A faint
smell of tobacco smoke greeted him: a detective was standing in the
lane below. Soundlessly, Sin Sin Wa descended again. Raising his bag
he lifted it lovingly until it rested upright upon the top of the wall
and against the side of the house. The night was dark and still. Only
a confused beating sound on the Surrey bank rose above the murmur of
sleeping London.
From the rubbish amid which he stood, Sin Sin Wa selected a piece of
rusty barrel-hoop. Cautiously he mounted upon a wooden structure built
against the end wall and raised himself upright, surveying the
prospect. Then he hurled the fragment of iron far along the lane, so
that it bounded upon a strip of corrugated roofing in a yard twice
removed from his own, and fell clattering among a neighbor's rubbish.
A short exclamation came from the detective in the lane. He could be
heard walking swiftly away in the direction of the disturbance. And
ere he had gone six paces, Sin Sin Wa was bending like an inverted U
over the wall and was lowering his precious bag to the ground. Like a
cat he sprang across and dropped noiselessly beside it.
"Hello! Who's there?" cried the detective, standing by the wall of the
house which Sin Sin Wa had selected as a target.
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