Tales of Chinatown

IV

ZANI CHADA, THE EURASIAN

“I can't help thinking, Chief Inspector,” said the officer in charge at Limehouse Station, “that you take unnecessary risks.”

“Can't you?” said Kerry, tilting his bowler farther forward and staring truculently at the speaker.

“No, I can't. Since you cleaned up the dope gang down here you've been a marked man. These murders in the Chinatown area, of which this one to-night makes the third, have got some kind of big influence behind them. Yet you wander about in the fog without even a gun in your pocket.”

“I don't believe in guns,” rapped Kerry. “My bare hands are good enough for any yellow smart in this area. And if they give out I can kick like a mule.”

The other laughed, shaking his head.

“It's silly, all the same,” he persisted. “The man who did the job out there in the fog to-night might have knifed you or shot you long before you could have got here.”

“He might,” snapped Kerry, “but he didn't.”

Yet, remembering his wife, who would be waiting for him in the cosy sitting-room he knew a sudden pang. Perhaps he did take unnecessary chances. Others had said so. Hard upon the thought came the memory of his boy, and of the telephone message which the episodes of the night had prevented him from sending.

He remembered, too, something which his fearless nature had prompted him to forget: he remembered how, just as he had arisen from beside the body of the murdered man, oblique eyes had regarded him swiftly out of the fog. He had lashed out with a boxer's instinct, but his knuckles had encountered nothing but empty air. No sound had come to tell him that the thing had not been an illusion. Only, once again, as he groped his way through the shuttered streets of Chinatown and the silence of the yellow mist, something had prompted him to turn; and again he had detected the glint of oblique eyes, and faintly had discerned the form of one who followed him.

Kerry chewed viciously, then:

“I think I'll 'phone the wife,” he said abruptly. “She'll be expecting me.”

Almost before he had finished speaking the 'phone bell rang, and a few moments later:

“Someone to speak to you, Chief Inspector,” cried the officer in charge.

“Ah!” exclaimed Kerry, his fierce eyes lighting up. “That will be from home.”

“I don't think so,” was the reply. “But see who it is.”

“Hello!” he called.

He was answered by an unfamiliar voice, a voice which had a queer, guttural intonation. It was the sort of voice he had learned to loathe.

“Is that Chief Inspector Kerry?”

“Yes,” he snapped.

“May I take it that what I have to say will be treated in confidence?”

“Certainly not.”

“Think again, Chief Inspector,” the voice continued. “You are a man within sight of the ambition of years, and although you may be unaware of the fact, you stand upon the edge of a disaster. I appreciate your sense of duty and respect it. But there are times when diplomacy is a more potent weapon than force.”

Kerry, listening, became aware that the speaker was a man of cultured intellect. He wondered greatly, but:

“My time is valuable,” he said rapidly. “Come to the point. What do you want and who are you?”

“One moment, Chief Inspector. An opportunity to make your fortune without interfering with your career has come in your way. You have obtained possession of what you believe to be a clue to a murder.”

The voice ceased, and Kerry remaining silent, immediately continued:

“Knowing your personal character, I doubt if you have communicated the fact of your possessing this evidence to anyone else. I suggest, in your own interests, that before doing so you interview me.”

Kerry thought rapidly, and then:

“I don't say you're right,” he rapped back. “But if I come to see you, I shall leave a sealed statement in possession of the officer in charge here.”

“To this I have no objection,” the guttural voice replied, “but I beg of you to bring the evidence with you.”

“I'm not to be bought,” warned Kerry. “Don't think it and don't suggest it, or when I get to you I'll break you in half.”

His red moustache positively bristled, and he clutched the receiver so tightly that it quivered against his ear.

“You mistake me,” replied the speaker. “My name is Zani Chada. You know where I live. I shall not detain you more than five minutes if you will do me the honour of calling upon me.”

Kerry chewed furiously for ten momentous seconds, then:

“I'll come!” he said.

He replaced the receiver on the hook, and, walking across to the charge desk, took an official form and a pen. On the back of the form he scribbled rapidly, watched with curiosity by the officer in charge.

“Give me an envelope,” he directed.

An envelope was found and handed to him. He placed the paper in the envelope, gummed down the lapel, and addressed it in large, bold writing to the Assistant Commissioner of the Criminal Investigation Department, who was his chief. Finally:

“I'm going out,” he explained.

“After what I've said?”

“After what you've said. I'm going out. If I don't come back or don't telephone within the next hour, you will know what to do with this.”

The Limehouse official stared perplexedly.

“But meanwhile,” he protested, “what steps am I to take about the murder? Durham will be back with the body at any moment now, and you say you've got a clue to the murderer.”

“I have,” said Kerry, “but I'm going to get definite evidence. Do nothing until you hear from me.”

“Very good,” answered the other, and Kerry, tucking his malacca cane under his arm, strode out into the fog.

His knowledge of the Limehouse area was extensive and peculiar, so that twenty minutes later, having made only one mistake in the darkness, he was pressing an electric bell set beside a door which alone broke the expanse of a long and dreary brick wall, lining a street which neither by day nor night would have seemed inviting to the casual visitor.

The door was opened by a Chinaman wearing national dress, revealing a small, square lobby, warmly lighted and furnished Orientally. Kerry stepped in briskly.

“I want to see Mr. Zani Chada. Tell him I am here. Chief Inspector Kerry is my name.”

The Chinaman bowed, crossed the lobby, and, drawing some curtains aside, walked up four carpeted stairs and disappeared into a short passage revealed by the raising of the tapestry. As he did so Kerry stared about him curiously.

He had never before entered the mystery house of Zani Chada, nor had he personally encountered the Eurasian, reputed to be a millionaire, but who chose, for some obscure reason, to make his abode in this old rambling building, once a country mansion, which to-day was closely invested by dockland and the narrow alleys of Chinatown. It was curiously still in the lobby, and, as he determined, curiously Eastern. He was conscious of a sense of exhilaration. That Zani Chada controlled powerful influences, he knew well. But, reviewing the precautions which he had taken, Kerry determined that the trump card was in his possession.

The Chinese servant descended the stairs again and intimated that the visitor should follow him. Kerry, carrying his hat and cane, mounted the stairs, walked along the carpeted passage, and was ushered into a queer, low room furnished as a library.

It was lined with shelves containing strange-looking books, none of which appeared to be English. Upon the top of the shelves were grotesque figures of gods, pieces of Chinese pottery and other Oriental ornaments. Arms there were in the room, and rich carpets, carven furniture, and an air of luxury peculiarly exotic. Furthermore, he detected a faint smell of opium from which fact he divined that Zani Chada was addicted to the national vice of China.

Seated before a long narrow table was the notorious Eurasian. The table contained a number of strange and unfamiliar objects, as well as a small rack of books. An opium pipe rested in a porcelain bowl.

Zani Chada, wearing a blue robe, sat in a cushioned chair, staring toward the Chief Inspector. With one slender yellow hand he brushed his untidy gray hair. His long magnetic eyes were half closed.

“Good evening, Chief Inspector Kerry,” he said. “Won't you be seated?”

“Thanks, I'm not staying. I can hear what you've got to say standing.”

The long eyes grew a little more narrow—the only change of expression that Zani Chada allowed himself.

“As you wish. I have no occasion to detain you long.”

In that queer, perfumed room, with the suggestion of something sinister underlying its exotic luxury, arose a kind of astral clash as the powerful personality of the Eurasian came in contact with that of Kerry. In a sense it was a contest of rapier and battle-axe; an insidious but powerful will enlisted against the bulldog force of the Chief Inspector.

Still through half-closed eyes Zani Chada watched his visitor, who stood, feet apart and chin thrust forward aggressively, staring with wide open, fierce blue eyes at the other.

“I'm going to say one thing,” declared Kerry, snapping out the words in a manner little short of ferocious. He laid his hat and cane upon a chair and took a step in the direction of the narrow, laden table. “Make me any kind of offer to buy back the evidence you think I've got, and I'll bash your face as flat as a frying-pan.”

