"It is for that reason," Mr. Endacott pointed out, "an unsuitable place for my niece. My establishment here, too, is impossible. No European woman could keep house under the prevailing conditions. That is why I am hurrying my niece off, although I myself shall follow before long."
"My father will be interested to see you again," Gregory ventured.
"Your father, if his tastes had lain that way," Mr. Endacott ruminated, "might have been a brilliant scholar. He preferred sport and life. We met, not so many years ago, in Pekin. He was dabbling in diplomacy then. He certainly had the gifts for it. He was, in fact, the most popular Englishman who ever appeared at the Court there. He was received and granted privileges where I could never follow him. He was, I suppose, your instigator in this buccaneering expedition of yours."
The young man laughed a little uneasily. There had been a vein of contempt in the other's tone.
"I suppose it must have seemed a horrible piece of vandalism to you, sir," he remarked. "However, there it is. The adventure appealed to me and we wanted the money badly enough."
His host looked out across the harbour at the swaying lanterns of the small boats and beyond to the great lighthouse.
"Money!" he repeated. "The password of the West. Somehow I never thought I should return to it."
"Money counts for something out here, too," Gregory protested. "Look at your friend and partner, Wu Ling, trading up the river with machine guns and rifles to protect himself. For what? To make money. He's doing it for Johnson and Company. You're one of the firm, Mr. Endacott."
"Touché," he admitted. "But let me point out to you, young gentleman, that the things Wu Ling brings back to our warehouses are things of beauty."
"Which he pays for with rubbish," Gregory rejoined. "Half of your warehouse is an abomination; the other half, I admit, a treasure house."
"I cannot defend myself," he acknowledged. "I am a partner in the firm because they insisted. All my savings for twenty years, which I advanced to them, were, they tell me, the foundation from which the business has been built up. But, believe me, I have never seen inside a ledger. Once every twelve months, a strange little man brings me a slip of paper. I look at it, and the business for the year is finished."