Stunned by a shock that for a few moments paralyzed every nerve center in his body, John Keith stood with the slip of white paper in his hands.  He was discovered!  That was the one thought that pounded like a hammer in his brain.  He was discovered in the very hour of his triumph and exaltation, in that hour when the world had opened its portals of joy and hope for him again and when life itself, after four years of hell, was once more worth the living.  Had the shock come a few hours before, he would have taken it differently.  He was expecting it then.  He had expected it when he entered McDowell’s office the first time.  He was prepared for it afterward.  Discovery, failure, and death were possibilities of the hazardous game he was playing, and he was unafraid, because he had only his life to lose, a life that was not much more than a hopeless derelict at most.  Now it was different.  Mary Josephine had come like some rare and wonderful alchemy to transmute for him all leaden things into gold.  In a few minutes she had upset the world.  She had literally torn aside for him the hopeless chaos in which he saw himself struggling, flooding him with the warm radiance of a great love and a still greater desire.  On his lips he could feel the soft thrill of her good-night kiss and about his neck the embrace of her soft arms.  She had not gone to sleep yet.  Across in the other room she was thinking of him, loving him; perhaps she was on her knees praying for him, even as he held in his fingers Shan Tung’s mysterious forewarning of his doom.

The first impulse that crowded in upon him was that of flight, the selfish impulse of personal salvation.  He could get away.  The night would swallow him up.  A moment later he was mentally castigating himself for the treachery of that impulse to Mary Josephine.  His floundering senses began to readjust themselves.

Why had Shan Tung given him this warning?  Why had he not gone straight to Inspector McDowell with the astounding disclosure of the fact that the man supposed to be Derwent Conniston was not Derwent Conniston, but John Keith, the murderer of Miriam Kirkstone’s father?

The questions brought to Keith a new thrill.  He read the note again.  It was a definite thing stating a certainty and not a guess.  Shan Tung had not shot at random.  He knew.  He knew that he was not Derwent Conniston but John Keith.  And he believed that he had killed the Englishman to steal his identity.  In the face of these things he had not gone to McDowell!  Keith’s eyes fell upon the card again.  “With the compliments of Shan Tung.”  What did the words mean?  Why had Shan Tung written them unless—­with his compliments—­he was giving him a warning and the chance to save himself?

His immediate alarm grew less.  The longer he contemplated the slip of paper in his hand, the more he became convinced that the inscrutable Shan Tung was the last individual in the world to stage a bit of melodrama without some good reason for it.  There was but one conclusion he could arrive at.  The Chinaman was playing a game of his own, and he had taken this unusual way of advising Keith to make a getaway while the going was good.  It was evident that his intention had been to avoid the possibility of a personal discussion of the situation.  That, at least, was Keith’s first impression.