The yellow hands of Zani Chada clutched the metal knobs which ornamented the arms of the chair in which he was seated. The long eyes now presented the appearance of being entirely closed; otherwise he remained immovable.

Following a short, portentous silence:

“How grossly you misunderstood me, Chief Inspector,” Chada replied, speaking very softly. “You are shortly to be promoted to a post which no one is better fitted to occupy. You enjoy great domestic happiness, and you possess a son in whom you repose great hopes. In this respect Chief Inspector, I resemble you.”

Kerry's nostrils were widely dilated, but he did not speak.

“You see,” continued the Eurasian, “I know many things about you. Indeed, I have watched your career with interest. Now, to be brief, a great scandal may be averted and a woman's reputation preserved if you and I, as men of the world, can succeed in understanding one another.”

“I don't want to understand you,” said Kerry bluntly. “But you've said enough already to justify me in blowing this whistle.” He drew a police whistle from his overcoat pocket. “This house is being watched.”

“I am aware of the fact,” murmured Zani Chada.

“There are two people in it I want for two different reasons. If you say much more there may be three.”

Chada raised his hand slowly.

“Put back your whistle, Chief Inspector.”

There was a curious restraint in the Eurasian's manner which Kerry distrusted, but for which at the time he was at a loss to account. Then suddenly he determined that the man was waiting for something, listening for some sound. As if to confirm this reasoning, just at that moment a sound indeed broke the silence of the room.

Somewhere far away in the distance of the big house a gong was beaten three times softly. Kerry's fierce glance searched the face of Zani Chada, but it remained mask-like, immovable. Yet that this had been a signal of some kind the Chief Inspector did not doubt, and:

“You can't trick me,” he said fiercely. “No one can leave this house without my knowledge, and because of what happened out there in the fog my hands are untied.”

He took up his hat and cane from the chair.

“I'm going to search the premises,” he declared.

Zani Chada stood up slowly.

“Chief Inspector,” he said, “I advise you to do nothing until you have consulted your wife.”

“Consulted my wife?” snapped Kerry. “What the devil do you mean?”

“I mean that any steps you may take now can only lead to disaster for many, and in your own case to great sorrow.”

Kerry took a step forward, two steps, then paused. He was considering certain words which the Eurasian had spoken. Without fearing the man in the physical sense, he was not fool enough to underestimate his potentialities for evil and his power to strike darkly.

“Act as you please,” added Zani Chada, speaking even more softly. “But I have not advised lightly. I will receive you, Chief Inspector, at any hour of the night you care to return. By to-morrow, if you wish, you may be independent of everybody.”

Kerry clenched his fists.

“And great sorrow may be spared to others,” concluded the Eurasian.

Kerry's teeth snapped together audibly; then, putting on his hat, he turned and walked straight to the door.

V

DAN KERRY, JUNIOR

Dan Kerry, junior, was humorously like his father, except that he was larger-boned and promised to grow into a much bigger man. His hair was uncompromisingly red, and grew in such irregular fashion that the comb was not made which could subdue it. He had the wide-open, fighting blue eyes of the Chief Inspector, and when he smiled the presence of two broken teeth lent him a very pugilistic appearance.

On his advent at the school of which he was now one of the most popular members, he had promptly been christened “Carrots.” To this nickname young Kerry had always taken exception, and he proceeded to display his prejudice on the first day of his arrival with such force and determination that the sobriquet had been withdrawn by tacit consent of every member of the form who hitherto had favoured it.

“I'll take you all on,” the new arrival had declared amidst a silence of stupefaction, “starting with you”—pointing to the biggest boy. “If we don't finish to-day, I'll begin again to-morrow.”

The sheer impudence of the thing had astounded everybody. Young Kerry's treatment of his leading persecutor had produced a salutary change of opinion. Of such kidney was Daniel Kerry, junior; and when, some hours after his father's departure on the night of the murder in the fog, the 'phone bell rang, it was Dan junior, and not his mother, who answered the call.

“Hallo!” said a voice. “Is that Chief Inspector Kerry's house?”

“Yes,” replied Dan.

“It has begun to rain in town,” the voice continued, “Is that the Chief Inspector's son speaking?”

“Yes, I'm Daniel Kerry.”

“Well, my boy, you know the way to New Scotland Yard?”

“Rather.”

“He says will you bring his overall? Do you know where to find it?”

“Yes, yes!” cried Dan excitedly, delighted to be thus made a party to his father's activities.

“Well, get it. Jump on a tram at the Town Hall and bring the overall along here. Your mother will not object, will she?”

“Of course not,” cried Dan. “I'll tell her. Am I to start now?”

“Yes, right away.”

Mrs. Kerry was sewing by the fire in the dining room when her son came in with the news, his blue eyes sparkling excitedly. She nodded her head slowly.

“Ye'll want ye'r Burberry and ye'r thick boots,” she declared, “a muffler, too, and ye'r oldest cap. I think it's madness for ye to go out on such a night, but——”

“Father said I could,” protested the boy.

“He says so, and ye shall go, but I think it madness a' the same.”

However, some ten minutes later young Kerry set out, keenly resenting the woollen muffler which he had been compelled to wear, and secretly determined to remove it before mounting the tram. Across one arm he carried the glistening overall which was the Chief Inspector's constant companion on wet nights abroad. The fog had turned denser, and ten paces from the door of the house took him out of sight of the light streaming from the hallway.

Mary Kerry well knew her husband's theories about coddling boys, but even so could not entirely reconcile herself to the present expedition. However, closing the door, she returned philosophically to her sewing, reflecting that little harm could come to Dan after all, for he was strong, healthy, and intelligent.

On went the boy through the mist, whistling merrily. Not twenty yards from the house a coupe was drawn up, and by the light of one of its lamps a man was consulting a piece of paper on which, presumably, an address was written; for, as the boy approached, the man turned, his collar pulled up about his face, his hat pulled down.

“Hallo!” he called. “Can you please tell me something?”

He spoke with a curious accent, unfamiliar to the boy. “A foreigner of some kind,” young Kerry determined.

“What is it?” he asked, pausing.

“Will you please read and tell me if I am near this place?” the man continued, holding up the paper which he had been scrutinizing.

Dan stepped forward and bent over it. He could not make out the writing, and bent yet more, holding it nearer to the lamp. At which moment some second person neatly pinioned him from behind, a scarf was whipped about his head, and, kicking furiously but otherwise helpless, he felt himself lifted and placed inside the car.

The muffler had been thrown in such fashion about his face as to leave one eye partly free, and as he was lifted he had a momentary glimpse of his captors. With a thrill of real, sickly terror he realized that he was in the hands of Chinamen!

Perhaps telepathically this spasm of fear was conveyed to his father, for it was at about this time that the latter was interviewing Zani Chada, and at about this time that Kerry recognized, underlying the other's words, at once an ill-concealed suspense and a threat. Then, a few minutes later, had come the three strokes of the gong; and again that unreasonable dread had assailed him, perhaps because it signalized the capture of his son, news of which had been immediately telephoned to Limehouse by Zani Chada's orders.

Certain it is that Kerry left the Eurasian's house in a frame of mind which was not familiar to him. He was undecided respecting his next move. A deadly menace underlay Chada's words.

“Consult your wife,” he kept muttering to himself. When the door was opened for him by the Chinese servant, he paused a moment before going out into the fog. There were men on duty at the back and at the front of the house. Should he risk all and raid the place? That Lady Rourke was captive here he no longer doubted. But it was equally certain that no further harm would come to her at the hands of her captors, since she had been traced there and since Zani Chada was well aware of the fact. Of the whereabouts of Lou Chada he could not be certain. If he was in the house, they had him.

The door was closed by the Chinaman, and Kerry stood out in the darkness of the dismal, brick-walled street, feeling something as nearly akin to dejection as was possible in one of his mercurial spirit. Something trickled upon the brim of his hat, and, raising his head, Kerry detected rain upon his upturned face. He breathed a prayer of thankfulness. This would put an end to the fog.

