Jane had gone to meet his father. How to secrete this note without being
observed by either the manager or the Chinaman? An accident came to his
aid. Someone in the corridor banged a door violently, and as the manager's
head and Ling Foo's jerked about, Dennison stuffed the note into a
pocket.
A trap! Dennison wasn't alarmed--he was only furious. Jane had walked into
a trap. She had worn those accursed beads when his father had approached
her by the bookstall that afternoon. The note had attacked her curiosity
from a perfectly normal angle. Dennison had absorbed enough of the note's
contents to understand how readily Jane had walked into the trap.
Very well. He would wait in the lobby until one; then if Jane had not
returned he would lay the plans of a counter-attack, and it would be a
rough one. Of course no bodily harm would befall Jane, but she would
probably be harried and bullied out of those beads. But would she? It was
not unlikely that she would become a pretty handful, once she learned she
had been tricked. If she balked him, how would the father act? The old
boy was ruthless when he particularly wanted something.
If anything should happen to her--an event unlooked for, accidental, over
which his father would have no control--this note would bring the old boy
into a peck of trouble; and Dennison was loyal enough not to wish this to
happen. And yet it would be only just to make the father pay once for his
high-handedness. That would be droll--to see his father in the dock,
himself as a witness against him! Here was the germ of a tiptop drama.
But all this worry was doubtless being wasted upon mere supposition. Jane
might turn over the beads without bargaining, provided the father had any
legal right to them, which Dennison strongly doubted.
He approached Ling Foo and seized him roughly by the arm.
"What do you know about these glass beads?"
Ling Foo elevated a shoulder and let it fall.
"Nothing, except that the man who owns them demands that I recover them."
"And who is this man?"
"I don't know his name."
"That won't pass. You tell me who he is or I'll turn you over to the
police."
"I am an honest man," replied Ling Foo with dignity. He appealed to the
manager.
"I have known Ling Foo a long time, sir. He is perfectly honest."
Ling Foo nodded. He knew that this recommendation, honest as it was, would
have weight with the American.