Making Christ Present in China:

Actor-Network Theory and the

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Michel Chambon
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Making Christ
Present in China
Actor-Network Theory and
the Anthropology of Christianity

Michel Chambon
Making Christ Present in China
 Michel Chambon

Making Christ Present

in China
Actor-Network Theory and the Anthropology
of Christianity
Michel Chambon
Anthropology
Hanover College
Hanover, IN, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-55604-4    ISBN 978-3-030-55605-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55605-1

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En hommage à Soeur Marie-Régis Arnaud
et au Père Bernard Ladet,
 Acknowledgments

This book came to life through the infinite encouragement and collabora-
tion of countless actors that I would like to thank. The mountains and
rivers of the Yanping District have given priceless support by allowing
healthy hikes during my entire ethnographic fieldwork. Also, the interac-
tion of the river’s humidity with the soil of the mountains sustains the
growth of exceptional tea plants that produce a delicious beverage. This
tea facilitates the gathering of Nanping people around friendly discussions
that have been crucial in this study. Unfortunately, naming all local infor-
mants, Christian and Non-Christian, who participated in these conversa-
tions is an impossible task. Yet, I want to specifically thank Pastor Thomas
Sun Renfu, the head pastor of the Gospel Church, for his trust and active
support. With him, other faces such as Huang Hailan and Lin Qing, Pastor
Chen Yanyu, Elder Luke, Nun Shi Lizhen and Father Wu Yishun have
been a source of endless inspiration. Friendly meals and open-minded
conversations with local officials have also helped me to better understand
the Middle Kingdom. Beyond Nanping, I greatly benefited from the
friendship and the apartments of Lin Weifeng and Mao Rongkun in
Guangzhou, and of the Leung Family in Hong Kong. Pastor Dennis
Balcombe and many members of the Missions Étrangères de Paris have
also greatly contributed to my journey.
However, the echoes of the field would have remained rather misshapen
without the tremendous patience and critical wisdom of Robert P. Weller.
Being one of his students has been a true blessing. My intellectual pilgrim-
age from European theology to American anthropology has also been pre-
ciously stimulated by professors Nancy T. Ammerman, Kimberly Arkin,

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Robert W. Hefner, John Lagerwey, Eugenio Menegon, and Adam

Seligman. The camaraderie and intellectual stimulation of my fellow col-
leagues at Boston University and Hanover College can neither be forgot-
ten. Sheldon Sawatzky and Pastor Vicki Gaber deserve a special thanks for
their patient editing. In this concert of voices who acted upon my work of
translation, I also want to acknowledge Elizabeth Alles and Joel Thoraval,
Alexander Chow, Guillaume Dutournier, Vincent Goossaert, Karine
Martin, Pan Junliang, Veronique Poisson, Patrick Royannais, Pascale Sidi
Brette, Ji Zhe, and the Jesuits Jacques Duraud, Thierry Meynard, Nicolas
Standaert, and Yves Vendé. Yet, nothing could have occurred without the
structural support of diverse institutions. My research has been financially
supported by the Boston University Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship,
the Confucius China Studies Program Research Fellowship, the China and
Inner Asia Council Small Grant from the Association for Asian Studies,
and the Global Religion Research Initiative writing grant from the
University of Notre Dame. I also received institutional support from Sun
Yat-Sen University and access to archival data from Yale Divinity Library.
Also, the production of this book greatly benefited from the feedback of
anonymous reviewers who helped me to clarify and deepen my analysis.
Last, and by no means least, I could not have survived through this eth-
nographic and intellectual journey without the love of my colleague and
now wife, Erica M. Larson, and our daughter, Cécilia Rose.
 Contents

1 Studying Chinese Christianity  1

1.1 Dialoguing with the Anthropology of Religion and
Anthropology of Christianity  3
1.2 Theoretical Issues and Methodological Approach  6
1.3 Being an Ethnographer Among Chinese Christians 11
Christianity in the Continent of the Gods  12
Doing Fieldwork at the Gospel Church in Nanping  15
What Counts as “Christian” in Nanping?  18
1.4 Nanping’s Six Christianizing Assemblages 20
1.5 Chapters and Arguments Summary 23
References 26

Part I The Epiphany of the Three  33

2 Building Churches on Chinese Soil 35

2.1 Nanping Territories 39
2.2 The Zhanghu Township 41
2.3 The Christianizing Presence Across the Zhanghu Area 47
2.4 Crossing Yanping District 51
2.5 The Wen and the Wu of Yanping District 60
2.6 The Typical Church 67
2.7 Conclusion: The Immanent Critique 72
References 74

ix
x Contents

3 Responding Together in the Face of the Lord 79

3.1 Worshipping in Nanping 82
3.2 Visiting the Gospel Church 89
3.3 Hearing a Sunday Service 96
3.4 Theoretical Echoes of the Sunday Service102
Disciplining the Body 103
The Realm of Sound 112
The Epiphany of the Face 117
3.5 Concluding Remarks124
References129

4 Revealing the Pastoral Church Through Elderly Care131

4.1 The Socio-political Background of an Aging Nation135
1949–1979 136
1979–Today 137
The Situation of Yanping District 139
4.2 A First Step: The Ren’ai Home141
4.3 The Ren’ai Home Tutelary Entity: The Church149
4.4 The Rebirth of the Elderly Home153
Opening a Second Elderly Home: The Ren’ai Nursing Home  153
Religious Life in the Two Homes 160
Fusion and Transition to the Sheng’ai Nursing Home 164
4.5 The Multiple Facets of a Collective Christian Project167
Serving the Elderly, But Also Those in Need 167
Generating a Sustainable Institution 169
Building Up Multilateral Political Merits 171
Sharing the Gospel 175
4.6 The Key Actors in the Life of the Nursing Home: The
Pastoral Clergy178
The Apparition of the Pastoral Clergy 178
Nanping Religious Experts and Specialists 180
Negotiating the Pastoral Functions 183
4.7 The Twin Collaboration Between “Church” and “Pastor”185
Within One Body, Under One Head: The Framing of a
Christianizing Assemblage 186
Beyond Groups and Competition 187
The Ambivalent Shadow of the Modern Chinese State 189
4.8 Conclusion: Toward a Christian Relatedness?190
References192
 Contents  xi

Part II The Networking of the Three 197

5 The Overflow of Gifts199

5.1 Variations and Continuities Among Nanping Christian
Offering Boxes202
Boxes of Merit in the Nanping Religious Landscape 202
Recycling Offering Boxes in Christianizing Assemblages 205
Renaming Offering Boxes in Christianizing Assemblages 209
5.2 Thanksgiving at the Gospel Church216
5.3 Echoes from the Celebration of Thanksgiving223
Who Designs This Thanksgiving Service? 223
What Do the Offerings Say About Those Actors and Their
Relations? 225
Worshiping the Present Lord and Suggesting Cosmological
Implications 228
Worshiping the Present Lord and Suggesting
Anthropological Implications 230
Worshiping the Present Lord and Suggesting a New Social
Order 231
5.4 Conclusion: Empowering Gifts234
References236

6 The Bloody Business of Christian Conversion239

6.1 The Gospel Church Dealing with Blood241
6.2 The Blood of Christ Within the Gospel Church245
6.3 The Other Christianizing Assemblages Dealing with Blood
and Holy Wine252
6.4 Blood and Wine in the Nanping Context of Chinese
Religiosities255
6.5 Toward a Christian Teaching on Blood in the Chinese
Context?259
Toward a Superior Reference: The Engaging Christian Face  261
Unity and Diversity: The Power of the Christian Center 265
6.6 Conclusion: Blood and Christian Conversion271
References275
xii Contents

7 Conclusion: The Tree of Life277

7.1 The Banyan Tree280
References285

Index287
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Nanping 15

Fig. 1.2 Nanping in its region 25
Fig. 2.1 The Yanping District 41
Fig. 2.2 Mapping of religious buildings across the Zhanghu area 45
Fig. 2.3 The Nanping Gospel Church 55
Fig. 2.4 The Baozhu Gospel Church 59
Fig. 2.5 Two local gods with the wen and the wu beside them 62
Fig. 2.6 A small temple near Nanping 69
Fig. 2.7 Archetypal church, temple, and housing 71
Fig. 3.1 The informal altar under the bridge 85
Fig. 3.2 Pastoral meeting with Pastor Sun in the center under the cross 93
Fig. 3.3 An 8 a.m. service at the Nanping Gospel Church 99
Fig. 3.4 Walking through a temple 105
Fig. 3.5 Walking through a church 106
Fig. 3.6 Service at the Christian Assembly. No central cross but an
“Emmanuel” in Chinese 110
Fig. 3.7 Christianity versus Chinese popular religion 111
Fig. 3.8 Stairs leading to the Christian Assembly’s sanctuary with a large
“Quiet”113
Fig. 3.9 Service at the True Jesus Church 128
Fig. 3.10 Worship within a temple 128
Fig. 4.1 Afternoon chitchat at the Ren’ai Home 144
Fig. 4.2 Mrs. Chan with one resident 147
Fig. 4.3 The Ren’ai Nursing Home, a former factory 157
Fig. 4.4 The room to pass away 163
Fig. 4.5 Nursing Home’s bedroom with Christmas decorations
in October 172

xiii
xiv List of Figures

Fig. 4.6 A wedding at the Nanping Gospel Church 191

Fig. 5.1 Two offering boxes 205
Fig. 5.2 Counting donations made through the offering box 211
Fig. 5.3 Altar during the Thanksgiving service 219
Fig. 5.4 Harvest dance by the Christian calisthenics group 221
Fig. 5.5 Buddhist temple with benefactors’ names on its pillars 235
Fig. 6.1 Eucharistic service at the Gospel Church 246
Fig. 6.2 Washing communion’s cups 249
Fig. 6.3 Protestant wine from Mudanjang 251
Fig. 6.4 Grids and centers in the construction of art 268
Fig. 6.5 Protestant university students kneeling to receive communion
in a large Chinese city 274
Fig. 7.1 A banyan tree 282
 CHAPTER 1

