17!" So that was how Furneaux had played the necromancer, and was able to mystify Theydon that morning.
The chief inspector, by raising the question, was touching on dangerous ground, as he was well aware, but he was determined now that all barriers should be thrown down.

Evelyn Forbes was no bread-and-butter miss from whose cognizance the evil things of life must be sedulously averted.

A, woman of spirit and intelligence, who had already run the dreadful risk of sharing Mrs.Lester's fate, should be made to understand every phase of the difficulty with which the Criminal Investigation Department had yet to deal.
British law and Chinese anarchy would soon grapple in a life and death conflict, and it was idle folly to suppose that, no matter how reticent her friends might be, this sharp-witted girl would not find out for herself the exact nature of the link which bound the fortunes of her own family with those of the dead woman.
Theydon tried to pass off the detective's retort with a careless laugh, but Evelyn reverted to the topic when they were seated in the London-bound train after Winter had dropped them at Tunbridge Wells Station.
"What did the chief inspector mean when he said you refused to help him at first ?" she inquired.

"There are gaps in my history of this affair.
How did you come to know that my father was acquainted with Mrs.Lester?
Why did you seem, at one time, to be taking sides with my father against a public inquiry by the police ?" Then, seeing there was no help for it, Theydon began at the beginning and told the girl the full, true and unexpurgated story of events on the Monday night.

Once or twice, when he hinted at the cause of his otherwise inexplicable actions--which, quite obviously, lay in his interest in the girl herself, she blushed a little and averted her eyes.
But she listened in silence, and did not speak during many seconds after he had ceased.
Then she simply murmured: "Poor, dear Dad! How worried he must have been! And how well he concealed it from me!" After another pause, she added: "We are deeply in your debt, Mr.Theydon.When this ordeal is ended, and those horrid men have been put in prison or driven out of the country, our next difficulty will be to--to thank you adequately for what you have done." _Surgit amari aliquid!_ Even in life's pleasantest hours something bitter arises.