of all important earthquakes and was an authority on the
Mogul Emperors. He could sketch you with equal facility the position
of Frossard’s second corps at Rezonville on August 17th, 1870, or the
military situation at Thermopylæ--and dates.
The only serious students of the “Megaphone” reference library were the
reporters who went there to confound Jacques. They never succeeded.
“Yeh Ling? Yes--queer bird. An educated Chink--got a son who is quite
a swell scholar by Chinese standards. He ought to make a good story
some day; that house he is building at Storford--it is on the way to
Hertford; says that one day his son will be the Chinese Ambassador
here and he wants him to have a house worthy of his position. That
is what he told Stott. Know Stott? He is a dud architect who knows
it all. Weird little devil who looks as if he might have been clever
with a different kind of brain. Stott laid out the ground work, sort
of Chinese temple with two enormous concrete pillars that are going to
stand half-way down the drive. The Pillar of Cheerful Memories and the
Pillar of Grateful Hearts. That’s what he is going to call them. Stott
thought it was heathenish and wondered if the Bishop would like it.
Yes, you ought to see that place, Tab. No, it isn’t built. Yeh Ling has
nothing but Chink labour. The Secretary of the Builders’ Union went to
see him about it. Yeh Ling said his ancestors had a union of their own
which put the bar upon non-Taoist labour. Taoism----”
“I hate to wade into the foaming torrent of your eloquence,” said Tab
gently, “but how did you come to meet Stott?”
“Same lodge,” said Jacques. “It is not for me to talk down a brother
craftsman--are you one of us by-the-way?”
Tab shook his head.
“Ought to be. Get a little respect for authority into your system. As I
was saying, I don’t want to knock Stott, but he’s not everybody’s meat.
Go and see that temple or whatever it is, Tab. Might be a good story.”
On the first idle day he had, Tab took his motor bicycle and went
out to Storford. He was not entirely without hope that he would see
Ursula--her house was only seven miles beyond Storford Hill, and he had
reason to know that she had withdrawn herself to her country home. In
a letter telling this she had told him in so many words that when she
wanted him she would send for him.
He saw the building from a distance.
He had noticed it before--it was hardly possible to miss seeing it,
for it stood on the crest of one of the few hills the country boasted.
The walls were half finished and heavy wooden uprights rose like the
palings of a fence above the queerly laid courses. And one of the
pillars already lifted its lofty head. It flanked on one side a broad
pathway which was half the width of the house, and stood some fifty
feet above the ground, being crowned by a small stone dragon.
Tab wondered if this was the Pillar of Grateful Hearts or that which
stood, or would stand, for cheerful memories.
Its diameter must have been fully five feet. Near at hand was one
of the wooden moulds in which it was cast, and a Chinese workman was
scraping the interior.
Tab walked through a break in the low hedge which separated Yeh Ling’s
new home from the road and now stood regarding with interest the
activities of the blue-bloused workmen. Their industry was remarkable.
Whether they were running bricks and mortar, or cutting out the garden
(already taking shape) or walling up the terraces, they moved quickly,
untiringly, wholly absorbed in their occupations. Never once did they
stop to lean upon their spades and picks to discuss the chances of the
new administration, or to tell one another how Milligan got his black
eye.
Nobody seemed to notice Tab. He strolled further into the land and
there was none to challenge his right. A gang of men were gravelling
and rolling the broad path and one of these said something which sent
the others into a fit of that chittering laughter which is peculiar to
the East. Tab wondered what was the joke.
Turning to walk back to the road, he saw that a car had stopped at the
break in the hedge, and his heart gave a leap, for its occupant was
Ursula.
“What do you think of it?” she asked.
“It is going to be rather wonderful--how do you like the idea of having
a Chinaman for a neighbour? I forgot--you rather like the Chinese?”
“Yes,” she said shortly. “There could be worse neighbours than Yeh
Ling.”
“You know him?”
He wondered if she would deny acquaintance or evade the question.
“Very well,” she said calmly, “he is the proprietor of the Golden Roof.
I often dine there. You know him too?”
“Slightly,” said Tab, looking back at the unfinished house. “He must be
rich.”
“I don’t know. One never really knows what money is required to build a
place like this. The labour is cheap and it seems a very simple kind of
house.”
And then with a wave of her hand, she drove on. She might at least have
asked him to lunch, he thought indignantly.
A week went past, a drab week for a discontented Tab Holland, for now
there was neither a likelihood of, nor an excuse for, a chance meeting.
A sedative week for hiding Walters. References to the murder seldom
appeared now in the newspapers, and he had found a man who had offered
to get him a job as a steward on an outward bound liner.
A week of drugged sleep for a besotted man, curled up on a mattress at
the top of Yo Len Fo’s house.
But for Inspector Carver an exceptionally busy week though there was no
newspaper record of his activities.
Tab no longer spent his evenings at home. The flat seemed horribly
empty now that the love-sick Rex had gone. He had had a radio from him
saying that he was improved in health. The message was cheerful enough,
so that Ursula’s refusal could not have bitten very hard.
By the end of the week, life had become an intolerable dreariness, and
to make matters worse, nothing was happening in the great world that
called for Tab’s intervention and interest. He was in that condition
of utter boredom when there happened the first of those remarkable
incidents which, in his official account of the case, Inspector Carver
refers to as “The Second Activity.”
The flats, one of which Tab occupied, had originally been apartments
in a private house. With little structural alterations they had been
turned into self-contained suites. On each of the landings was a door
of one of the four flats. Admission to the house was by the front door,
and the landlord had so arranged matters that, whilst the key of each
flat was different, all keys opened the street-door. It was, therefore,
possible to go in and out without observation, unless by chance one of
the other tenants happened to be on the stairs or in the passage-way at
the time.
On Saturday night Tab knew he would be alone in the house; the other
three tenants invariably spent the week-end out of town. One was a
middle-aged musician who lived on the top floor. Beneath him was a
young couple engaged in literary work; then came Tab’s flat, and the
ground floor suite was occupied by a man whose profession was unknown,
but who was generally believed to be connected with an advertising
agency. He was seldom at home, and Tab had only seen him once.
The Saturday night happened to be the occasion of an annual dinner
of his club, and Tab dressed and went out early, spent a mildly
exhilarating evening and returned home at half-past twelve. There
was nothing in first appearance to suggest that anything unusual had
happened in his absence, except that the lights in his sitting-room
were burning and he had switched them off before he went out.
His first impression was that the waste of current was due to his own
carelessness, but then he recalled very clearly that he had turned out
the light and closed the sitting-room door before he went out. Now the
sitting-room door was open, as also was the door of Rex’s old room.