"It was the night of the 29th of July, _Thakin_, and I sent him forth
upon a business. Next morning he did not return. It was I who opened the
shop, it was I who waited upon customers, and Absalom was not there."

"What inquiries have you made?"

"All that may be made, _Thakin_. His mother comes crying to my door, his
brothers have searched everywhere. Ah, that I had the body of the man
who has done this thing, and held him in the sacred tank, to make food
for the fishes."

His dark eyes gleamed, and he showed his teeth like a dog.

"Nonsense, man," said Hartley, quickly. "You seem to suppose that the
boy is dead. What reason have you for imagining that there has been foul
play?"

"_Seem_ to suppose, _Thakin_?" Mhtoon Pah gasped again, like a drowning
man. "And yet the _Thakin_ knows the sewer city, the Chinese quarter,
the streets where men laugh horribly in the dark. Houses there,
_Thakin_, that crawl with yellow men, who are devils, and who split a
man as they would split a fowl--" he broke off, and waved his hands
about wildly.

Hartley felt a little sick; there was something so hideous in the way
Mhtoon Pah expressed himself that he recoiled a step and summoned his
common sense to his aid.

"Who saw Absalom last?"