"All I care to say. I've strained a point to say that much."
"And you will not tell me where you got your information? Is that quite fair?"
John Bradley shook his head. "Not information. I have no information—none. But I have my suspicion, and I believe it is well based."
"Built on Chinese rock!"
"Well—yes—in part. And I have a great deal of respect for Chinese rock. As for being unfair, that is the last thing I'd be willingly. And I have tried to look at this from every side. A man likes to respect confidence; with a priest it is a duty, solemn and imperative. But if I chose to blab, I have not one concrete fact to state. A Chinese woman, I will not tell you her name—if I know it—comes to me in the middle of the night, getting into the grounds somehow over the wall or up the hill, certainly not through the gate, and begs me to find some way of getting Basil Gregory's people out of China. She urges me to let them lose no time in searching for him, because no searching will find him; and they, she insists, are in danger that will grow deadlier every hour they stay on here. I did not know that Basil was missing until she told me; it's two nights ago. I had been expecting him to call—to complete some talk we'd begun"
"About a girl?"
"But I was not particularly surprised that he delayed keeping an appointment that was not very definite. Basil was always a procrastinator. The woman does not know where he is or what has happened to him. Take that from me. She said so, and she was speaking the truth. It is part of my business to know when people
