“No,” said Benham.  “He is shameless.  Let him do what he can.”

The messenger was still reluctant to go.

And scarcely had he gone before misgivings seized Benham.

“Where is your friend?” asked the mandarin.

“I don’t know,” said Benham.

“But they will keep him!  They may do all sorts of things when they find he is lying to them.”

“Lying to them?”

“About your help.”

“Stop that man,” cried Benham suddenly realizing his mistake.  But when the servants went to stop the messenger their intentions were misunderstood, and the man dashed through the open gate of the garden and made off down the winding road.

“Stop him!” cried Benham, and started in pursuit, suddenly afraid for Prothero.

The Chinese are a people of great curiosity, and a small pebble sometimes starts an avalanche. . . .

White pieced together his conception of the circles of disturbance that spread out from Benham’s pursuit of Prothero’s flying messenger.

For weeks and months the great town had been uneasy in all its ways because of the insurgent spirits from the south and the disorder from the north, because of endless rumours and incessant intrigue.  The stupid manoeuvres of one European “power” against another, the tactlessness of missionaries, the growing Chinese disposition to meet violence and force with violence and force, had fermented and brewed the possibility of an outbreak.  The sudden resolve of Benham to get at once to Prothero was like the firing of a mine.  This tall, pale-faced, incomprehensible stranger charging through the narrow streets that led to the pleasure-boats in the south river seemed to many a blue-clad citizen like the White Peril embodied.  Behind him came the attendants of the rich man up the hill; but they surely were traitors to help this stranger.

Before Benham could at all realize what was happening he found his way to the river-boat on which he supposed Prothero to be detained, barred by a vigorous street fight.  Explanations were impossible; he joined in the fight.

For three days that fight developed round the mystery of Prothero’s disappearance.

It was a complicated struggle into which the local foreign traders on the river-front and a detachment of modern drilled troops from the up-river barracks were presently drawn.  It was a struggle that was never clearly explained, and at the end of it they found Prothero’s body flung out upon a waste place near a little temple on the river bank, stabbed while he was asleep. . . .