Studying Chinese Christianity

In early July 2004, a group of young altar servants held their summer
camp in a house in Mui Wo, a remote bay of the Hong Kong territory.
The Catholic priest in charge of their parish, a young French missionary,
invited me to join this three-day camp. I had already been in Hong Kong
for about a year as a volunteer for the local Catholic Church, organizing
pastoral activities for French expatriates while living in a local parish and
learning Cantonese at Hong Kong University. Joining this summer camp
was an opportunity to further immerse myself among young local
Catholics.
When all the activities were over, and everyone prepared for bed, a
group assigned to sleep in the upper room of the building came to me
begging for my sahpjihga. Thanks to their gestures and efforts to repeat
the term many times, I finally understood that they were looking for my
cross. Unfortunately, the French seminarian that I was, I did not wear any
cross. Once they understood my lack of piety, they turned to the priest and
begged for his cross. Since they were supposed to spend the night alone
upstairs, he agreed to give them the cross he wears since his ordination to
get peace and reassure everyone. The problem was solved.
Yet, I did not understand what was going on and which problem was
behind this “cross hunting.” Why were these teenagers so concerned
about getting one cross? The priest explained that they were simply afraid
of ghosts and wanted protection. Since our building was in the middle of
some abandoned fields and in a quite poor condition, these Hong Kong

© The Author(s) 2020 1

M. Chambon, Making Christ Present in China,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55605-1_1
2 M. CHAMBON

teenagers not used to sleep in such a remote environment were simply

scared by the potential wandering spirits filling the surroundings. These
explanations were far from satisfying, and all kinds of questions raised in
me. How could such modern and well-educated young Christians still be
afraid of ghosts? If ghosts exist by any means, how can a piece of wood,
even shaped as a Christian cross, be enough to stop their dangerous influ-
ence? Should we not challenge their “childish” and “superstitious”
behavior?
Coming from a French and rural background where the idea of
Halloween was entirely foreign, and where ghosts were perceived as a
vanished superstition from the Middle Ages, I still knew how objects are
crucial in the deployment of a Christian faith. At my parents’ and grand-
parents’ farms, we put pieces of blessed palms at the front of the doors. At
church, we sign ourselves with holy water. And once a year, we join a local
pilgrimage during which priests bless our cars. So, indeed, material objects
were everywhere in my own experience of Christianity, and as a seminar-
ian, I was used to introducing younger generations to sacraments through
a pedagogy centered on objects. But, apart from the Holy Eucharist,
objects were always used as symbols to indirectly refer to and recall the
presence of the Christian God. They were not the presence itself, or any
part of it. They were about meaning.
These Hong Kong teenagers puzzled me. In some sense, their belief in
the presence of ghosts and in the power of the cross appeared silly, naïve,
and somehow from another age. Since we were all Catholics, I was sur-
prised by the operant connection they made between a material object and
invisible beings as if a protective mechanism exists there. How could these
young, educated, and committed Christians have such strong feelings
toward ghosts, and at the same time such an approach to material objects?
Can we really believe that religious objects hold protective power? How
far can a Christian be still afraid of ghosts and rely “magically” on objects
to keep them at bay? Should their relation to Christ not free them from
these concerns?
Fourteen years later, it is a similar set of questions that this book aims
to investigate. When Chinese people turn to the religion of the cross, what
difference does it make? How are the ways in which they perceive and con-
nect things together maintained or transformed? What are the cultural
continuities and discontinuities implied by a turn to Christianity? These
questions not solely aim to enquire who is acting and how, but to also shift
our attention beyond specific social actors in order to wonder “what is
 1 STUDYING CHINESE CHRISTIANITY 3

acting?” What is it about Christianity that pushes Christians to act and

inter-act this way?

1.1   Dialoguing with the Anthropology

of Religion and Anthropology of Christianity

These questions are not new for anthropologists. Indeed, they have gener-
ated a rich anthropological literature that explores the turn to Christianity
and its cultural implications (Hefner 1993; Cannell 2006; Keane 2007;
Robbins 2007). In this section, I briefly introduce some of this literature
and the ways in which it approaches the cultural continuities and disconti-
nuities induced by the religion of the cross in order not to provide an
exhaustive review but to better situate how this book intends to contrib-
ute to this conversation.
A major part of the research on the relationship between Christianity
and cultural change takes roots in studies on African churches. Seminal
investigations explored the relationship between Christianity and “tradi-
tional religions” in regard to the question of Africanization (Comaroff
1985; Meyer 2004). In an intellectual context interested in the question
of modernity, some early anthropologists insisted on the modernizing
rupture brought by the religion of the cross and foreign missionaries to
African societies because Christianity was characterized, for example, as a
religion of transcendence (Evens and Peacock 1990; Gluckman 1964;
Fortes 1970). Soon enough, other studies highlighted the continuities
between traditional African religions and Christianity, downplaying the
transformative and disruptive power of the new religion and pointing to
the importance of other broader socio-political changes (Horton 1971;
Vail 1989; Peel 2000). For instance, Jean Comaroff has studied how the
Barolong Boo Ratshidi, an ethnic group of the South Africa-Botswana,
have struggled over 150 years to construct an order of Christian symbols
and practices through which they can act upon the forces that surround
them. Comparing pre-colonial body rituals and contemporary ones found
in the local churches of Zion, Comaroff theorizes “the role of the Tshidi
as determined, yet determining, in their own history; as human beings
who, in their everyday production of goods and meanings, acquiesce yet
protest, reproduce yet seek to transform their predicament” (Comaroff
1985: 1). In her approach, Christianity is conceived as a lingua franca
4 M. CHAMBON

between colonizers and colonized, a malleable tool to reconstruct a sense

of history and identity which encapsulates both dominance and resistance.
Subsequently, new forms of Pentecostal churches and of transnational
born-again movements in Africa and elsewhere across the world led the
research to further question previous assumptions that opposed moder-
nity and tradition, and local and global religions (Corten and Marshall
2001; Englund and Leach 2000). An influential contribution to these
conversations on continuities and discontinuities has been made by Joel
Robbins through his ethnographic description of the moral dilemma
encountered by a tiny ethnic group in Papua New Guinea, the Urapmin
(Robbins 2004). Since the 1970s, they have embraced a form of
Pentecostalism and constantly deployed efforts in confessions and sin-­
removal rituals. And yet, they remain deeply and painfully convinced that
they are sinners. For Robbins, this manifests how the Urapmin juxtapose
two contradictory cultural logics, a traditional moral system and a Christian
one. In the tensions between a Urapmin social life, where one has to assert
himself in acts of will, and a particular “Christian moral system” condemn-
ing desires, jealousies, and envy, Urapmin are doomed to perceive them-
selves as sinful (Robbins 2004: 248). In this model, Robbins portrays
Christianity as a cultural system of moral values in discontinuity with the
traditional Urapmin culture. In later works, though, Robbins embraced a
more pluralistic view, but still insists on its disruptive power because “many
kinds of Christianity stress radical change” (Robbins 2007: 5).
At the same moment, but moving in the opposite direction, Fenella
Cannell et al. explored multiples forms of Christianity in various places to
present how this religion is first and foremost in continuity with the cul-
tural milieu in which it grows. “Christianity is not an arbitrary construct,
but that it is a historically complex one” (Cannell 2006: 7). For Cannell,
since the core of Christianity lies in paradoxical teaching about incarnation
and redemption, it provides room for each society and time period to
develop its own interpretations and social forms of it. By exploring types
of personhood, ideas of religious power, kinship, or ritual practices across
various churches, those scholars illustrate how the religion of the cross is
marked by all types of continuities with non-Christian cultures. For those
researchers, Christianity is first and foremost “a changeable phenomenon”
(Cannell 2006: 25), and eventually “a tool to assert and maintain cultural
stability”(Marshall 2016: 4).
Clearly, social scientists have developed several ways of approaching,
evaluating, and theorizing the continuities and discontinuities that
 1 STUDYING CHINESE CHRISTIANITY 5