He began to walk along by the high brick wall, but had not proceeded far before a muffled figure arose before him and the light of an electric torch was shone into his face.

“Oh, it's you, Chief Inspector!” came the voice of the watcher.

“It is,” rapped Kerry. “Unless there are tunnels under this old rat-hole, I take it the men on duty can cover all the exits?”

“All the main exits,” was the reply. “But, as you say, it's a strange house, and Zani Chada has a stranger reputation.”

“Do nothing until you hear from me.”

“Very good, Chief Inspector.”

The rain now was definitely conquering the fog, and in half the time which had been occupied by the outward journey Kerry was back again in Limehouse police station. Unconsciously he had been hastening his pace with every stride, urged onward by an unaccountable anxiety, so that finally he almost ran into the office and up to the desk where the telephone stood.

Lifting it, he called his own number and stood tapping his foot, impatiently awaiting the reply. Presently came the voice of the operator: “Have they answered yet?”

“No.”

“I will ring them again.”

Kerry's anxiety became acute, almost unendurable; and when at last, after repeated attempts, no reply could be obtained from his home, he replaced the receiver and leaned for a moment on the desk, shaken with such a storm of apprehension as he had rarely known. He turned to the inspector in charge, and:

“Let me have that envelope I left with you,” he directed. “And have someone 'phone for a taxi; they are to keep on till they get one. Where is Sergeant Durham?”

“At the mortuary.”

“Ah!”

“Any developments, Chief Inspector?”

“Yes. But apart from keeping a close watch upon the house of Zani Chada you are to do nothing until you hear from me again.”

“Very good,” said the inspector. “Are you going to wait for Durham's report?”

“No. Directly the cab arrives I am going to wait for nothing.”

Indeed, he paced up and down the room like a wild beast caged, while call after call was sent to neighbouring cab ranks, for a long time without result. What did it mean, his wife's failure to answer the telephone? It might mean that neither she nor their one servant nor Dan was in the house. And if they were not in the house at this hour of the night, where could they possibly be? This it might mean, or—something worse.

A thousand and one possibilities, hideous, fantastic, appalling, flashed through his mind. He was beginning to learn what Zani Chada had meant when he had said: “I have followed your career with interest.”

At last a taxi was found, and the man instructed over the 'phone to proceed immediately to Limehouse station. He seemed so long in coming that when at last the cab was heard to pause outside, Kerry could not trust himself to speak to the driver, but directed a sergeant to give him the address. He entered silently and closed the door.

A steady drizzle of rain was falling. It had already dispersed the fog, so that he might hope with luck to be home within the hour. As a matter of fact, the man performed the journey in excellent time, but it seemed to his passenger that he could have walked quicker, such was the gnawing anxiety within him and the fear which prompted him to long for wings.

Instructing the cabman to wait, Kerry unlocked the front door and entered. He had noted a light in the dining room window, and entering, he found his wife awaiting him there. She rose as he entered, with horror in her comely face.

“Dan!” she whispered. “Dan! where is ye'r mackintosh?”

“I didn't take it,” he replied, endeavouring to tell himself that his apprehensions had been groundless. “But how was it that you did not answer the telephone?”

“What do ye mean, Dan?” Mary Kerry stared, her eyes growing wider and wider. “The boy answered, Dan. He set out wi' ye'r mackintosh full an hour and a half since.”

“What!”

The truth leaped out at Kerry like an enemy out of ambush.

“Who sent that message?”

“Someone frae the Yard, to tell the boy to bring ye'r mackintosh alone at once. Dan! Dan———”

She advanced, hands outstretched, quivering, but Kerry had leaped out into the narrow hallway. He raised the telephone receiver, listened for a moment, and then jerked it back upon the hook.

“Dead line!” he muttered. “Someone has been at work with a wire-cutter outside the house!”

His wife came out to where he stood, and, clenching his teeth very grimly, he took her in his arms. She was shaking as if palsied.

“Mary dear,” he said, “pray with all your might that I am given strength to do my duty.”

She looked at him with haggard, tearless eyes.

“Tell me the truth: ha' they got my boy?”

His fingers tightened on her shoulders.

“Don't worry,” he said, “and don't ask me to stay to explain. When I come back I'll have Dan with me!”

He trusted himself no further, but, clapping his hat on his head, walked out to the waiting cab.

“Back to Limehouse police station,” he directed rapidly.

“Lor lumme!” muttered the taximan. “Where are you goin' to after that, guv'nor? It's a bit off the map.”

“I'm going to hell!” rapped Kerry, suddenly thrusting his red face very near to that of the speaker. “And you're going to drive me!”

VI

THE KNIGHT ERRANT

Recognizing the superior strength of his captors, young Kerry soon gave up struggling. The thrill of his first real adventure entered into his blood. He remembered that he was the son of his father, and he realized, being a quick-witted lad, that he was in the grip of enemies of his father. The panic which had threatened him when first he had recognized that he was in the hands of Chinese, gave place to a cold rage—a heritage which in later years was to make him a dangerous man.

He lay quite passively in the grasp of someone who held him fast, and learned, by breathing quietly, that the presence of the muffler about his nose and mouth did not greatly inconvenience him. There was some desultory conversation between the two men in the car, but it was carried on in an odd, sibilant language which the boy did not understand, but which he divined to be Chinese. He thought how every other boy in the school would envy him, and the thought was stimulating, nerving. On the very first day of his holidays he was become the central figure of a Chinatown drama.

The last traces of fear fled. His position was uncomfortable and his limbs were cramped, but he resigned himself, with something almost like gladness, and began to look forward to that which lay ahead with a zest and a will to be no passive instrument which might have surprised his captors could they have read the mind of their captive.

The journey seemed almost interminable, but young Kerry suffered it in stoical silence until the car stopped and he was lifted and carried down stone steps into some damp, earthy-smelling place. Some distance was traversed, and then many flights of stairs were mounted, some bare but others carpeted.

Finally he was deposited in a chair, and as he raised his hand to the scarf, which toward the end of the journey had been bound more tightly about his head so as to prevent him from seeing at all, he heard a door closed and locked.

The scarf was quickly removed. And Dan found himself in a low-ceilinged attic having a sloping roof and one shuttered window. A shadeless electric lamp hung from the ceiling. Excepting the cane-seated chair in which he had been deposited and a certain amount of nondescript lumber, the attic was unfurnished. Dan rapidly considered what his father would have done in the circumstances.

“Make sure that the door is locked,” he muttered.

He tried it, and it was locked beyond any shadow of doubt.

“The window.”

Shutters covered it, and these were fastened with a padlock.

He considered this padlock attentively; then, drawing from his pocket one of those wonderful knives which are really miniature tool-chests, he raised from a grove the screw-driver which formed part of its equipment, and with neatness and dispatch unscrewed the staple to which the padlock was attached!

A moment later he had opened the shutters and was looking out into the drizzle of the night.

The room in which he was confined was on the third floor of a dingy, brick-built house; a portion of some other building faced him; down below was a stone-paved courtyard. To the left stood a high wall, and beyond it he obtained a glimpse of other dingy buildings. One lighted window was visible—a square window in the opposite building, from which amber light shone out.

Somewhere in the street beyond was a standard lamp. He could detect the halo which it cast into the misty rain. The glass was very dirty, and young Kerry raised the sash, admitting a draught of damp, cold air into the room. He craned out, looking about him eagerly.

A rainwater-pipe was within reach of his hand on the right of the window and, leaning out still farther, young Kerry saw that it passed beside two other, larger, windows on the floor beneath him. Neither of these showed any light.

Dizzy heights have no terror for healthy youth. The brackets supporting the rain-pipe were a sufficient staircase for the agile Dan, a more slippery prisoner than the famous Baron Trenck; and, discarding his muffler and his Burberry, he climbed out upon the sill and felt with his thick-soled boots for the first of these footholds. Clutching the ledge, he lowered himself and felt for the next.

