After a protracted debate in private between the two heads of the Criminal Investigation Department, the names and addresses of the prisoners were recorded and they were set at liberty.

Before Li Chang went away Furneaux demanded the return of the three ivory skulls, which were promptly handed over.

“One word in your ear,” murmured the detective, sotto voce.  “Did Wong Li Fu recognize you?”

“Oh, yes,” said the Chinaman.

“And you spoke to him?”

“Oh, yes.”

The eyes of the two clashed.  For once, Furneaux peered deep into the
mind of an Oriental, and what he saw there kept him quiet, but he
knew, just as surely as if he had been present, exactly what Li Chang
said to Wong Li Fu.  He delivered a message from two graves in far-off
China.
                               _______

And that is all—­ or nearly all.

The “Charlotte Street Fire” caused only a slight sensation.  It became known that No. 412 was a resort of Chinese opium fiends, and the loss of the den and its frequenters was not treated as a National calamity.  The shooting at No. 11 Fortescue Square was regarded much more seriously, and the newspapers were full of it all next day.

Thenceforth, however, interest flagged.  Mr. Forbes and his family and servants left London for Scotland, and the Amateur Golf Championship came along, so the escapades of a few Chinese fanatics in London were quickly forgotten.

They were forgotten, that is, by most people; but one man, Frank Theydon, went back to his flat in Innesmore Mansions to plunge into work and strive vainly to obliterate those pages of his memory charged with bitter-sweet day-dreams.

Strive as he would, and did, to bury the past under the duties and cares of the present, the radiant vision of Evelyn Forbes remained ineffaceable and entrancing.

But he was built of tough fiber, and resolutely refused an invitation to visit the Sutherlandshire glen in which Forbes and his daughter were sedulously nursing to health and strength the dear wife and mother whose nervous system had suffered far more than she permitted to become known under the stress and strain of the kidnaping experience.

Even when Evelyn herself wrote, seconding her father’s most friendly note, Theydon pleaded the exigencies of his profession and filled a letter with an amusing account of Bates’s chagrin because he had failed to “bag a Chinaman on his own account,” having actually purchased a pistol and fixed it in position before he and his wife quitted the flat.

Three months passed.  On August 9, a broiling morning, Theydon was dejectedly reading of preparations for the “Twelfth,” when a telegram reached him.  It read: 

“Handyside has arrived here in his car.  Come for the gathering of the clan.  We take no refusal.  Forbes.”

Theydon traveled north that night.  He reached the glen in time for dinner next evening and passed a few delightfully miserable days in Evelyn’s company.