Christianity may bring into a cultural system. Still, the field remains deeply
influenced by the Western and Protestant world in which it has emerged
(Robbins 2007). Most conversations have evolved around a few concepts
central to a certain Protestant imaginary. Notions of rupture, sincerity, and
interiority have been repeatedly discussed, and little attention has been
paid to non-Protestant communities and their distinctive imaginaries
(Hann 2014; Brown and Feener 2017).
Consequently, it is in relation with these particular debates but within
the specific historic-cultural context of China that scholars studying
Chinese Christians have forged their own conversations. Several historians
argue that the initial moral, social, and political disruption brought by
Christianity into China has been, in the long run, accustomed to the
Chinese religious landscape (Menegon 2009; Xi 2010). By contrast,
Henrietta Harrison claims that Chinese Catholicism has followed the
opposite path (2013). She argues that forms of Italian piety initially intro-
duced to northern China were extremely similar to Chinese popular reli-
gion. But then, Chinese Catholics have worked over the centuries to make
their religion increasingly distinct. In a similar way, social scientists suggest
that the current appeal of Protestantism in China is fueled by popular
opposition to the authoritarian and communist regime and by a disillusion
toward the communist ideology (Yang 2012; Vala 2018; Madsen 2000;
Kang 2016). However, Cao Nanlai shows how the influential Wenzhou
boss Christians are actively supporting the neo-liberal values inscribed
within the economic model promoted by the post-reform Chinese state
(2011). Indeed, Wenzhou Christians develop an “indigenized Chinese
Christianity” which provides “a form of non-market morality that serves
to effectively legitimate Wenzhou’s pre-modern household economy in
the context of market modernity” (Cao 2013: 85). Therefore, they should
not be regarded as dissidents or antagonistic toward the state, or even with
their broader religious milieu, but in continuity with the new socio-eco-
nomic order of the country.
In these quests to evaluate change and discontinuity, one may notice
that there is a fundamental problem with the references used to theorize
it. What is the paramount criterion that one utilizes—more or less explic-
itly—to approach the messiness of Christianity within a cultural milieu?
Some prioritize the relation to the construction of the individual self as a
moral subject, while others focus on power relations and political econ-
omy. Some insist on transcendence, while others favor social relationships
such as gender and kinship issues. Some rely on the supposedly distinctive
6 M. CHAMBON

features linked to a rural or an urban environment, while others prefer to

focus on theological traditions. But which kind of criteria do we prioritize
in our scholarly informed understanding of Christianity? And which kinds
of assumptions about “religion” and “social science” do we apply to elab-
orate our evaluations?
This book joins conversions on the continuities and discontinuities
brought by Christianity in order to question the models we deploy in
theorizing its unity and diversity. More specifically, I propose to look at
Chinese Christians who live their religious commitment in a society rela-
tively foreign to Christianity, not only to discuss whether their religious
turn is a cultural and social rupture, but first and foremost to critically
rethink the ways anthropology conceptualizes the Christian phenomenon.
I am interested in considering how Chinese Christians and their various
churches produce categories and standards that enable them to position
themselves as Christ’s disciples. What is Christianity about for them? And
in light of the variety of their beliefs, rituals, and institutions, how can we
revisit and reformulate an anthropological understanding of Christianity
that does not fall into narrow essentialism, nor a contextual relativism,
both of which failing to honor the tremendous variations and yet stable
resilience of the Christian phenomenon?

1.2   Theoretical Issues

and Methodological Approach

To address these questions, this book returns to what my puzzling Hong

Kong ghost experience invites; that is, investigating how Chinese Christians
relate to the power of material objects. I draw on a tradition in anthropol-
ogy where the roles of objects in relation to people are carefully scruti-
nized to unfold the ways in which a cultural system operates (Mauss 1954;
Malinowski 1922). Yet, material objects are not just raw matter free from
cultural construction. The relations people establish with them are also
dynamically informed and oriented by their cultural milieu (Houtman and
Meyer 2012). To investigate how Christians relate to their material
belongings, and unfold from there what Christianity implies for them, one
needs to pay attention to the tensions surrounding the relation to and the
understanding of material entities (Keane 2007; Engelke 2007).
To explore these dynamic relations and the ways in which there are
constructed, reinforced, challenged and eventually redefined, I apply
 1 STUDYING CHINESE CHRISTIANITY 7

Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a methodological tool to investigate

how material objects participate in the collective emergence of Chinese
Christianity, and how their participation redefines them in return. At the
foundation of ANT, there is a push inspired by modern science and tech-
nology studies and encouraged by Michel Callon, Bruno Latour, and John
Law (Callon 1991; Latour 1988; Law and Hassard 1999) to carefully
describe the ways in which humans rely on material objects either in their
everyday life or in their way of building knowledge and social cohesion
(Sayes 2017). This pragmatic approach invites the social sciences to ques-
tion predefined ontological distinctions between humans and material
objects that place agency on the side of humans only (Latour 2005).
According to ANT advocates, such assumptions abusively separate the
social sciences from natural sciences and precondition our way of under-
standing social phenomena. By revisiting the model of natural sciences,
ANT argues that nothing exists outside of the constantly evolving rela-
tionships in which it is embedded (Latour 2000). Things work in relation
to each other, and through the possibilities brought by interrelations,
therefore “when we speak of actor we should always add the large network
of attachments making it act” (Latour 2005: 218). Since human and non-­
human entities are deeply intertwined and interdependent, they all act
upon one another, each crucial in the functioning of social networks
(Latour 1988).
At the core of ANT, also known as “sociology of translation” and “soci-
ology of association,” there is a fundamental debate about agency and
relation (Sayes 2014). How do things rely on each other? What does it
take to make links and changes? ANT does not aim to simply describe a
network but to explore how things get bound together, sharing “in-­
formation” to the point of putting things in form. It investigates the dis-
tributed agency of networks of humans and non-humans, which can
include things, animals and deities. Therefore, to explore social phenom-
ena, we need to increase (1) the number of actors we recognize and
acknowledge, and (2) the types of agency they deploy. Since objects have
hundreds of ways of exerting an influence on humans and causing them to
act, agency should not be essentialized outside of the material and rela-
tional conditions from which it emerges. In other words, an action does
not occur along a unilineal chain of causality rooted exclusively in the
human mind or in the needs of a social group but relies on countless inter-
mediaries that form and constrain this collective action. Recognizing the
tremendous variety of actors and “actants” (natural objects striking back
8 M. CHAMBON

on humans) allows us to avoid essentializing “social forces,” and to con-

stantly question the ways in which things make each other do something
(Latour 2000). This new empiricism pushes to trace the circulation of
“the social” among human actors and non-human actants in their ways of
creating a state of affairs, the collective work of a social web.
Nonetheless, ANT has generated various reinterpretations and theo-
retical hybridizations since its early theorization (Farías 2014; Krarup and
Blok 2011), as well as passionate critiques (Bloor 1999; Shapin 1988;
Turner 2015). Despite various research directions growing out of ANT
and its increasing diversification, it is regularly attacked for its tendency for
ontological deconstructivism where nothing exists prior social construc-
tion (Elder-Vass 2015; Whittle and Spicer 2008); or for creating a flat
ontology where all members of a network share a rather similar agency and
potentiality of being (Amsterdamska 1990); or for reducing material
objects to their acting potentialities only (Harman 2011).
Aware of these debates, this book applies ANT as a methodological
tool to approach Chinese Christians and reflect on their model of
Christianity. Despite the large influence of ANT across the social sciences,
its contribution to religious studies remains rather limited (Ingman and
Lassander 2012). Nonetheless, I suggest elaborating on ANT by paying
special attention to the ways in which Chinese Christians rely on a variety
of material objects and relationships in order to uncover how things work
together. The point is not to find out “why” Chinese people become
Christian, but “how” they constantly do so. For example, when inter-
viewed Christians mention that they go to church “because of” Jesus, I do
not translate this as something about belief or moral system only, but ask
them to explain further how so. How do they go to church? How did they
find out that Jesus asks that of them? What provides Jesus with this poten-
tiality? Which path has allowed Jesus to let them do that, and which medi-
ations are involved? The issue behind these questions is to trace back the
lines of causalities, and the various actors involved in them, that unfold
how their religious commitment is made possible.
ANT invites us to scrutinize the ways in which human actors—in our
case Chinese Christians—create their own network, and how they distin-
guish it from other forms of association. “It is always by comparison with
other competing ties that any tie is emphasized. So for every group to be
defined, a list of anti-groups is set up as well” (Latour 2005: 32).
Consequently, this book provides extensive observations and discussions
on alternative local religious traditions to compare and contrast the ways
 1 STUDYING CHINESE CHRISTIANITY 9

Chinese Christians create relationships and operate through them. By

applying ANT, I aim to highlight which relations and actors are con-
structed and reinforced among Christian actors, but also which ones are
challenged and sidelined. Therefore, this study also works at providing a
methodology in comparing and contrasting religious traditions.
While ANT allows us to explore the multiple ties that Chinese Christians
favor, construct, reinforce, transform, and display, their materially informed
ties also reveal that a central entity is constantly recalled, produced, and
revealed at the core of their network. Indeed, Chinese Christians and their
objects constantly refer to Jesus Christ or yesu jidu (耶稣基督) in Chinese.
To describe further this central and unifying actor, and the ways in which
it participates in the continual creation of the network, I borrow the
notion of the “face” from the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. In
his philosophical work, highly concerned with ethics and subjectivity,
one’s existence and knowledge are first and foremost based on the relation
to the intriguing face of the other, and not on some kind of abstract uni-
versal being embedded in one’s self (Levinas 1969, 1985).
For Levinas, the encounter with the face of the other, a questioning
face characterized by ultimate alterity and proximity, is the key phenome-
non—epiphany—that reveals to one his own existence. One comes into
existence by encountering a face. Furthermore, the particularity and con-
creteness of the face exceed the idea of the otherness. This gentle revela-
tion of otherness in the vulnerable face of the other simultaneously brings
an ambiguous question—Are you going to kill me?—and a demand for
responsibility that awakens the subject to his moral potency. The otherness
of the face disturbs the self, opening a structural interval questioning the
existence of the “I.” For Levinas, while the face emerges naked, given,
defenseless, never reducible to an inert portrait or a discursive speech, it
exceeds all descriptions, open to infinity and totality while remaining first
and foremost a vulnerable entity supplicating in front of the nascent sub-
ject. Ultimately, Levinas argues that this face-to-face encounter gives
direction and orientation to one’s subjective being-in-the-world because
although the face does not formally speak, it still requires that one respond
to him and make ethical judgments. His emergence is an order, a calling,
ordering one’s own existence without determining in advance the choice
he is called to make.
In this philosophical approach, the face of the other, being the key to
the epiphany of the subject but still not directly acting upon him, displays
a paradoxical agency. While the face forbids to kill but calls for
10 M. CHAMBON