Then came the moment when he must trust all his weight to the pipe. Clenching his teeth, he risked it, felt for and found the third angle, and then, still clutching the pipe, stood for a moment upon the ledge of the window immediately beneath him. He was curious respecting the lighted window of the neighbouring house; and, twisting about, he bent, peering across—and saw a sight which arrested his progress.

The room within was furnished in a way which made him gasp with astonishment. It was like an Eastern picture, he thought. Her golden hair dishevelled and her hands alternately clenching and unclenching, a woman whom he considered to be most wonderfully dressed was pacing wildly up and down, a look of such horror upon her pale face that Dan's heart seemed to stop beating for a moment!

Here was real trouble of a sort which appealed to all the chivalry in the boy's nature. He considered the window, which was glazed with amber-coloured glass, observed that it was sufficiently open to enable him to slip the fastening and open it entirely could he but reach it. And—yes! —there was a rain-pipe!

Climbing down to the yard, he looked quickly about him, ran across, and climbed up to the lighted window. A moment later he had pushed it widely open.

He was greeted by a stifled cry, but, cautiously transferring his weight from the friendly pipe to the ledge, he got astride of it, one foot in the room. Then, by exercise of a monkey-like agility, he wriggled his head and shoulders within.

“It's all right,” he said softly and reassuringly; “I'm Dan Kerry, son of Chief Inspector Kerry. Can I be of any assistance?”

Her hands clasped convulsively together, the woman stood looking up at him.

“Oh, thank God!” said the captive. “But what are you going to do? Can you get me out?”

“Don't worry,” replied Dan confidently. “Father and I can manage it all right!”

He performed a singular contortion, as a result of which his other leg and foot appeared inside the window. Then, twisting around, he lowered himself and dropped triumphantly upon a cushioned divan. At that moment he would have faced a cage full of man-eating tigers. The spirit of adventure had him in its grip. He stood up, breathing rapidly, his crop of red hair more dishevelled than usual.

Then, before he could stir or utter any protest, the golden-haired princess whom he had come to rescue stooped, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him.

“You darling, brave boy!” she said. “I think you have saved me from madness.”

Young Kerry, more flushed than ever, extricated himself, and:

“You're not out of the mess yet,” he protested. “The only difference is that I'm in it with you!”

“But where is your father?”

“I'm looking for him.”

“What!”

“Oh! he's about somewhere,” Dan assured her confidently.

“But, but——” She was gazing at him wide-eyed, “Didn't he send you here?”

“You bet he didn't,” returned young Kerry. “I came here on my own accord, and when I go you're coming with me. I can't make out how you got here, anyway. Do you know whose house this is?”

“Oh, I do, I do!”

“Whose?”

“It belongs to a man called Chada.”

“Chada? Never heard of him. But I mean, what part of London is it in?”

“Whatever do you mean? It is in Limehouse, I believe. I don't understand. You came here.”

“I didn't,” said young Kerry cheerfully; “I was fetched!”

“By your father?”

“Not on your life. By a couple of Chinks! I'll tell you something.” He raised his twinkling blue eyes. “We are properly up against it. I suppose you couldn't climb down a rain-pipe?”

VII

RETRIBUTION

It was that dark, still, depressing hour of the night, when all life is at its lowest ebb. In the low, strangely perfumed room of books Zani Chada sat before his table, his yellow hands clutching the knobs on his chair arms, his long, inscrutable eyes staring unseeingly before him.

Came a disturbance and the sound of voices, and Lou Chada, his son, stood at the doorway. He still wore his evening clothes, but he no longer looked smart. His glossy black hair was dishevelled, and his handsome, olive face bore a hunted look. Panic was betoken by twitching mouth and fear-bright eyes. He stopped, glaring at his father, and:

“Why are you not gone?” asked the latter sternly. “Do you wish to wreck me as well as yourself?”

“The police have posted a man opposite Kwee's house. I cannot get out that way.”

“There was no one there when the boy was brought in.”

“No, but there is now. Father!” He took a step forward. “I'm trapped. They sha'n't take me. You won't let them take me?”

Zani Chada stirred not a muscle, but:

“To-night,” he said, “your mad passion has brought ruin to both of us. For the sake of a golden doll who is not worth the price of the jewels she wears, you have placed yourself within reach of the hangman.”

“I was mad, I was mad,” groaned the other.

“But I, who was sane, am involved in the consequences,” retorted his father.

“He will be silent at the price of the boy's life.”

“He may be,” returned Zani Chada. “I hate him, but he is a man. Had you escaped, he might have consented to be silent. Once you are arrested, nothing would silence him.”

“If the case is tried it will ruin Pat's reputation.”

“What a pity!” said Zani Chada.

In some distant part of the house a gong was struck three times.

“Go,” commanded his father. “Remain at Kwee's house until I send for you. Let Ah Fang go to the room above and see that the woman is silent. An outcry would ruin our last chance.”

Lou Chada raised his hands, brushing the hair back from his wet forehead, then, staring haggardly at his father, turned and ran from the room.

A minute later Kerry was ushered in by the Chinese servant. The savage face was set like a mask. Without removing his hat, he strode across to the table and bent down so that fierce, wide-open blue eyes stared closely into long, half-closed black ones.

“I've got one thing to say,” explained Kerry huskily. “Whatever the hangman may do to your slimy son, and whatever happens to the little blonde fool he kidnapped, if you've laid a hand on my kid I'll kick you to death, if I follow you round the world to do it.”

Zani Chada made no reply, but his knuckles gleamed, so tightly did he clutch the knobs on the chair arms. Kerry's savagery would have awed any man, even though he had supposed it to be the idle threat of a passionate man. But Zani Chada knew all men, and he knew this one. When Daniel Kerry declared that in given circumstances he would kick Zani Chada to death, he did not mean that he would shoot him, strangle him, or even beat him with his fists; he meant precisely what he said—that he would kick him to death—and Zani Chada knew it.

Thus there were some moments of tense silence during which the savage face of the Chief Inspector drew even closer to the gaunt, yellow face of the Eurasian. Finally:

“Listen only for one moment,” said Zani Chada. His voice had lost its guttural intonation. He spoke softly, sibilantly. “I, too, am a father———”

“Don't mince words!” shouted Kerry. “You've kidnapped my boy. If I have to tear your house down brick by brick I'll find him. And if you've hurt one hair of his head—you know what to expect!”

He quivered. The effort of suppression which he had imposed upon himself was frightful to witness. Zani Chada, student of men, knew that in despite of his own physical strength and of the hidden resources at his beck, he stood nearer to primitive retribution than he had ever done. Yet:

“I understand,” he continued. “But you do not understand. Your boy is not in this house. Oh! violence cannot avail! It can only make his loss irreparable.”

Kerry, nostrils distended, eyes glaring madly, bent over him.

“Your scallywag of a son,” he said hoarsely, “has gone one step too far. His adventures have twice before ended in murder—and you have covered him. This time you can't do it. I'm not to be bought. We've stood for the Far East in London long enough. Your cub hangs this time. Get me? There'll be no bargaining. The woman's reputation won't stop me. My kid's danger won't stop me. But if you try to use him as a lever I'll boot you to your stinking yellow paradise and they'll check you in as pulp.”

“You speak of three deaths,” murmured Zani Chada.

Kerry clenched his teeth so tightly that his maxillary muscles protruded to an abnormal degree. He thrust his clenched fists into his coat pockets.

“We all follow our vocations in life,” resumed the Eurasian, “to the best of our abilities. But is professional kudos not too dearly bought at the price of a loved one lost for ever? A far better bargain would be, shall we say, ten thousand pounds, as the price of a silk handkerchief———”

Kerry's fierce blue eyes closed for a fraction of a second. Yet, in that fraction of a second, he had visualized some of the things which ten thousand pounds—a sum he could never hope to possess—would buy. He had seen his home, as he would have it—and he had seen Dan there, safe and happy at his mother's side. Was he entitled to disregard the happiness of his wife, the life of his boy, the honourable name of Sir Noel Rourke, because an outcast like Peters had come to a fitting end—because a treacherous Malay and a renegade Chinaman had, earlier, gone the same way, sped, as he suspected, by the same hand?

