"This white-face was a bad man.

I am glad he is dead." "Humph!" said Tarling, and dismissed his retainer.
Ling Chu was the cleverest of all his sleuths, a man who never lifted his nose from the trail once it was struck, and he had been the most loyal and faithful of Tarling's native trailers.

But the detective never pretended that he understood Ling Chu's mind, or that he could pierce the veil which the native dropped between his own private thoughts and the curious foreigner.

Even native criminals were baffled in their interpretation of Ling Chu's views, and many a man had gone to the scaffold puzzling the head, which was soon to be snicked from his body, over the method by which Ling Chu had detected his crime.
Tarling went back to the table and picked up the newspaper, but had hardly begun to read when the telephone bell rang.

He picked up the receiver and listened.