responsibility, it does not act through direct constraint or interference

(Levinas 1985: 86). The face is fundamentally in tension between its given
passivity and what it generates. The face, in its absolute anteriority to
action, projects a passive agency made of expression and potency without
being a mechanical correlation (Gibbs 1992).
Ultimately, Making Christ Present in China borrows from these two
theoretical developments, ANT and the notion of the questioning face, to
explore the dynamic interplay between Christian continuities and changes,
unity and diversity. ANT allows us to investigate how Chinese Christians
build and transform their relationships to all kinds of entities while relying
on material mediations. Yet, ANT uncovers that Christians and their
objects give specific importance to one peculiar entity, the Christian God,
which stands in continuity with their material and social world but through
different ways of being present. The notion of the engaging face, there-
fore, allows us to further describe how the central but intriguing presence
of their God orients, transforms and re-hierarchizes the ways in which
relationships are redefined and adjusted within the Christian network.
Levinas’ concept points to the radical change in agency introduced in the
network and enlightens the converging dynamic of the responding but
heterogeneous network. Thus, it helps to challenge the potential flat
ontology associated with ANT. I argue that only the tension between the
two theoretical inputs allows us to approach Christianity as a whole and
understand what it specifically entails for those who connect to it.
By looking at the kind of heterogeneous networks elaborated among
Chinese Christians, this book offers a model of the religion of the cross
that one may call interactionist. In contrast to intellectualist models which
ultimately locate the Christian faith in the mind of people (Luhrmann
2012; Keane 2007), and in contrast to social models which tends to
approach Christianity through social relationships only (Comaroff and
Comaroff 1991; Cao 2011; Inouye 2019), this study turns the focus on
interactions between people and things in order to carefully investigate the
type of network they collectively design. By looking at how Chinese
Christians rely on objects, and at how material artifacts allow certain kinds
of possibilities, I propose to map out the types of actors and agency that
inform their networks and characterize their religious enterprise. Thus,
the constant dialogue that human subjects and material objects nourish
provides the substrate through which this book offers an alternative model
theorizing the unity and diversity of Christianity.
 1 STUDYING CHINESE CHRISTIANITY 11

1.3   Being an Ethnographer Among

Chinese Christians
To better situate this study, I must say a few words about myself. As I
mentioned in the opening, I was for several years a seminarian for a
Catholic diocese located in central France. This diocese offers eighteen
centuries of Christian heritage including major historical events, architec-
tural accomplishments, and intellectual figures (Blaise Pascal, Teilhard de
Chardin). Although I received the full training to become a priest of this
specific territory, I finally decided to remain a layperson and serve the
Church through an academic involvement. Since then, my research inter-
ests have crystallized around the interplay of “faith” and “culture.”
To further explored the encounter between the religion of the cross
and cultural systems, I decided to return to China, a territory that Taoist
traditions name “the continent of the gods” (shenzhou 神州) (Lagerwey
2019). Indeed, the Chinese world provides a unique opportunity to revisit
the religion of the cross through an interreligious lens and within a rather
non-Christian culture. Because of the Christian syntheses it increasingly
exports abroad, the Middle Kingdom is also gaining a growing influence
on World Christianity and calls for further investigation. Therefore, I did
a Master’s in Theology at the Catholic University of Paris exploring how
Taiwanese Catholics deal with the Chinese belief in ghosts (Chambon
2012). While I conducted fieldwork in Taiwan, I also engaged with
Presbyterian and Pentecostal churches to enlarge my experience of
“Chinese Christianity.” Since my initial seminary training, I have been
taught to reflect on Christianity from the perspective of its various forms
(Orthodox, Eastern, Protestant, etc.), the socio-political context within
which they evolve, and their relative demographic and historical impor-
tance. Therefore, studying the question of ghosts brought me to engage
further with other Christian denominations, but also with social sciences
and the scholarly informed study of Chinese religions—either in the field
or in France (Chambon 2017). This book is the extension of this journey.
Since the number of Christians is purportedly growing in mainland China,
mostly within Protestant circles, it appeared interesting to me to explore
further this specific portion of Chinese Christianity and see what it may say
about the encounter between the Christian faith and the Chinese world.
Finally, conducting research among Protestants in mainland China, besides
being politically less sensitive, appeared as an opportunity to renew
12 M. CHAMBON

approaches regarding the situation of Catholics in the People’s Republic

of China.
Inscribing myself in the anthropological tradition of “doing fieldwork,”
this book builds on an ethnographic approach and participant observation
in one place. Thanks to Dennis Balcombe, an American Pentecostal mis-
sionary, and to various contacts I had in Hong Kong and Taiwan, I was
able to visit numerous Protestant churches across different parts of main-
land China before selecting a site of research. During this selection pro-
cess, I looked for a suitable and safe place where I could spend at least a
full year of immersion as a participant-observer. To do so, I had to find a
Protestant Church capable of welcoming me despite a certain number of
obstacles. To understand some of those difficulties, we need to introduce
the broader situation of the religion of the cross in contemporary China.

Christianity in the Continent of the Gods

The situation of Christianity in China is both complex and sensitive.
During the last five centuries, the Chinese state has shown recurrent
antagonism against its Christian subjects (Menegon 2009). Either through
imperial banishment after the rites controversy (17th and 18th centuries)
or during the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901), Chinese Christians have
struggled to find their place in the Chinese society (Goossaert and Palmer
2011). Then, when the Chinese Communist Party took control of the
country, Christianity was portrayed as a “foreign religion” used by Western
imperialism to colonize China. Like other religious practices, it was entirely
banished from the public sphere during the Cultural Revolution
(1966–1976) (Lee 2009). Since the early 1980s, though, it publicly reap-
peared and demonstrated a real dynamism that has attracted the interest of
many observers (Bays 2012; Chan and Hunter 1993).
In the 1990s–2000s, most analysts emphasized the division between
legally registered Christian communities and those refusing any collabora-
tion with the Chinese Communist state (Lee 2007). Chinese Protestants
were depicted as being either part of “house churches” (unregistered
ones) or part of “Three-Self Patriotic Churches” (the registered ones tak-
ing their name from the three requirements for autonomy that the state
tries to implement upon religious groups) (Yang 2006; Cheng 2003;
 1 STUDYING CHINESE CHRISTIANITY 13

Wright and Zimmerman-Liu 2013; Homer 2010).1 Catholics were

depicted as being either part of the “underground church” (the unregis-
tered one claiming full obedience to the Pope) or part of the “patriotic
church” (the registered one officially autonomous from papal supervision)
(Madsen 1998, 2003; Bays 2012).
This Christian panorama fueled endless debates. Chinese Christians
offered recurrent opportunities to various entities such as anti-­government
Chinese Christians, various American media outlets, missionary societies,
some Western powers, and so on, to denounce how the authoritarian
Chinese state does not meet the “modern” standards of what a state
should implement in terms of religious freedom and the rule of law (Yang
2012; Homer 2010; Dulk and Carpenter 2014). Unlike Christians in
Turkey or India, who attract far less attention, reports about the situation
of Chinese Christians regularly appear in the American public sphere
through books and articles that indicate a continuous—and somehow
ambiguous—Western interest in Chinese Christians (Bays 2009).
By the end of the 2010s, the situation has evolved and more and more
observers agree that Chinese Christians cannot be classified through a
simple binary opposition between registered and unregistered communi-
ties (Bays 2012). On the one hand, the theological and political diversifi-
cation of Chinese Christians precludes any typology from clearly emerging.
Simultaneously, the ongoing urbanization of China deeply impacts the
ways in which house churches reshape themselves (Kang 2016). Therefore,
Chinese Christian networks remain more complex and diverse than any
classification. On the other hand, the religious policy of the state greatly
varies from place to place and therefore diversifies, even more, the ways in
which local communities respond and structure themselves (Dulk and
Carpenter 2014; Goh et al. 2016; Chan 2015). Analysts are left without a
clear map to portray Chinese Christians and their complex relation to the
Communist state (Vala 2018).
Although there is no reliable data to evaluate the number of Chinese
Christians, broad assessments consider that there are about 15 million
Catholics and from 50–100 million Protestants in China (Bays 2012; Yang
2012). What is now certain is that the number of Chinese Christians has
increased since the 1970s. Indeed, all religious movements are thriving

