Explanations were impossible; he
joined in the fight.
For three days that fight developed round the mystery of Prothero's
disappearance.
It was a complicated struggle into which the local foreign traders
on the river-front and a detachment of modern drilled troops from
the up-river barracks were presently drawn. It was a struggle that
was never clearly explained, and at the end of it they found
Prothero's body flung out upon a waste place near a little temple on
the river bank, stabbed while he was asleep. . . .
And from the broken fragments of description that Benham let fall,
White had an impression of him hunting for all those three days
through the strange places of a Chinese city, along narrow passages,
over queer Venetian-like bridges, through the vast spaces of empty
warehouses, in the incense-scented darkness of temple yards, along
planks that passed to the dark hulls of secret barges, in quick-
flying boats that slipped noiselessly among the larger craft, and
sometimes he hunted alone, sometimes in company, sometimes black
figures struggled in the darkness against dim-lit backgrounds and
sometimes a swarm of shining yellow faces screamed and shouted
through the torn paper windows.
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