“Wait!” he said softly.  In his flowing gown he seemed to glide to a carven desk near at hand.  He was back in a moment with a roll of parchment in his hand.  He sat down again and met Keith’s eyes squarely and in silence for a moment.

“We are both men, John Keith.”  His voice was soft and calm.  His tapering fingers with their carefully manicured nails fondled the roll of parchment, and then unrolled it, and held it so the other could read.

It was a university diploma.  Keith stared.  A strange name was scrolled upon it, Kao Lung, Prince of Shantung.  His mind leaped to the truth.  He looked at the other.

The man he had known as Shan Tung met his eyes with a quiet, strange smile, a smile in which there was pride, a flash of sovereignty, of a thing greater than skins that were white.  “I am Prince Kao,” he said.  “That is my diploma.  I am a graduate of Yale.”

Keith’s effort to speak was merely a grunt.  He could find no words.  And Kao, rolling up the parchment and forgetting the urn of tea that was growing cold, leaned a little over the table again.  And then it was, deep in his narrowed, smoldering eyes, that Keith saw a devil, a living, burning thing of passion, Kao’s soul itself.  And Kao’s voice was quiet, deadly.

“I recognized you in McDowell’s office,” he said.  “I saw, first, that you were not Derwent Conniston.  And then it was easy, so easy.  Perhaps you killed Conniston.  I am not asking, for I hated Conniston.  Some day I should have killed him, if he had come back.  John Keith, from that first time we met, you were a dead man.  Why didn’t I turn you over to the hangman?  Why did I warn you in such a way that I knew you would come to see me?  Why did I save your life which was in the hollow of my hand?  Can you guess?”

“Partly,” replied Keith.  “But go on.  I am waiting.”  Not for an instant had it enter his mind to deny that he was John Keith.  Denial was folly, a waste of time, and just now he felt that nothing in the world was more precious to him than time.

Kao’s quick mind, scheming and treacherous though it was, caught his view-point, and he nodded appreciatively.  “Good, John Keith.  It is easily guessed.  Your life is mine.  I can save it.  I can destroy it.  And you, in turn, can be of service to me.  You help me, and I save you.  It is a profitable arrangement.  And we both are happy, for you keep Derwent Conniston’s sister—­and I—­I get my golden-headed goddess, Miriam Kirkstone!”

“That much I have guessed,” said Keith.  “Go on!” For a moment Kao seemed to hesitate, to study the cold, gray passiveness of the other’s face.  “You love Derwent Conniston’s sister,” he continued in a voice still lower and softer.  “And I—­I love my golden-headed goddess.  See!  Up there on the dais I have her picture and a tress of her golden hair, and I worship them.”

Colder and grayer was Keith’s face as he saw the slumbering passion burn fiercer in Kao’s eyes.  It turned him sick.  It was a terrible thing which could not be called love.  It was a madness.  But Kao, the man himself, was not mad.  He was a monster.  And while the eyes burned like two devils, his voice was still soft and low.