1
The Three-Self Patriotic Movement was initially a Protestant ideology about mission and
was recycled by the Chinese Communist Party in 1951 to require self-governance, self-sup-
port, and self-propagation from all Protestant churches in China.
14 M. CHAMBON

and some researchers even refer to a “religious fever” as a way to describe

religiosity in China (Johnson 2017). Yet, Christian movements—like all
religious organizations—remain a question for the Communist state
(Goossaert and Palmer 2011). The level of control and regulation that
they are facing remains highly variable from place to place, depending on
local history, individual officials, and economic factors. In the rise of Xi
Jinping, however, the religious policy of the Chinese state has become
tighter. Christians are now more careful, enjoying less autonomy and dis-
playing more self-censorship than a few years ago (Yang 2017). In this
context, studying Chinese Christians is not without risks, either for the
researcher or for the Christians who support him.
This broader situation, therefore, weighs on the ways in which social
scientists approach Chinese Christians. In fact, the scholarly study of
Chinese Christianity remains under constant risk of becoming a political
means to criticize the Chinese state, a growing challenger to the American
hegemony (Yang 2012; Wielander 2013; Vala 2018; Ownby 2011; Ashiwa
and Wank 2009). It is meaningful that a large proportion of the research
focuses on political questions and on unregistered “house churches” only
(Cheng 2003; Yang 2005; Homer 2010; Koesel 2013; Wright and
Zimmerman-Liu 2013; Kang 2016; Ma 2019). It leaves aside many other
issues and neglects the Three-Self Patriotic Churches, perceived as some-
how “corrupted” by the state (Wang 2016; Byler 2014). Anthropologists
like Cao Nanlai and a few others have tried to move away from these pit-
falls by offering new insights on Protestantism in Wenzhou (Cao 2011;
Chen and Huang 2004). Also, the recent academic interest in the growth
of Pentecostalism has encouraged researchers to enlarge the scope of their
investigation (Yang et al. 2017). Thus, it is in this academically ambigu-
ous, religiously complex, and politically sensitive situation that my research
took place.
In order to select a field site, during the summers of 2013 and 2014, I
visited around fifty Protestant communities in various parts of China with
several criteria in mind. I was looking for somewhere not entirely rural nor
urban. I did not want my research becoming too specified by its environ-
ment and the farmer’s son that I remain was skeptical about any kind of
ontological division between urban and rural churches (Huang 2014; Cao
2011; Kang 2016). Also, it was necessary to select a place where Mandarin
was the practical language among local people (putonghua 普通话). After
learning Cantonese and Mandarin, I was not capable of learning a new
Chinese dialect. Then, it was important to me to find a large enough
 1 STUDYING CHINESE CHRISTIANITY 15

Fig. 1.1 Nanping

church able to reflect a certain level of complexity and diversity. Finally, my

last criterion was to find a Protestant Church able to welcome me in a safe
way for them, and for me in the long run. Even though I met with many
large Protestant churches willing to share their experience, many were
anxious about the idea of having a foreign researcher among them, joining
almost all church events for more than an entire year. After two summers
of inquiry, only one place appeared suitable, and this was in Fujian
(Fig. 1.1).

Doing Fieldwork at the Gospel Church in Nanping

Pastor Thomas Sun from the Gospel Church of Nanping was the most
confident and welcoming Christian leader I met during my preliminary
research.2 Soon, I understood that my doctoral research would occur in
Nanping, a place that met all my research criteria. Located at the junction
of rural inner China and the urban coast, the city and its surrounding dis-
trict, Yanping District, comprise around 504,500 inhabitants according to
the 2016 official census.3 Almost 300,000 of them live in the city itself.
Unlike in most parts of Fujian, Nanping people speak Mandarin as their
primary language, and local dialects dominate only the rural parts of the

2
Throughout this book, I keep the real names of my informants whenever they are identi-
fiable public figures, such as Pastor Sun. The rest of the time, I use pseudonyms to respect
my informants’ privacy.
3
See 2016 official census: http://www.ypzf.gov.cn/cms/cms/html/npsypqrmzf/
2017-04-01/655911812.html visited on October 1, 2019.
16 M. CHAMBON

