Yada followed to the front door and, through a slight opening, watched. The garden was fairly well lighted by the moon, which had recently risen. He saw Chen Li let the man out. He saw him turn from the gate and slowly come back towards the house. And then he saw something else--the sudden spring, from behind a big laurel bush, of a man--a short-statured, slight-figured man, who leapt on Chen Li with the agility of a panther. He saw the flash of a knife in the moonlight--he heard a muffled cry, and startled groan--and saw Chen Li pitch forward and lie evidently lifeless, where he fell. He saw the assailant stoop, seize his victim by the shoulders and drag him behind the shrubbery. Then, without further delay, the murderer hurried to the gate. Evidently assured himself that there was no one about, let himself out, and was gone.
By all the solemn oaths that he could think of, Yada swore that this was true. Of another thing he was certain--the murderer was a Chinese.
Now began his own career of crime. He was just then very hard up. He had spent much more than his allowance--he was in debt at his lodgings and elsewhere. Somewhere, he felt sure, there was, in that house, the money which Chen Li had evidently stolen from old Multenius. He immediately set to work to find it. But he had no difficulty--the bank-notes were in the drawer from which he had seen Chen Li take the gold which he had given to the blackmailer, Parslett. He hurriedly transferred them to his own pocket, and got away from the house by the door at the back of the garden--and it was not until late that night, in the privacy of his own rooms, that he found he had nearly eighty thousand pounds in his possession.
For some days, said Yada, he was at a loss what to do with his booty. He was afraid of attempting to change five hundred pound notes. He made cautious enquiries as to how that could be done--and he began to think that the notes were so much waste paper to him. And then Ayscough called on him--and for the first time, he heard the story of the orange-yellow diamond.
That gave him an idea. He had a very accurate knowledge of Chinese habits and characteristics, and he felt sure that Chen Li would have hidden that diamond in his pig-tail. So he took advantage of his possession of the detective's card to go to the mortuary, to get a minute or two alone with the body, and to slip his hand underneath the dead man's silk cap. There he found the diamond--and he knew that whether the bank-notes were to be of any value to him or not, the diamond would be if he could only escape to the Continent.