One of the men looked uneasily at the flickering flame of the single candle that cast their weirdly distorted shadows on the plaster wall. He asked in a tired voice: "Why do you insist on doing it tonight?"

"Because I choose to!" the second replied placidly. "Don't you think that today's feast is a most appropriate occasion?"

"With all those people about here?" the first asked dubiously.

"You are not afraid, are you?" his companion asked with a sneer. "You weren't afraid on that former occasion, remember?"

The other made no reply. Thunder rumbled in the distant mountains. Then there came a torrential downpour. The rain clattered against the shutters with a rattle as of hail stones. Suddenly he said: "No, I am not afraid. But I repeat that the face of the morose fellow looks familiar to me. It worries me that I can't remember when or where I…"

"You distress me!" the man opposite him interrupted with mock politeness.

The first frowned, then resumed: "I wish you wouldn't kill her, this time. People might remember, and start wondering why three…"

"It all depends on her herself, doesn't it?" His thin lips curved in a cruel smile. Rising abruptly he added: "Let's go back, they'll notice our absence in the hall below. We must never forget to act our parts, my friend!"

The other got up also. He muttered something but his words were drowned in another roll of thunder. It seemed very near, this time.

II

Farther down in the mountains on the southern border of Han-yuan, that thunderclap made Judge Dee lift his head in the pouring rain and anxiously inspect the dark, wind-swept sky. He pressed himself close to the side of the high tiltcart, drawn up under the cliff that overhung the mountain road. Wiping the rain from his eyes he said to the two coachmen who stood before him huddled in their straw rain cloaks: "Since we can't go on to Han-yuan this evening, we'd better pass the night right here in our cart. You could fetch some rice for our evening meal from a farm in the neighbourhood, I suppose?"