“My resources are unusual,” added Chada, speaking almost in a whisper. “I have cash to this amount in my safe———”

So far he had proceeded when he was interrupted; and the cause of the interruption was this:

A few moments earlier another dramatic encounter had taken place in a distant part of the house. Kerry Junior, having scientifically tested all the possible modes of egress from the room in which Lady Pat was confined, had long ago desisted, and had exhausted his ingenuity in plans which discussion had proved to be useless. In spite of the novelty and the danger of his situation, nature was urging her laws. He was growing sleepy. The crowning tragedy had been the discovery that he could not regain the small, square window set high in the wall from which he had dropped into this luxurious prison. Now, as the two sat side by side upon a cushioned divan, the woman's arm about the boy's shoulders, they were startled to hear, in the depths of the house, three notes of a gong.

Young Kerry's sleepiness departed. He leapt to his feet as though electrified.

“What was that?”

There was something horrifying in those gong notes in the stillness of the night. Lady Pat's beautiful eyes grew glassy with fear.

“I don't know,” replied Dan. “It seemed to come from below.”

He ran to the door, drew the curtain aside, and pressed his ear against one of the panels, listening intently. As he did so, his attitude grew tense, his expression changed, then:

“We're saved!” he cried, turning a radiant face to the woman. “I heard my father's voice!”

“Oh, are you sure, are you sure?”

“Absolutely sure!”

He bent to press his ear to the panel again, when a stifled cry from his companion brought him swiftly to his feet. The second door in the room had opened silently, and a small Chinaman, who carried himself with a stoop, had entered, and now, a menacing expression upon his face, was quickly approaching the boy.

What he had meant to do for ever remained in doubt, for young Kerry, knowing his father to be in the house and seeing an open door before him, took matters into his own hands. At the moment that the silent Chinaman was about to throw his arms about him, the pride of the junior school registered a most surprising left accurately on the point of Ah Fang's jaw, following it up by a wilful transgression of Queensberry rules in the form of a stomach punch which temporarily decided the issue. Then:

“Quick! quick!” he cried breathlessly, grasping Lady Pat's hand. “This is where we run!”

In such fashion was Zani Chada interrupted, the interruption taking the form of a sudden, shrill outcry:

“Dad! dad! Where are you, dad?”

Kerry spun about as a man galvanized. His face became transfigured.

“This way, Dan!” he cried. “This way, boy!”

Came a clatter of hurrying feet, and into the low, perfumed room burst Dan Kerry, junior, tightly clasping the hand of a pale-faced, dishevelled woman in evening dress. It was Lady Rourke; and although she seemed to be in a nearly fainting condition, Dan dragged her, half running, into the room.

Kerry gave one glance at the pair, then, instantly, he turned to face Zani Chada. The latter, like a man of stone, sat in his carved chair, eyes nearly closed. The Chief Inspector whipped out a whistle and raised it to his lips. He blew three blasts upon it.

From one—two—three—four points around the house the signal was answered.

Zani Chada fully opened his long, basilisk eyes.

“You win, Chief Inspector,” he said. “But much may be done by clever counsel. If all fails———”

“Well?” rapped Kerry fiercely, at the same time throwing his arm around the boy.

“I may continue to take an interest in your affairs.”

A tremendous uproar arose, within and without the house. The police were raiding the place. Lady Rourke sank down, slowly, almost at the Eurasian's feet.

But Chief Inspector Kerry experienced an unfamiliar chill as his uncompromising stare met the cold hatred which blazed out of the black eyes, narrowed, now, and serpentine, of Zani Chada.

THE PIGTAIL OF HI WING HO

I

HOW I OBTAINED IT

Leaving the dock gates behind me I tramped through the steady drizzle, going parallel with the river and making for the Chinese quarter. The hour was about half-past eleven on one of those September nights when, in such a locality as this, a stifling quality seems to enter the atmosphere, rendering it all but unbreathable. A mist floated over the river, and it was difficult to say if the rain was still falling, indeed, or if the ample moisture upon my garments was traceable only to the fog. Sounds were muffled, lights dimmed, and the frequent hooting of sirens from the river added another touch of weirdness to the scene.

Even when the peculiar duties of my friend, Paul Harley, called him away from England, the lure of this miniature Orient which I had first explored under his guidance, often called me from my chambers. In the house with the two doors in Wade Street, Limehouse, I would discard the armour of respectability, and, dressed in a manner unlikely to provoke comment in dockland, would haunt those dreary ways sometimes from midnight until close upon dawn. Yet, well as I knew the district and the strange and often dangerous creatures lurking in its many burrows, I experienced a chill partly physical and partly of apprehension to-night; indeed, strange though it may sound, I hastened my footsteps in order the sooner to reach the low den for which I was bound—Malay Jack's—a spot marked plainly on the crimes-map and which few respectable travellers would have regarded as a haven of refuge.

But the chill of the adjacent river, and some quality of utter desolation which seemed to emanate from the deserted wharves and ramshackle buildings about me, were driving me thither now; for I knew that human companionship, of a sort, and a glass of good liquor—from a store which the Customs would have been happy to locate—awaited me there. I might chance, too, upon Durham or Wessex, of New Scotland Yard, both good friends of mine, or even upon the Terror of Chinatown, Chief Inspector Kerry, a man for whom I had an esteem which none of his ungracious manners could diminish.

I was just about to turn to the right into a narrow and nameless alley, lying at right angles to the Thames, when I pulled up sharply, clenching my fists and listening.

A confused and continuous sound, not unlike that which might be occasioned by several large and savage hounds at close grips, was proceeding out of the darkness ahead of me; a worrying, growling, and scuffling which presently I identified as human, although in fact it was animal enough. A moment I hesitated, then, distinguishing among the sounds of conflict an unmistakable, though subdued, cry for help, I leaped forward and found myself in the midst of the melee. This was taking place in the lee of a high, dilapidated brick wall. A lamp in a sort of iron bracket spluttered dimly above on the right, but the scene of the conflict lay in densest shadow, so that the figures were indistinguishable.

“Help! By Gawd! they're strangling me———”

From almost at my feet the cry arose and was drowned in Chinese chattering. But guided by it I now managed to make out that the struggle in progress waged between a burly English sailorman and two lithe Chinese. The yellow men seemed to have gained the advantage and my course was clear.

A straight right on the jaw of the Chinaman who was engaged in endeavouring to throttle the victim laid him prone in the dirty roadway. His companion, who was holding the wrist of the recumbent man, sprang upright as though propelled by a spring. I struck out at him savagely. He uttered a shrill scream not unlike that of a stricken hare, and fled so rapidly that he seemed to melt in the mist.

“Gawd bless you, mate!” came chokingly from the ground—and the rescued man, extricating himself from beneath the body of his stunned assailant, rose unsteadily to his feet and lurched toward me.

As I had surmised, he was a sailor, wearing a rough, blue-serge jacket and having his greasy trousers thrust into heavy seaboots—by which I judged that he was but newly come ashore. He stooped and picked up his cap. It was covered in mud, as were the rest of his garments, but he brushed it with his sleeve as though it had been but slightly soiled and clapped it on his head.

He grasped my hand in a grip of iron, peering into my face, and his breath was eloquent.

“I'd had one or two, mate,” he confided huskily (the confession was unnecessary). “It was them two in the Blue Anchor as did it; if I 'adn't 'ad them last two, I could 'ave broke up them Chinks with one 'and tied behind me.”

“That's all right,” I said hastily, “but what are we going to do about this Chink here?” I added, endeavouring at the same time to extricate my hand from the vise-like grip in which he persistently held it. “He hit the tiles pretty heavy when he went down.”