territory. This linguistic particularity—quite different from the rest of the

Fujian province and already mentioned by missionaries in the 1920s—
comes from the fact that Nanping was the crossroad of inner and coastal
China. This hub was a place of encounter and trade where people needed
a common language.
Local Christianity, like other forms of religious life, is lively, diverse, and
visible. Indeed, before my long-term fieldwork, Christians in Fujian
Province were enjoying a fairly peaceful and favorable socio-political situ-
ation. With the exception of painful conflicts involving underground
Catholics in the north of the province, which includes the Nanping
Prefecture (also named Minbei Prefecture), the provincial government
displayed a more nuanced and pragmatic approach toward Christian
churches than in some other parts of China (Chan 2012).
With the blessing of Pastor Sun and an official affiliation with the
Department of Anthropology at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou,
Guangdong Province, I moved to the People’s Republic of China from
January 2015 to May 2016, spending most of my time in Nanping. During
my stay there, I lived in one of the elderly homes of the Gospel Church, in
an apartment initially designed for the staff. This location, besides being
comfortable, allowed me to observe and participate in a wide range of
church activities that this book describes. During the first part of my field-
work, I also tried to immerse myself as much as I could within the extended
local network of the Gospel Church while adjusting to life in Nanping.
Since the Gospel Church reaches around 4000 people across the Yanping
District and interconnects various local churches, it generates countless
activities, programs, and sub-groups that kept me quite busy.
While I was getting more familiar with the Gospel Church, I also started
to engage with other Nanping churches and joined more and more of
their services and activities. I needed to connect with all local Christian
communities I could in order to develop a deeper and wider understand-
ing of the Christian phenomenon in Nanping. Besides Christians, I spent
a fair amount of time to explore other religious practices and networks
that enrich the religious life of most Nanping people. In view of the local
religious dynamism, this exploration was an endless journey. Although I
always remained focused on the Gospel Church and other Christian com-
munities, I constantly enlarged the scope of my observations, engaging in
more and more comparative approaches. This book comes as an echo to
these incessant dialogues between different religious practices of Nanping
people and their multiple traditions.
Another random document with
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 Lane was speaking in answer to some remarks just brought to a
conclusion by the valet with the neat, respectable appearance and
the low, deferential voice.
“And so you think of shifting. Well, it’s no use staying in a place
that doesn’t square with your ideas of comfort.”
“That’s just it, Mr. Cox.” The detective had assumed this name for
the purposes of the temporary friendship. “I knew after the first
fortnight it wouldn’t suit me at all. But I’ve stayed nine months for
reasons. It doesn’t do for a man with my record in good families to
go chopping and changing every five minutes, it gets him a bad
name.”
Lane signified his approval of this politic conduct, and noting that
the valet’s glass was empty, hastened to have it refilled, a
proceeding to which Mr. Simmons offered no objection. With his
shrewd knowledge of men, his habit of drawing conclusions from
small but infallible signs, the detective inclined to the belief that his
new friend was an acquisitive kind of fellow, a man who would take
all he could get and give as little as he could in return.
“Your health, Mr. Cox.” The man lifted his glass and looked
appreciatively at his host, while he gave utterance to further thoughts
of his master.
“I don’t say Sir George isn’t all right in the matter of family,
although of course we know they’ve come down through his old
father playing ducks and drakes with the property. But the truth is, a
poor place doesn’t suit a man at my time of life, forty-five last
birthday. Wages are nothing; it’s the pickings that enable a fellow to
put by and start a snug little place of his own to keep him in his old
age.”
A poor place, an absence of “pickings”! This confirmed the
banker’s report. As a matter of fact, Lane did not want the banker’s
report confirmed, he could rely on it as far as it went. He was on a
much deeper game, and with that object he had sought the society
of Mr. Simmons in the hope of finding him the sort of person who
would help him to play it.
 “Now, that’s rather funny,” he said in assumed surprise. “I’ve heard
a good deal about Sir George, one way and another, and I was
always under the impression he was a wealthy man, had come into a
large fortune.”
Mr. Simmons gave a contemptuous sniff. “If he came into a large
fortune, and I think I’ve heard something of that tale myself, it was
before my time. I’ll bet he hasn’t got any of it left now. I tell you what
he does, Mr. Cox, he bluffs a lot, he makes out to most of his
acquaintances that he’s got tons of money, and, of course, several of
them take his word. I’ve heard him putting the pot on often myself
when he didn’t know I was listening.”
An eavesdropper, this quiet, respectable-looking man! If he had
the smaller infirmities, he would be pretty certain to have the bigger
ones. Such was the thought of the shrewd detective.
“But I’ve always heard he bets high, Mr. Simmons.”
The valet, warmed by his potations, gave another sniff of
contempt. “Not he; that’s where he bluffs again. I know it for a fact. I
overheard him one morning put a fiver on a horse over the
telephone; it won at six to one. That same evening, when I was
bringing in the whisky, he told a pal of his right before me he’d laid a
hundred. Of course, he didn’t know I’d heard him in the morning.
That’s how he got the reputation of wealth, by bluffing, gassing and
lying.”
It was clear that Simmons hated his employer with the deadly
rancour of a man deprived of his legitimate “pickings,” for he
proceeded to further disclosures, not at all redounding to Sir
George’s credit.
He emitted a sardonic chuckle. “I overheard a little conversation
between him and that precious nephew of his one day, and I soon
put the pieces together, though I wasn’t in at the beginning of it. It
seems Sir George had changed a cheque for thirty pounds at one of
his clubs, in the expectation of some money coming in the next day.
Well, the money hadn’t come in, and he was in a frightful stew. ‘If I
can’t pay-in the first thing to-morrow morning, I’m done, and I shall
be had up before the Committee. The bank won’t let me overdraw
five pounds; the manager refused me a week ago when I begged the
favour of him.’ That’s your wealthy man. Bah! I’m a poor chap
enough, but I believe I could buy him up if he was for sale.”
Lane shrugged his shoulders. “If you weren’t in the know you’d
hardly credit it, would you, Mr. Simmons?”
“By George, he was in a stew. I remember his words to his
nephew; he almost screamed them; ‘Archie, old boy, you must stand
by me, you must get me that money this afternoon, or it’s all up with
me.’ Queer sort of thing to say, wasn’t it, Mr. Cox.”
“Very queer,” agreed the detective. “Did you hear young Brookes’s
reply? I take it you were listening outside the door.”
“I was,” admitted Mr. Simmons, quite unabashed. It was evident he
was a very curious sort of person, and spent a considerable portion
of his time eavesdropping. “Young Archie was talking extremely low,
and I couldn’t catch very distinctly what he said. But there was a bit
of an argument between the two. I thought I caught the words, ‘it’s so
soon after the other,’ and then Sir George almost screamed out
again, ‘I can’t help that; I tell you it’s got to be done.’”
“An interesting couple,” remarked the supposed Mr. Cox. He was
quite sure now of the kind of man Mr. Simmons was. Should he
approach him at once or cultivate him a little further before he did
so? Being a cautious man and disinclined to do things in a hurry, he
chose the waiting policy. So he asked the valet when he would be
likely to meet him there again, at the same time proffering another
whisky.
“To tell the truth, Mr. Cox, I shall be here for the next three
evenings. A bit of luck has come my way. Sir George is going into
the country to-morrow morning, and won’t be back till Friday. He isn’t
taking me with him, and I don’t know where’s he’s going. No letters
or telegrams are to be forwarded.”
“A bit queer he doesn’t want his valet with him, isn’t it?”
“I think so,” replied Mr. Simmons with a knowing expression. “A
very dark horse is our respected and wealthy baronet! If he’s going
to a swagger country house he takes me fast enough. But it’s not the
first time by half a dozen that he’s sloped off like this by himself. He’s
after something that he doesn’t want anybody else to know about,
you bet. A very queer fish, Mr. Cox.”
So Sir George would be away for a few days; that would just suit
Lane’s plans. He must open the campaign with the not too
scrupulous valet as soon as possible, but not to-night.
“Look out for me to-morrow evening then, Mr. Simmons. I like this
little place, it’s very snug and quiet, and I have very much enjoyed
my chats with you. Good-night. Sure you won’t have another before
you go?” But the acquisitive valet had that delicacy in him that he
declined further hospitality; he had already done himself very well at
his companion’s expense, and was perhaps fearful of trespassing
too greatly on his good nature.
The next evening they were again in their quiet corner, and Lane
opened the ball a few minutes after they had exchanged greetings.
“Now, Mr. Simmons, I am going to be quite frank with you. I didn’t
come here by accident. I got to know—it doesn’t matter how—that
you were Sir George’s valet, that you frequented this place. If you
are so inclined, you are just the man to give me help in a little job I’m
after. I’m a detective by profession; here is my card with my name
and address. If you have any doubts about the truth of my assertion,
I will take you down to Shaftesbury Avenue now and convince you by
ocular proof.”
Mr. Simmons scrutinized the card carefully; he was a shrewd and
wary fellow, and not one to be easily taken in.
“To tell you the truth, Mr. Cox, or rather Mr. Lane, to give you your
true name, I had a sort of suspicion all along that you were a ’tec and
wanted something out of me. I’ve never seen you in this place
before, and you’ve given me a lot of drinks and wouldn’t take one
back. Now, sir, if I may speak without offence, a man who meets a
stranger doesn’t do all the paying without a motive. Well, sir, let’s
come to business. What can I do for you—of course, with safety to
myself, and if I do it, what do I get out of it?”
 A business-like fellow, a bit of a rogue, in a noncriminal way no
doubt! But it was always easier to deal with a rogue than a fool in
matters of this kind. There would be no beating about the bush.
Lane briefly explained what he wanted. He wished to examine Sir
George’s pass-book; if that was not available, his paying-in slips. Did
the valet know where he kept them?
Yes, Mr. Simmons did know. Sir George was in the habit of getting
his book every month from the bank, and after examining it, returning
it in about three weeks to be made up for the following month. He
kept it with his cheque-book and the paying-in slips in one of the top
drawers of his writing-table. Sometimes the drawer was locked, more
frequently not, for in some matters where the vast majority of men
were cautious, the mysterious baronet was singularly careless. At
the present moment Mr. Simmons did not know whether it was
locked or not, but it would probably be locked before he went away.
“That doesn’t present much difficulty,” said Lane with a calmness
that took away his companion’s breath. “If it is not a very complicated
lock, and it’s not likely to be if the writing-table is an ordinary sort of
one; I can easily pick it.”
Mr. Simmons pursed his lips in perplexity. “But that’s burglary, isn’t
it, and spells quod if were caught?”
The detective smiled. “’Pon my soul, I’m not very sure. We have to
do this sort of thing sometimes, but we don’t run any very great risk,
because the people we do it to have so much to conceal that they
daren’t take action. I’m not proposing to take away anything, you
know.”
But Mr. Simmons evidently did not like the prospect. He was
perfectly unscrupulous in a small way, would not have objected to
certain petty pilferings sanctioned by custom and tradition amongst
certain members of his profession. One of his grievances against the
baronet was that he counted his cigars and his bottles of wine; there
was never a chance of getting a free smoke or drink.
But this looked a bigger thing than he expected. He thought very
deeply for a few seconds, while Lane cursed him in his heart for a
faint-hearted rogue, who let his inclination wait upon his fears.
“Look here,” he said at length. “We haven’t said anything yet about
terms. If I do it—and mind you, I’m not very gone on it—what’s the
price? It ought to be a good one.”
Lane named a liberal sum, and, truth to tell, it did make the valet’s
mouth water, but he was a greedy fellow, and he was determined to
try for a bit more. So for a few minutes they haggled till a
compromise was effected. But still Simmons was torn in two
between his greed and his fear of detection and would not say
positively that he would assist.
The detective was a man of resource, he saw that he must adopt
different tactics with this cowardly rogue and relieve him from his
apprehensions.
“Look here, my friend, I can see you are in a blue funk; you are
afraid of what I am certain won’t happen, that Sir George will return
unexpectedly, walk into his flat and find me at work. Of course, he
has got his key.”
Mr. Simmons wanted to get that money in his possession, and his
greed sharpened his wits.
“Yes, he has got his key; he always carries it with him. But I could
put the inside latch up, making some plausible excuse for doing so,
and while I was going to the door you could put things straight and
escape into my room, hide there and be smuggled out as soon as
we got a chance. What do you think of that?”
“Quite ingenious,” was the approving answer. No doubt the fellow
would have developed a very pretty talent in the domain of
“crookdom” if he had been properly trained by a qualified professor.
“Quite ingenious,” repeated Lane; “but I think I can manage it in a
way that will avert any danger from yourself if accidents should
happen. Now here is my plan. I will explain it as briefly as possible.
You won’t appear in the matter at all.”
Mr. Simmons heaved a sigh of relief. He looked at his new friend
with an air of admiration; he felt he was in the presence of a master
mind.
The detective lucidly explained his scheme. “You meet me at the
bottom of the street to-morrow evening at seven o’clock, and hand
me the key of the flat. You come on here, I join you in five minutes;
we have met here as usual for a chat. I’m in a hurry; I stay with you a
quarter of an hour, then hasten off on the plea of having to attend to
some urgent business. I go on to the flat, take care that nobody is
about, put the key in the door, enter Sir George’s room and do my
business. You will sit here for an hour with your pals, then you will
leave and meet me, say, in the buffet of Victoria Station, when I will
hand you back your key.”
“It sounds all right,” said Mr. Simmons, still speaking dubiously.
“But what happens if Sir George ‘cops’ you, and you can’t meet me
at Victoria?”
“I’m coming to that, although there’s not the smallest probability
that Sir George will ‘cop’ me. If he does, I think I shall have to say
something to him that will prevent him from giving me in charge. But
whatever happens, all that can be proved against you is indiscretion
—mind you, rather unpardonable in a man of your years, but still
only indiscretion. So you tumble to it now?”
“I think I’m getting an inkling; but you might explain it fully. You are
a clever chap, and you make things seem so clear.”
“You met a very plausible stranger in a certain pub. Give the name
to show good faith. Your friends can prove they have seen us talking
together. You got rather pals; he stood you a lot of drinks. On this
particular evening he gave you a little too much, perhaps put
something in it to make you stupid, and while you were losing your
wits, picked your pocket of the key and rushed round to the flat,
leaving you to recover yourself. So remember, after I leave you to-
morrow evening, to be a little foolish in your manner for half an hour
or so.”
“Excellent,” cried Mr. Simmons in genuine admiration. “By jingo,
you are a knock-out; you think of everything. To-morrow evening, just
at the bottom of the street; afterwards here. Now, what do you think
of something on account—say a ‘tenner.’”
“I don’t mind a ‘fiver,’” was Lane’s answer; he was not disposed to
trust the valet too much. If he got as much as ten pounds safely into
his hands he might back out at the last moment and leave the
detective in the lurch. “I won’t give it you before all these people; you
never know who’s looking. We’ll leave here in about half an hour,
and I’ll hand it over when we’re safe out of the street.”
About eleven o’clock the next morning he received a further
surprise in connection with this most puzzling case. A note was sent
round to him from Mr. Morrice:
“Dear Sir,—Another development! On opening my safe
this morning I found that the packet of papers abstracted
in the first robbery has been put back, also the bundle of
Swiss notes. I suppose the thief found they were of no use
to him and obligingly returned them. Come round as soon
as you can. I shall be in all day.
“Yours faithfully,
“Rupert Morrice.”
 CHAPTER XIII
AUNT AND “NEPHEW”!

