sorry I broke out as I did, Sergeant. Naturally I'm upset—sitting here, facing this ghastly tragedy as I talk with you. No, I've never quarreled with Mr. Li. Once I fined him pretty heavily for not appearing on the lot, two days running, when he was due in a series of sequences. Apparently he had been having a bout with the pipe, for he staggered in the third day, with his eyes the size of pinpoints and looking like a wreck. That means opium, doesn't it?"
"It do," replied the sergeant dryly. "Which brrings up another point: where did he get his opium?"
"How on earth should I know that?"
"No, I don't suppose you do. We'll try to run that down. Actorr smokin' opium. There may be our solution: he might have been smuggling it, on the side, and have been hi-jacked. There do be the most unlikely folk engagin' theirselves in that. The last ye'd ever suspect."
O'Conner laughed. "As long as you don't suspect me! I don't even know what opium looks like. It's a brown powder, isn't it?"
"It is not!" said the sergeant ponderously. "It's brrown, all right, but it's a fearrful, sticky gum. But do you think said Li might have been engaged in smugglin' it with a member of yer company?"
"It's possible, Sergeant. We've engaged scores of extra people."
"But not, say, Miss Laura Sun?"
"It would seem to me that they hated each other too much to be partners in anything."
"Then, how about Rutherrford, yer camera man?"
"That seems extremely unlikely, Sergeant, although I know very little about Rutherford. He's a queer young fellow. Moody, not talkative. I don't know what he does with himself, when he's off the lot. We don't live at the same hotel."
"How long have you known him?"
"About four months. I met him in Hollywood, just before we sailed. I advertised for a camera man and he answered the ad. The samples he showed me were excellent, so I hired him."
Once again that ponderous voice, just catching up with O'Conner's quick, nervous speech:
"'Known Rutherrford—four months—his past shrrouded—his nights spent suspeeciously'" A pause. "All right, Muster O'Conner. I'll be right over. You'd be surprized how few murrderers get out of our net! You'd be surprized!"
"I'm sure I would, Sergeant. And believe me, I won't feel safe, myself, until he is netted. I may even be next!"
"Yes," agreed the sergeant earnestly. "Yes, ye may be, at that!"
2
Noel Rutherford sat with his back pressed hard against the rungs of a wooden chair. On the floor of Terence O'Conner's office the body of Mr. Li still sprawled. Rutherford kept his eyes carefully away from the spectacle of death. He was scowling.
Seared opposite him, face impassive, was Fergus Andrews, the sergeant of the Shanghai Municipal Police who had taken down O'Conner's story over the telephone. Andrews was saying stolidly:
"Why can't ye remember when ye had a quarrrel wi' Muster Li?"
"Because I can't, that's all! I've been too busy. I'm doing all the photography for the entire job here."
"Even so"
"Yes, even so! Why should I have stopped my work and said: 'Now, I must remember this; I must fix it in my mind! Because later a fat-headed policeman is going to come and ask me all about it!'"
The words were flung out by Ruther-