As if to settle my doubts, the recumbent figure suddenly arose and without a word fled into the darkness and was gone like a phantom. My new friend made no attempt to follow, but:

“You can't kill a bloody Chink,” he confided, still clutching my hand; “it ain't 'umanly possible. It's easier to kill a cat. Come along o' me and 'ave one; then I'll tell you somethink. I'll put you on somethink, I will.”

With surprising steadiness of gait, considering the liquid cargo he had aboard, the man, releasing my hand and now seizing me firmly by the arm, confidently led me by divers narrow ways, which I knew, to a little beerhouse frequented by persons of his class.

My own attire was such as to excite no suspicion in these surroundings, and although I considered that my acquaintance had imbibed more than enough for one night, I let him have his own way in order that I might learn the story which he seemed disposed to confide in me. Settled in the corner of the beerhouse—which chanced to be nearly empty—with portentous pewters before us, the conversation was opened by my new friend:

“I've been paid off from the Jupiter—Samuelson's Planet Line,” he explained. “What I am is a fireman.”

“She was from Singapore to London?” I asked.

“She was,” he replied, “and it was at Suez it 'appened—at Suez.”

I did not interrupt him.

“I was ashore at Suez—we all was, owin' to a 'itch with the canal company—a matter of money, I may say. They make yer pay before they'll take yer through. Do you know that?”

I nodded.

“Suez is a place,” he continued, “where they don't sell whisky, only poison. Was you ever at Suez?”

Again I nodded, being most anxious to avoid diverting the current of my friend's thoughts.

“Well, then,” he continued, “you know Greek Jimmy's—and that's where I'd been.”

I did not know Greek Jimmy's, but I thought it unnecessary to mention the fact.

“It was just about this time on a steamin' 'ot night as I come out of Jimmy's and started for the ship. I was walkin' along the Waghorn Quay, same as I might be walkin' along to-night, all by myself—bit of a list to port but nothing much—full o' joy an' happiness, 'appy an' free—'appy an' free. Just like you might have noticed to-night, I noticed a knot of Chinks scrappin' on the ground all amongst the dust right in front of me. I rammed in, windmillin' all round and knocking 'em down like skittles. Seemed to me there was about ten of 'em, but allowin' for Jimmy's whisky, maybe there wasn't more than three. Anyway, they all shifted and left me standin' there in the empty street with this 'ere in my 'and.”

At that, without more ado, he thrust his hand deep into some concealed pocket and jerked out a Chinese pigtail, which had been severed, apparently some three inches from the scalp, by a clean cut. My acquaintance, with somewhat bleared eyes glistening in appreciation of his own dramatic skill—for I could not conceal my surprise—dangled it before me triumphantly.

“Which of 'em it belong to,” he continued, thrusting it into another pocket and drumming loudly on the counter for more beer, “I can't say, 'cos I don't know. But that ain't all.”

The tankards being refilled and my friend having sampled the contents of his own:

“That ain't all,” he continued. “I thought I'd keep it as a sort of relic, like. What 'appened? I'll tell you. Amongst the crew there's three Chinks—see? We ain't through the canal before one of 'em, a new one to me—Li Ping is his name—offers me five bob for the pigtail, which he sees me looking at one mornin'. I give him a punch on the nose an' 'e don't renew the offer: but that night (we're layin' at Port Said) 'e tries to pinch it! I dam' near broke his neck, and 'e don't try any more. To-night”—he extended his right arm forensically—“a deppitation of Chinks waits on me at the dock gates; they explains as from a patriotic point of view they feels it to be their dooty to buy that pigtail off of me, and they bids a quid, a bar of gold—a Jimmy o' Goblin!”

He snapped his fingers contemptuously and emptied his pewter. A sense of what was coming began to dawn on me. That the “hold-up” near the riverside formed part of the scheme was possible, and, reflecting on my rough treatment of the two Chinamen, I chuckled inwardly. Possibly, however, the scheme had germinated in my acquaintance's mind merely as a result of an otherwise common assault, of a kind not unusual in these parts, but, whether elaborate or comparatively simple, that the story of the pigtail was a “plant” designed to reach my pocket, seemed a reasonable hypothesis.

“I told him to go to China,” concluded the object of my suspicion, again rapping upon the counter, “and you see what come of it. All I got to say is this: If they're so bloody patriotic, I says one thing: I ain't the man to stand in their way. You done me a good turn to-night, mate; I'm doing you one. 'Ere's the bloody pigtail, 'ere's my empty mug. Fill the mug and the pigtail's yours. It's good for a quid at the dock gates any day!”

My suspicions vanished; my interest arose to boiling point. I refilled my acquaintance's mug, pressed a sovereign upon him (in honesty I must confess that he was loath to take it), and departed with the pigtail coiled neatly in an inner pocket of my jacket. I entered the house in Wade Street by the side door, and half an hour later let myself out by the front door, having cast off my dockland disguise.

II

HOW I LOST IT

It was not until the following evening that I found leisure to examine my strange acquisition, for affairs of more immediate importance engrossed my attention. But at about ten o'clock I seated myself at my table, lighted the lamp, and taking out the pigtail from the table drawer, placed it on the blotting-pad and began to examine it with the greatest curiosity, for few Chinese affect the pigtail nowadays.

I had scarcely commenced my examination, however, when it was dramatically interrupted. The door bell commenced to ring jerkily. I stood up, and as I did so the ringing ceased and in its place came a muffled beating on the door. I hurried into the passage as the bell commenced ringing again, and I had almost reached the door when once more the ringing ceased; but now I could hear a woman's voice, low but agitated:

“Open the door! Oh, for God's sake be quick!”

Completely mystified, and not a little alarmed, I threw open the door, and in there staggered a woman heavily veiled, so that I could see little of her features, but by the lines of her figure I judged her to be young.

Uttering a sort of moan of terror she herself closed the door, and stood with her back to it, watching me through the thick veil, while her breast rose and fell tumultuously.

“Thank God there was someone at home!” she gasped.

I think I may say with justice that I had never been so surprised in my life; every particular of the incident marked it as unique—set it apart from the episodes of everyday life.

“Madam,” I began doubtfully, “you seem to be much alarmed at something, and if I can be of any assistance to you———”

“You have saved my life!” she whispered, and pressed one hand to her bosom. “In a moment I will explain.”

“Won't you rest a little after your evidently alarming experience?” I suggested.

My strange visitor nodded, without speaking, and I conducted her to the study which I had just left, and placed the most comfortable arm-chair close beside the table so that as I sat I might study this woman who so strangely had burst in upon me. I even tilted the shaded lamp, artlessly, a trick I had learned from Harley, in order that the light might fall upon her face.

She may have detected this device; I know not; but as if in answer to its challenge, she raised her gloved hands and unfastened the heavy veil which had concealed her features.

Thereupon I found myself looking into a pair of lustrous black eyes whose almond shape was that of the Orient; I found myself looking at a woman who, since she was evidently a Jewess, was probably no older than eighteen or nineteen, but whose beauty was ripely voluptuous, who might fittingly have posed for Salome, who, despite her modern fashionable garments, at once suggested to my mind the wanton beauty of the daughter of Herodias.

I stared at her silently for a time, and presently her full lips parted in a slow smile. My ideas were diverted into another channel.

“You have yet to tell me what alarmed you,” I said in a low voice, but as courteously as possible, “and if I can be of any assistance in the matter.”

My visitor seemed to recollect her fright—or the necessity for simulation. The pupils of her fine eyes seemed to grow larger and darker; she pressed her white teeth into her lower lips, and resting her hands upon the table leaned toward me.

“I am a stranger to London,” she began, now exhibiting a certain diffidence, “and to-night I was looking for the chambers of Mr. Raphael Philips of Figtree Court.”

“This is Figtree Court,” I said, “but I know of no Mr. Raphael Philips who has chambers here.”

The black eyes met mine despairingly.