T HERE was not very much to discuss when Lane did get to
Deanery Street. Certain inexplicable things had happened for
which, at present, there seemed no accounting. Somebody seemed
to be doing what he liked with this wonderful safe, abstracting and
replacing property when he chose, without hindrance, in a house full
of people. One novel feature on this occasion was the total absence
of finger-prints. They had been carefully rubbed out.
Morrice seemed greatly perturbed, as was quite natural under the
circumstances; but Lane noticed that there was a considerable
difference in his demeanour on this occasion from the last, when he
had insisted, with some display of temper, upon the certainty of
Croxton’s guilt.
Lane had been a little nettled at the time—at the cocksure attitude
of this hard-headed man of business who, however great his
success in his own particular line, did not seem to possess a very
great logical faculty, and could not forbear putting a rather pertinent
question.
“Are you quite as sure as you were, Mr. Morrice, that your late
secretary is the thief?”
Morrice shrugged his shoulders. It was easy to see that he was in
a subdued mood; there was no fear of further explosions to-day. “I
admit there are complications in this infernal business that perplex
one extremely. But I don’t think that, so far, I can see any particular
reasons for altering my previous opinion. You can’t get over the
insurmountable fact that Croxton and myself were the only two
persons who knew the secret of the mechanism. He may not be the
actual purloiner, I admit; he may have passed on his knowledge to a
confederate with whom he shares the spoil.”
 Lane let fall only a few words in answer to these observations, but
they were very significant ones.
“Don’t forget, Mr. Morrice, that you lost the original key or
memorandum, as you call it, of the workings.”
But the financier was an obstinate person, as many strong-minded
men are. When he had once formed a theory, he did not give it up in
a hurry.
“Only mislaid, I expect,” he answered, but it was easy to see his
tone was not quite so confident as usual. “I shouldn’t be surprised if
it turned up at any moment.”
But Lane hastened to put on a damper at once. “And if it did, I
don’t see that it would help you so very much. You couldn’t possibly
know in what other hands it might have been during the interval.”
The financier had no wish to engage in further argument with this
calm, self-possessed man, whose merciless logic made such short
work of anything in the nature of a positive opinion.
“It doesn’t seem to matter much what I think,” he cried with a slight
return of his old petulance. “And perhaps it would be wiser to admit
at once that I don’t possess your capacity for weighing facts and
drawing deductions from them. I should like to know one thing, Mr.
Lane—does what has just happened convey any new suggestions to
you, throw any fresh light upon the situation?”
He did not gauge the detective as accurately as one might have
expected from a man with his wide knowledge of human nature, or
he would never have put this question in the hope of getting a
satisfactory answer. Whatever theory or theories might be forming in
his mind, and there could be no doubt that it was working at full-
speed all the time, and readjusting itself to every fresh turn of events,
Lane would make no disclosures till he judged the time was ripe.
He shook his head with great gravity: “We work very slowly, Mr.
Morrice; we come to conclusions with equal slowness, in our
profession. I dare say to a keen business man like yourself who plan
your coups with lightning rapidity, make and clinch a deal of many
thousands in a few minutes, we must seem dull, plodding fellows.
But you must remember that most of our time we are working
underground where very little light penetrates. What has happened
to-day may suggest a new line of thought to me, but I have not yet
had time to digest its significance. It will want a great deal of patient
thinking over before it bears any fruit.”
With this the rather impatient financier had to be content. He was
beginning to have a certain respect for the firm, self-reliant attitude of
the detective, who did not appear to be in the least overawed by
Morrice’s wealth and position. And he had a shrewd idea that, in his
own particular and less remunerative line, Lane had a brain not
greatly inferior to his own. They worked in different directions with a
vast disproportion between the rewards attending their efforts.
Morrice had the instinct of moneymaking, Lane the instinct of
unravelling criminal mysteries. Perhaps in the bare fact of intellectual
equipment there was not much to choose between them.
As the detective passed through the hall on his way out, he found
Rosabelle waiting for him. She was of course cognizant of what had
happened, and on Lane’s arrival her first idea had been to be
present at the interview between him and her uncle. But on second
thoughts she had decided to speak to the detective alone.
She still loved her uncle very dearly; she must always do that for
all the kindness and affection he had lavished on her. But it was
impossible there should not be a little secret antagonism between
the two in the circumstances. He appeared to be firmly convinced of
Richard Croxton’s guilt, she as firmly convinced of his innocence.
She was a fair-minded girl, and she was prepared to make every
allowance for Morrice’s attitude, but as there did not seem any
common ground on which they could meet when the matter was
under discussion, she judged it best to speak of it to him as little as
possible.
She put to him practically the same question that her uncle had
done: “Well, Mr. Lane, what do you think of the new development?
Does it reveal anything to you?”
That wary and cautious person shook his head. He had taken a
great liking to Rosabelle. Her staunch devotion to her lover had
appealed to the finer chords of his nature; for although he never
allowed sentiment to sway him unduly, he was by no means destitute
of that human quality. But not even for Rosabelle’s sake would he
depart greatly from that cautious attitude which was habitual to him.
“It is a strange development, Miss Sheldon, but I have not yet had
time to think it over. I am going back to my office to do so, and the
thinking over will take some time.”
Her charming face fell. “You cannot see in it even the remotest
thing that tells in favour of Richard Croxton?”
The eyes were very sad, the voice was very pleading. Should he
give the unhappy girl one little crumb of comfort? For a little time he
hesitated, then compassion got the better of prudence and of his iron
reserve.
“I will just say this, Miss Sheldon, and no more. It is becoming a
less impossible task to clear him than I at first thought; but please
don’t be too jubilant—there are still very formidable difficulties in the
way.”
A radiant light came into the charming face, although her eyes
filled with tears and she clasped her hands nervously together. Her
voice trembled as she spoke.
“You have put new life into me with those words, Mr. Lane. I know
you quite well by now, and I am sure that, coming from you, they
mean much.”
Poor Lane began to think he had made a bit of a mistake in
departing from his usual caution, in being moved by the pleading
attitude of the girl into giving her this small crumb of comfort. That
was the worst of women—they were so impressionable and
optimistic, or pessimistic, as the case might be. Their moods were
never equable: they were either at the height of elation or in the
depth of despair.
“Please do not let me excite false hopes, Miss Sheldon,” he
hastened to say. “Remember, I have told you there are great
difficulties in the way. Until we are on much firmer ground I would
beg that you do not repeat my words to Mr. Croxton.”
 But she did not give any answer to this request, and he knew that
for all practical purposes he might have held his peace. Of course,
she would post off to her lover as soon as she could get away, and
infect him with her own optimism. Well, he was loath to confide too
much in the most hard-headed and sceptical man; he had only
himself to blame for having been over-confidential with a member of
the emotional sex.
Later on in the day Rosabelle carried out his prediction; she made
up her mind to pay a visit to Petersham, to hearten her lover with a
recital of those words which she was convinced meant so much,
coming from a man of Lane’s cautious temperament.
Morrice had left the house shortly after the detective’s departure.
The two women would have lunched alone together but for the
unexpected arrival of young Archie Brookes, who was pressed to
stay for the meal.
Rosabelle was very sensitive to impressions, and, for so young a
girl, particularly observant. It struck her that during the progress of
the luncheon the young man seemed rather distrait and preoccupied.
Two or three times he answered at random, and once Mrs. Morrice
called out to him sharply, “I don’t think you are listening to what I am
saying, Archie.” At that rebuke he seemed to pull himself together,
but the girl was sure his thoughts were far away from her aunt’s light
chatter.
Presently aunt and nephew, to call him what Rosabelle, ignorant of
Lane’s discoveries, still believed him to be, went up to Mrs. Morrice’s
boudoir. There was nothing unusual in this; it was a frequent custom
when the young man called or lunched at the house.
Rosabelle thought she would start for Petersham at once, making
her journey there as usual in a taxi. She always had plenty of money
for her needs, as Morrice supplemented her own little modest
income of a hundred a year with a very generous allowance.
As she went upstairs to her own room to make ready for her
expedition, she passed her aunt’s boudoir, the door of which stood
slightly ajar. It was a rather unusual circumstance, for when the two
were closeted together Rosabelle had noticed that it was nearly
always closed. This time it had evidently been forgotten by both.
She was not a girl who in ordinary circumstances would have
condescended to listen at doors, but she could not help hearing
words that startled and puzzled her.
Archie was speaking in a voice of great excitement and emotion.
“But if I don’t have it I am ruined. It means that I cannot face the
disgrace—there is only one alternative——” His voice had by now
sunk almost to a whisper, and she could not catch what followed.
She stood rooted to the spot. The young man’s preoccupied
manner at the lunch-table was accounted for. He was in some deep
trouble from which he was begging Mrs. Morrice to rescue him.
She heard her aunt reply in tones that were half angry, half tearful.
“How many times have you threatened me with that, and I have
yielded. I have half ruined myself for you; it cannot go on much
longer.”
Suddenly she felt that she was listening to a conversation not
intended for her ears, and resolutely turned away and went to her
own room. For the present she would say nothing, not even to Dick,
of what she had heard by the purest accident. But she thought over it
all the way on the long drive to Petersham. Was there yet another
tragedy going on in the Morrice household, and was her placid-
looking, dignified aunt the centre of it?
And what was that alternative which Archie Brookes had described
in a whisper she could not catch? Had he threatened to destroy
himself if his request were not acceded to? And what did Mrs.
Morrice mean by saying she had half ruined herself for him?
 CHAPTER XIV
AN ALARMING INTERRUPTION

