The Yellow Snake by Edgar Wallace Page A

bankers there amongst other things, and when the revolution came along, enormous sums were deposited with us and transferred to Shanghai. Many of the depositors, poor souls, are dead, and these include some of the biggest. In the present state of chaos it is impossible to trace their relatives. Their money is known as Reserve B: that is the reserve which Fing-Su is after!"
        He saw that she was puzzled, and went on:
        "It was not until a few months ago that I learnt that Joe had given away more than half his founders' shares to this sleek young scoundrel Fing-Su. He would have given him the lot, only five of the certificates—each share is separated—he couldn't find. Thank God I got them and had them transferred to me. Whilst I have the predominant holding, Fing-Su can do nothing with the reserves. Once he has that share, not all the courts of China can stop his playing the devil with other people's money. Oh, Joe! You've got a lot to answer for!"
        This time she reproached him.
        "Mr Lynne—Clifford, you want me to call you?—how can you say such unpleasant things about a man who was your friend and is now dead?"
        He did not reply immediately, and when he did it was to ignore the question.
        "This world is a pretty good place to live in," he said, "and I hate the thought of leaving it—but one of these days I'm going to kill Fing-Su!"
     

 
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
     
     
        Joan Bray had a large attic which had come to be the most comfortable room in the house. It was not intended to be such when this retreat was given to her; but Joan was popular with the servants at Sunni Lodge, and in some mysterious way odd and cosy pieces of furniture had found their way to the room under the roof with its big windows and outlook. It had a special value to her now, for from this vantage she could see the square chimney of the Slaters' Cottage, and this gave her an indefinable sense of communion with the strange man who had come over her horizon.
        The girls were out when she arrived, and she went up to her attic apartment, locked the door and sat down on the ancient sofa and, with her head between her hands, tried to straighten out the confusion in her mind. That Clifford Lynne had been no salaried servant of her relative, she had suspected from the first. He was a rich man, richer even than Joe Bray—what effect would that have had upon Stephen Narth's attitude had he known from the first? Suppose, instead of the apparition with the wild beard and the untidy clothes, there had appeared at Sunni Lodge that fateful afternoon this good-looking, well-dressed man, not in his role of manager, but as co-partner of Joe Bray? She had no doubt at all as to what would have been the result.
        Somehow—she could not exactly tell why—the knowledge of Clifford's wealth depressed her. For what appeared now to be a very inadequate reason, she had steeled her soul to an appalling marriage with an unknown man, and had grown used to the prospect of her sacrifice. She shook her head. She was cheating herself: it had never really seemed a sacrifice. The stranger had interested her from the first; was an individuality so far outside the range of her experience that his very novelty had overcome all her natural qualms.
        Joan was beginning to see life from a new angle, to realize the tremendous difference this marriage would make, and Letty (or was it Mabel?) had been right. What did a girl know about the lover into whose hands she placed her future? Already she knew, and was more akin to, the nature of Clifford Lynne than had been half a dozen brides she could recall to the real character of the men they had wed.
        Walking to the window, she stood looking at that visible portion of the Slaters' Cottage which showed through the trees. Smoke was coming from the chimney now, and she remembered the cab full of provisions and wondered if Clifford Lynne was as efficient as a cook as