“But I am positive of the address!” protested my beautiful but strange caller—from her left glove she drew out a scrap of paper, “here it is.”

I glanced at the fragment, upon which, in a woman's hand the words were pencilled: “Mr. Raphael Philips, 36-b Figtree Court, London.”

I stared at my visitor, deeply mystified.

“These chambers are 36-b!” I said. “But I am not Raphael Philips, nor have I ever heard of him. My name is Malcolm Knox. There is evidently some mistake, but”—returning the slip of paper—“pardon me if I remind you, I have yet to learn the cause of your alarm.”

“I was followed across the court and up the stairs.”

“Followed! By whom?”

“By a dreadful-looking man, chattering in some tongue I did not understand!”

My amazement was momentarily growing greater.

“What kind of a man?” I demanded rather abruptly.

“A yellow-faced man—remember I could only just distinguish him in the darkness on the stairway, and see little more of him than his eyes at that, and his ugly gleaming teeth—oh! it was horrible!”

“You astound me,” I said; “the thing is utterly incomprehensible.” I switched off the light of the lamp. “I'll see if there's any sign of him in the court below.”

“Oh, don't leave me! For heaven's sake don't leave me alone!”

She clutched my arm in the darkness.

“Have no fear; I merely propose to look out from this window.”

Suiting the action to the word, I peered down into the court below. It was quite deserted. The night was a very dark one, and there were many patches of shadow in which a man might have lain concealed.

“I can see no one,” I said, speaking as confidently as possible, and relighting the lamp, “if I call a cab for you and see you safely into it, you will have nothing to fear, I think.”

“I have a cab waiting,” she replied, and lowering the veil she stood up to go.

“Kindly allow me to see you to it. I am sorry you have been subjected to this annoyance, especially as you have not attained the object of your visit.”

“Thank you so much for your kindness; there must be some mistake about the address, of course.”

She clung to my arm very tightly as we descended the stairs, and often glanced back over her shoulder affrightedly, as we crossed the court. There was not a sign of anyone about, however, and I could not make up my mind whether the story of the yellow man was a delusion or a fabrication. I inclined to the latter theory, but the object of such a deception was more difficult to determine.

Sure enough, a taxicab was waiting at the entrance to the court; and my visitor, having seated herself within, extended her hand to me, and even through the thick veil I could detect her brilliant smile.

“Thank you so much, Mr. Knox,” she said, “and a thousand apologies. I am sincerely sorry to have given you all this trouble.”

The cab drove off. For a moment I stood looking after it, in a state of dreamy incertitude, then turned and slowly retraced my steps. Reopening the door of my chambers with my key, I returned to my study and sat down at the table to endeavour to arrange the facts of what I recognized to be a really amazing episode. The adventure, trifling though it seemed, undoubtedly held some hidden significance that at present was not apparent to me. In accordance with the excellent custom of my friend, Paul Harley, I prepared to make notes of the occurrence while the facts were still fresh in my memory. At the moment that I was about to begin, I made an astounding discovery.

Although I had been absent only a few minutes, and had locked my door behind me, the pigtail was gone!

I sat quite still, listening intently. The woman's story of the yellow man on the stairs suddenly assumed a totally different aspect—a new and sinister aspect. Could it be that the pigtail was at the bottom of the mystery? —could it be that some murderous Chinaman who had been lurking in hiding, waiting his opportunity, had in some way gained access to my chambers during that brief absence? If so, was he gone?

From the table drawer I took out a revolver, ascertained that it was fully loaded, and turning up light after light as I proceeded, conducted a room-to-room search. It was without result; there was absolutely nothing to indicate that anyone had surreptitiously entered or departed from my chambers.

I returned to the study and sat gazing at the revolver lying on the blotting-pad before me. Perhaps my mind worked slowly, but I think that fully fifteen minutes must have passed before it dawned on me that the explanation not only of the missing pigtail but of the other incidents of the night, was simple enough. The yellow man had been a fabrication, and my dark-eyed visitor had not been in quest of “Raphael Philips,” but in quest of the pigtail: and her quest had been successful!

“What a hopeless fool I am!” I cried, and banged my fist down upon the table, “there was no yellow man at all—there was——-”

My door bell rang. I sprang nervously to my feet, glanced at the revolver on the table—and finally dropped it into my coat pocket ere going out and opening the door.

On the landing stood a police constable and an officer in plain clothes.

“Your name is Malcolm Knox?” asked the constable, glancing at a note-book which he held in his hand.

“It is,” I replied.

“You are required to come at once to Bow Street to identify a woman who was found murdered in a taxi-cab in the Strand about eleven o'clock to-night.”

I suppressed an exclamation of horror; I felt myself turning pale.

“But what has it to do———”

“The driver stated she came from your chambers, for you saw her off, and her last words to you were 'Good night, Mr. Knox, I am sincerely sorry to have given you all this trouble.' Is that correct, sir?”

The constable, who had read out the information in an official voice, now looked at me, as I stood there stupefied.

“It is,” I said blankly. “I'll come at once.” It would seem that I had misjudged my unfortunate visitor: her story of the yellow man on the stair had apparently been not a fabrication, but a gruesome fact!

III

HOW I REGAINED IT

My ghastly duty was performed; I had identified the dreadful thing, which less than an hour before had been a strikingly beautiful woman, as my mysterious visitor. The police were palpably disappointed at the sparsity of my knowledge respecting her. In fact, had it not chanced that Detective Sergeant Durham was in the station, I think they would have doubted the accuracy of my story.

As a man of some experience in such matters, I fully recognized its improbability, but beyond relating the circumstances leading up to my possession of the pigtail and the events which had ensued, I could do no more in the matter. The weird relic had not been found on the dead woman, nor in the cab.

Now the unsavoury business was finished, and I walked along Bow Street, racking my mind for the master-key to this mystery in which I was become enmeshed. How I longed to rush off to Harley's rooms in Chancery Lane and to tell him the whole story! But my friend was a thousand miles away—and I had to see the thing out alone.

That the pigtail was some sacred relic stolen from a Chinese temple and sought for by its fanatical custodians was a theory which persistently intruded itself. But I could find no place in that hypothesis for the beautiful Jewess; and that she was intimately concerned I did not doubt. A cool survey of the facts rendered it fairly evident that it was she and none other who had stolen the pigtail from my rooms. Some third party—possibly the “yellow man” of whom she had spoken—had in turn stolen it from her, strangling her in the process.

The police theory of the murder (and I was prepared to accept it) was that the assassin had been crouching in hiding behind or beside the cab—or even within the dark interior. He had leaped in and attacked the woman at the moment that the taxi-man had started his engine; if already inside, the deed had proven even easier. Then, during some block in the traffic, he had slipped out unseen, leaving the body of the victim to be discovered when the cab pulled up at the hotel.

I knew of only one place in London where I might hope to obtain useful information, and for that place I was making now. It was Malay Jack's, whence I had been bound on the previous night when my strange meeting with the seaman who then possessed the pigtail had led to a change of plan. The scum of the Asiatic population always come at one time or another to Jack's, and I hoped by dint of a little patience to achieve what the police had now apparently despaired of achieving—the discovery of the assassin.

Having called at my chambers to obtain my revolver, I mounted an eastward-bound motor-bus. The night, as I have already stated, was exceptionally dark. There was no moon, and heavy clouds were spread over the sky; so that the deserted East End streets presented a sufficiently uninviting aspect, but one with which I was by no means unfamiliar and which certainly in no way daunted me.

Changing at Paul Harley's Chinatown base in Wade Street, I turned my steps in the same direction as upon the preceding night; but if my own will played no part in the matter, then decidedly Providence truly guided me. Poetic justice is rare enough in real life, yet I was destined to-night to witness swift retribution overtaking a malefactor.

The by-ways which I had trodden were utterly deserted; I was far from the lighted high road, and the only signs of human activity that reached me came from the adjacent river; therefore, when presently an outcry arose from somewhere on my left, for a moment I really believed that my imagination was vividly reproducing the episode of the night before!