P UNCTUALLY at five o’clock on the appointed evening Lane and

Simmons met. On the face of the valet was a triumphant
expression.
“We needn’t try this new scheme of yours, Mr. Cox—Mr. Lane, I
should say. I’ll come back to the flat with you; it’s all plain sailing. The
drawer is unlocked. The bank-book isn’t there, and he’s taken the
cheque-book with him; but he’s left the paying-in slips all right. You
said these would do.”
Not by any means for the first time was Gideon Lane impressed by
the inconsistencies of the human temperament. Here was a shrewd,
clever man like Sir George Clayton-Brookes, one who counted his
cigars and wine-bottles to prevent his valet helping himself to a
surreptitious smoke or drink! Surely he would be equally meticulous
in other and more important matters. And yet, he had gone away
leaving that drawer unlocked, its contents open to the prying eyes of
Simmons.
The detective himself would never have done such a thing, and he
was quite sure he had less to conceal than this mysterious baronet
who passed himself off as a wealthy man, while all the evidence that
had been gathered pointed to the contrary. Perhaps Sir George, like
many other persons of considerable mentality—for there was little
doubt that he had brains of a certain order—entertained a great
contempt for the intelligence of his inferiors, and thought that if
Simmons did pry about in his absence he would not be much the
wiser for his researches.
The baronet resided on the first floor of a block of service flats in
the Victoria direction, finding this mode of living very suitable to him.
Simmons slept out, coming early in the morning and leaving at all
sorts of times dependent upon his master’s convenience. In the
course of his communications to Lane, the detective had gathered
that, in many respects, it was a very easy place. Sir George did a
great deal for himself, so that the valet’s duties were not onerous,
and he had a lot of spare time. If his master went out for the evening,
and this happened on most evenings of the week, Simmons was
never required to await his return. His meals he occasionally took in
the restaurant attached to the flats, but more frequently he lunched
and dined at his clubs or the private houses of his acquaintances.
Breakfast, a Continental one of coffee and rolls, was served in his
own apartments.
“As a matter of fact, he doesn’t want a valet at all,” was Simmons’s
rather contemptuous comment on his master’s habits. “And if he
consulted his own inclinations, I don’t believe he would keep one, for
he’s that dirt mean that I know he begrudges me my wages every
time he pays me. What can you expect of a man who sells all his old
clothes to a second-hand dealer? Not a waistcoat or a pair of old
boots have I had since I was in his service. He’s obliged to keep one
to carry out his policy of ‘swank.’ He knows his friends would think it
deuced queer for one in his position to be without a man.”
It formed a handsome suite of apartments, with its two elegantly
furnished sitting-rooms, large airy bedroom and capacious bathroom.
Still, one would only put it down as the abode of a man comfortably
well-off, not one supposed to be actually wealthy.
“Here we are!” exclaimed Mr. Simmons, as he ushered the
detective into the smaller of the two sitting-rooms, which was used
as a smoking-room and study in which the owner wrote his letters
and attended to his business, whatever it was.
“And here’s the writing-table, and that top one on the left is the
drawer in which you want to look. I’m glad it’s turned out like this, Mr.
Lane; I feel a good bit easier in my mind. Nobody can call this
burglary, eh? No harm in taking a peep at things that be under your
hand, is there?”
By which it will be seen that Mr. Simmons, though perhaps not a
high authority on morals, had certain well-defined ethics of his own.
It was not stealing to abstract a cigar from the store of a master who
did not resort to the discreditable meanness of putting out a dozen in
a box at a time so that he would easily miss one; it was not wrong to
help yourself as often as you could to a glass of good wine; it was
not against the moral code to listen outside doors, or to read letters
and papers to which you could procure easy access through your
employer’s carelessness. But in some matters the valet was a purist,
more, it is to be feared, from terror of the legal consequences than
from the revolt of a tender conscience. He did draw the line at
picking locks or steaming open a letter.
Growing quite daring in his comfortable belief that they were
engaged in a comparatively innocent operation, he pulled the drawer
open with his own hands and pointed to the pale-coloured little book
which contained the paying-in slips.
“There it is; goes back for two months. Is that enough for you? I
hope so, for I don’t know where he puts the old ones; locks them up
in his safe, I expect.”
Lane intimated it would be quite sufficient for his purposes, and
got to work at once. He took careful notice of the exact position of
the little book which was lying at a slight angle on the top of a pile of
papers, so that he could replace it in the same position. Sir George,
careless as he appeared to be in some matters, might have a good
memory in certain things, and might notice on his return that the
contents of the drawer had been disturbed. Still, that did not matter
very much if he did suspect; his suspicions would naturally fall upon
Simmons as the guilty party, and, truth to tell, the detective was not
very much concerned about that individual. He had proved a useful
and adaptable instrument, but Lane could not help despising him for
a smooth-faced hypocrite and venal rogue.
It cannot be said that he enjoyed the situation very much himself.
He had taken this course because he could think of no other which
would serve his ends, and one has often to resort to dirty means in a
good cause. But even if Sir George was the scoundrel he was
beginning to believe him to be, the action he was now taking
savoured just a little too much of hitting below the belt to square with
his stolid English notions of fair play. If it had been possible he would
have preferred to come out more in the open. Still, all is fair in war;
he had comforted himself with that reflection many times in the
course of his active career.
It was not a very long task, for there seemed to be but few
payments, and those mostly for small sums. The name of Willis
occurred frequently in the margin of the counterfoils, evidently this
was the person who had paid the amounts to Sir George.
“Do you know anything of a man named Willis?” asked Lane of the
valet who was watching his proceedings with great interest. He was
a very curious fellow, and he would dearly have liked to know the
particular object of the present researches.
“Yes, that’s his bookmaker,” was the answer of Simmons.
Mr. Willis’s cheques were for trifling sums which seemed to prove
that the baronet did not bet so high as was generally supposed, as
he pretended to his friends, according to the valet’s account. But, of
course, it was not proof positive. Like most men who follow racing,
he would win one day and lose the next, so that at the end of the
week there might be a very trifling balance against him or in his
favour.
What, of course, Lane was looking for was an entry a little
subsequent to the first big burglary, when the diamonds and the big
bundle of foreign notes had been stolen. There was certainly the
biggest entry he had seen in the book about a week after the actual
date of the robbery, and against it was marked the word “cash.” But it
was only for seventy-five pounds.
Now the diamonds alone, according to Lane’s information, had
cost Mr. Morrice no less than eight thousand pounds, as the stones
were big ones, perfect in matching and colour. Granted that they had
been realized by the thief or thieves at a tremendous depreciation,
they should at least have brought in a fourth of that sum. It was
hardly possible that Sir George, even if he were a member of a gang
who shared the spoil, would engage in such a dangerous operation
for the sake of the paltry sum of seventy-five pounds.
 Including that item the total payings-in for the two months were a
little over four hundred pounds. Assuming that this was a fair
average, the baronet’s income would be only slightly more than two
thousand a year. It was a small amount for a man who went about in
good society, and according to Simmons, spent about five hundred a
year at least on his clothes, and entertained his friends lavishly to
lunches and dinners at the most expensive restaurants.
“That’s what riles me about him,” observed the valet when he had
answered Lane’s direct questions on these points. “A month ago he
bought a new car that must have cost him every penny of a
thousand pounds. He thinks nothing of paying fifty pounds for a
dinner to his pals, I know that from one or two waiters who are
friends of mine. And yet he’s so devilish mean in some things, he
sells his old clothes, he begrudges me a cigar or a glass of wine, and
while he’s blueing all this money, his bank won’t let him overdraw five
pounds, according to his own statement which I overheard him make
to his nephew.”
“On the evidence of this book, one would say he was,
comparatively speaking, a poor man, that is to say a poor man for
his position,” said the detective in a musing tone, as he restored the
little pale-coloured book to its original position, and shut the drawer.
“And yet he spends any amount of money on clothes and
entertaining, and can plank down a thousand pounds for a new car.
You said yourself he was a poor man, pretending to be rich.”
“He seems to be wealthy one day and hard-up the next, now one
comes to go into it a bit closer,” remarked Mr. Simmons. “I expect I
was guided a bit too much to my opinion by the fact of his being in
such a blue funk about that cheque he had changed at the club.”
“That little book is a blind, Simmons; no wonder he is careless
about that drawer; he knows that whatever you can see there will not
disclose the true state of his affairs. And you say he bought that car
about a month ago.”
“Of course, he may owe for it, for anything we know to the
contrary,” was the valet’s comment, “only just paid a bit down and is
trying to raise the wind somewhere now. Perhaps that’s the object of
his present journey.”
The detective was thinking deeply, it was a puzzling situation. He
had been in hopes that he might have got some absolute results
from his visit to Sir George’s flat and the inspection of his paying-in
book. The outcome was quite negative. The one suspicious thing
was the purchase of that car, and as Simmons had truly remarked, it
might have been bought on credit. Still, supposing it had been, Sir
George must have expected to lay his hands upon a thousand
pounds pretty soon.
The drawer contained nothing to help him. He cast his eyes
longingly at the safe which stood in the corner of the room, a big
one, made by one of the best-known makers in London. He would
very much have liked to have a peep into that safe, it might have
yielded up some secrets. But he was not an expert safe-breaker like
Mr. “Tubby” Thomas now languishing in Dartmoor, or the hitherto
undiscovered thief who had practised his art in the big, old-fashioned
house in Deanery Street.
He lost himself in speculation for some little time, almost oblivious
of the valet’s presence. That gentleman thought it time that attention
should be paid to his own immediate affairs, and coughed gently to
raise Lane from his reverie.
“Haven’t you found what you wanted?” he asked, with an anxious
look in his cunning little eyes.
“To tell the truth, I haven’t. For all practical purposes I might as
well not have taken on the job.”
The anxious look grew more intense. Mr. Simmons had small faith
in his fellow-men. Perhaps the detective might try to get out of his
bargain, if not altogether, to a very considerable extent.
He spoke in an ingratiating tone. “Not my fault, is it? I’ve done all
you wanted, haven’t I?”
“Oh, certainly, there is no blame attached to you.” Lane
understood what he was driving at and extracted from a letter-case
several five-pound notes, the balance of the sum which he had