"But everything
points to the imminent departure of this someone. Will you see to it,
Inspector, that not a rat--_pardieu_ not a little mouse--is allowed to
slip out of our red circle to-day. For to-night we shall pay a
friendly visit to the house of Ah-Fang-Fu, and I should wish all the
company to be present."
CHAPTER III
MISKA'S STORY
Stuart returned to his house in a troubled frame of mind. He had
refrained so long from betraying the circumstances of his last meeting
with Mlle. Dorian to the police authorities that this meeting now
constituted a sort of guilty secret, a link binding him to the
beautiful accomplice of "The Scorpion"--to the dark-eyed servant of
the uncanny cowled thing which had sought his life by strange means.
He hugged this secret to his breast, and the pain of it afforded him a
kind of savage joy.
In his study he found a Post Office workman engaged in fitting a new
telephone. As Stuart entered the man turned.
"Good-afternoon, sir," he said, taking up the destroyed instrument
from the litter of flux, pincers and screw drivers lying upon the
table. "If it's not a rude question, how on earth did _this_ happen?"
Stuart laughed uneasily.
"It got mixed up with an experiment which I was conducting," he
replied evasively.
The man inspected the headless trunk of the instrument.
"It seems to be fused, as though the top of it had been in a blast
furnace," he continued. "Experiments of that sort are a bit dangerous
outside a proper laboratory, I should think.
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