As I descended¹ to the street the liftman regarded me in a curious and rather significant way. Finally, just as I was about to step out into the hall:

 

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, having evidently decided² that I was a fit person to converse³ with, “but are you a friend of Mr. Adderley's?”

 

“Why do you ask?”

 

“Well, sir, I hope you will excuse me, but at times I have thought the gentleman was just a little bit queer, like.”

 

“You mean insane?” I asked sharply.

 

“Well, sir, I don't know, but he is always asking me if I can see shadows and things in the lift, and sometimes when he comes in late of a night he absolutely gives me the cold shivers, he does.”

 

I lingered, the box under my arm, reluctant to obtain confidences from a servant, but at the same time keenly interested. Thus encouraged:

 

“Then there's that lady friend of his who is always coming here,” the man continued. “She's haunted by shadows, too.” He paused, watching me narrowly.

 

“There's nothing better in this world than a clean conscience, sir,” he concluded.

 

Having returned to my room at the hotel, I set down the mysterious parcel, surveying it with much disfavour. That it contained the hand of the Mandarin⁴ Quong I could not doubt, the hand which had been amputated by Dr. Matheson. Its appearance in that dramatic fashion confirmed Matheson's idea that the mandarin's injury had been received at the hands of Adderley. What did all this portend⁵, unless that the Mandarin Quong was dead? And if he were dead why was Adderley more afraid of him dead than he had been of him living?

 

I thought of the haunting shadow, I thought of the night at Katong, and I thought of Dr. Matheson's words when he had told us of his discovery of the Chinaman lying in the road that night outside Singapore.

 

I felt strangely disinclined to touch the

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