Standing upright, Sin Sin Wa looked from the dead man to the dead raven.  Then, tenderly raising poor Tling-a-Ling, he laid the great dishevelled bird—­a weird offering—­upon the knees of Sam Tuk.

“Take him with you where you travel tonight, my father,” he said.  “He, too, was faithful.”

A cheap German clock commenced a muted clangor, for the little hammer was muffled.

Sin Sin Wa walked slowly across to the counter.  Taking up the gleaming joss, he unscrewed its pedestal.  Then, returning to the spot where Mrs. Sin lay, he coolly detached a leather wallet which she wore beneath her dress fastened to a girdle.  Next he removed her rings, her bangles and other ornaments.  He secreted all in the interior of the joss—­his treasure-chest.  He raised his hands and began to unplait his long pigtail, which, like his “blind” eye, was camouflage—­a false queue attached to his own hair, which he wore but slightly longer than some Europeans and many Americans.  With a small pair of scissors he clipped off his long, snake-like moustaches. . . .

CHAPTER XLI

THE FINDING OF KAZMAH

At a point just above the sweep of Limehouse Reach a watchful river police patrol observed a moving speck of light on the right bank of the Thames.  As if in answer to the signal there came a few moments later a second moving speck at a point not far above the district once notorious in its possession of Ratcliff Highway.  A third light answered from the Surrey bank, and a fourth shone out yet higher up and on the opposite side of the Thames.

The tide had just turned.  As Chief Inspector Kerry had once observed, “there are no pleasure parties punting about that stretch,” and, consequently, when George Martin tumbled into his skiff on the Surrey shore and began lustily to pull up stream, he was observed almost immediately by the River Police.

Pulling hard against the stream, it took him a long time to reach his destination—­stone stairs near the point from which the second light had been shown.  Rain had ceased and the mist had cleared shortly after dusk, as often happens at this time of year, and because the night was comparatively clear the pursuing boats had to be handled with care.

George did not disembark at the stone steps, but after waiting there for some time he began to drop down on the tide, keeping close inshore.

“He knows we’ve spotted him,” said Sergeant Coombes, who was in one of the River Police boats.  “It was at the stairs that he had to pick up his man.”

Certainly, the tactics of George suggested that he had recognized surveillance, and, his purpose abandoned, now sought to efface himself without delay.  Taking advantage of every shadow, he resigned his boat to the gentle current.  He had actually come to the entrance of Greenwich Reach when a dock light, shining out across the river, outlined the boat yellowly.