A furious scuffle—between a European and an Asiatic—was in progress not twenty yards away!

Realizing that such was indeed the case, and that I was not the victim of hallucination, I advanced slowly in the direction of the sounds, but my footsteps reechoed hollowly from wall to wall of the narrow passage-way, and my coming brought the conflict to a sudden and dramatic termination.

“Thought I wouldn't know yer ugly face, did yer?” yelled a familiar voice. “No good squealin'—I got yer! I'd bust you up if I could!” (a sound of furious blows and inarticulate chattering) “but it ain't 'umanly possible to kill a Chink———”

I hurried forward toward the spot where two dim figures were locked in deadly conflict.

“Take that to remember me by!” gasped the husky voice as I ran up.

One of the figures collapsed in a heap upon the ground. The other made off at a lumbering gait along a second and even narrower passage branching at right angles from that in which the scuffle had taken place.

The clatter of the heavy sea-boots died away in the distance. I stood beside the fallen man, looking keenly about to right and left; for an impression was strong upon me that another than I had been witness of the scene—that a shadowy form had slunk back furtively at my approach. But the night gave up no sound in confirmation of this, and I could detect no sign of any lurker.

I stooped over the Chinaman (for a Chinaman it was) who lay at my feet, and directed the ray of my pocket-lamp upon his yellow and contorted countenance. I suppressed a cry of surprise and horror.

Despite the human impossibility referred to by the missing fireman, this particular Chinaman had joined the shades of his ancestors. I think that final blow, which had felled him, had brought his shaven skull in such violent contact with the wall that he had died of the thundering concussion set up.

Kneeling there and looking into his upturned eyes, I became aware that my position was not an enviable one, particularly since I felt little disposed to set the law on the track of the real culprit. For this man who now lay dead at my feet was doubtless one of the pair who had attempted the life of the fireman of the Jupiter.

That my seafaring acquaintance had designed to kill the Chinaman I did not believe, despite his stormy words: the death had been an accident, and (perhaps my morality was over-broad) I considered the assault to have been justified.

Now my ideas led me further yet. The dead Chinaman wore a rough blue coat, and gingerly, for I found the contact repulsive, I inserted my hand into the inside pocket. Immediately my fingers closed upon a familiar object—and I stood up, whistling slightly, and dangling in my left hand the missing pigtail!

Beyond doubt Justice had guided the seaman's blows. This was the man who had murdered my dark-eyed visitor!

I stood perfectly still, directing the little white ray of my flashlight upon the pigtail in my hand. I realized that my position, difficult before, now was become impossible; the possession of the pigtail compromised me hopelessly. What should I do?

“My God!” I said aloud, “what does it all mean?”

“It means,” said a gruff voice, “that it was lucky I was following you and saw what happened!”

I whirled about, my heart leaping wildly. Detective-Sergeant Durham was standing watching me, a grim smile upon his face!

I laughed rather shakily.

“Lucky indeed!” I said. “Thank God you're here. This pigtail is a nightmare which threatens to drive me mad!”

The detective advanced and knelt beside the crumpled-up figure on the ground. He examined it briefly, and then stood up.

“The fact that he had the missing pigtail in his pocket,” he said, “is proof enough to my mind that he did the murder.”

“And to mine.”

“There's another point,” he added, “which throws a lot of light on the matter. You and Mr. Harley were out of town at the time of the Huang Chow case; but the Chief and I outlined it, you remember, one night in Mr. Harley's rooms?”

“I remember it perfectly; the giant spider in the coffin———”

“Yes; and a certain Ah Fu, confidential servant of the old man, who used to buy the birds the thing fed on. Well, Mr. Knox, Huang Chow was the biggest dealer in illicit stuff in all the East End—and this battered thing at our feet is—Ah Fu!”

“Huang Chow's servant?”

“Exactly!”

I stared, uncomprehendingly, and:

“In what way does this throw light on the matter?” I asked.

Durham—a very intelligent young officer—smiled significantly.

“I begin to see light!” he declared. “The gentleman who made off just as I arrived on the scene probably had a private quarrel with the Chinaman and was otherwise not concerned in any way.”

“I am disposed to agree with you,” I said guardedly.

“Of course, you've no idea of his identity?”

“I'm afraid not.”

“We may find him,” mused the officer, glancing at me shrewdly, “by applying at the offices of the Planet Line, but I rather doubt it. Also I rather doubt if we'll look very far. He's saved us a lot of trouble, but”—peering about in the shadowy corners which abounded—“didn't I see somebody else lurking around here?”

“I'm almost certain there was someone else!” I cried. “In fact, I could all but swear to it.”

“H'm!” said the detective. “He's not here now. Might I trouble you to walk along to Limehouse Police Station for the ambulance? I'd better stay here.”

I agreed at once, and started off.

Thus a second time my plans were interrupted, for my expedition that night ultimately led me to Bow Street, whence, after certain formalities had been observed, I departed for my chambers, the mysterious pigtail in my pocket. Failing the presence of Durham, the pigtail must have been retained as evidence, but:

“We shall know where to find it if it's wanted, Mr. Knox,” said the Yard man, “and I can trust you to look after your own property.”

The clock of St. Paul's was chiming the hour of two when I locked the door of my chambers and prepared to turn in. The clangour of the final strokes yet vibrated through the night's silence when someone set my own door bell loudly ringing.

With an exclamation of annoyance I shot back the bolts and threw open the door.

A Chinaman stood outside upon the mat!

IV

HOW IT ALL ENDED

“Me wishee see you,” said the apparition, smiling blandly; “me comee in?”

“Come in, by all means,” I said without enthusiasm, and, switching on the light in my study, I admitted the Chinaman and stood facing him with an expression upon my face which I doubt not was the reverse of agreeable.

My visitor, who wore a slop-shop suit, also wore a wide-brimmed bowler hat; now, the set bland smile still upon his yellow face, he removed the bowler and pointed significantly to his skull.

His pigtail had been severed some three inches from the root!

“You gotchee my pigtail,” he explained; “me callee get it—thank you.”

“Thank you,” I said grimly. “But I must ask you to establish your claim rather more firmly.”

“Yessir,” agreed the Chinaman.

And thereupon in tolerable pidgin English he unfolded his tale. He proclaimed his name to be Hi Wing Ho, and his profession that of a sailor, or so I understood him. While ashore at Suez he had become embroiled with some drunken seamen: knives had been drawn, and in the scuffle by some strange accident his pigtail had been severed. He had escaped from the conflict, badly frightened, and had run a great distance before he realized his loss. Since Southern Chinamen of his particular Tong hold their pigtails in the highest regard, he had instituted inquiries as soon as possible, and had presently learned from a Chinese member of the crew of the S. S. Jupiter that the precious queue had fallen into the hands of a fireman on that vessel. He (Hi Wing Ho) had shipped on the first available steamer bound for England, having in the meanwhile communicated with his friend on the Jupiter respecting the recovery of the pigtail.

“What was the name of your friend on the Jupiter?”

“Him Li Ping—yessir!” —without the least hesitation or hurry.

I nodded. “Go on,” I said.

He arrived at the London docks very shortly after the Jupiter. Indeed, the crew of the latter vessel had not yet been paid off when Hi Wing Ho presented himself at the dock gates. He admitted that, finding the fireman so obdurate, he and his friend Li Ping had resorted to violence, but he did not seem to recognize me as the person who had frustrated their designs. Thus far I found his story credible enough, excepting the accidental severing of the pigtail at Suez, but now it became wildly improbable, for he would have me believe that Li Ping, or Ah Fu, obtaining possession of the pigtail (in what manner Hi Wing Ho protested that he knew not) he sought to hold it to ransom, knowing how highly Hi Wing Ho valued it.

I glared sternly at the Chinaman, but his impassive countenance served him well. That he was lying to me I no longer doubted; for Ah Fu could not have hoped to secure such a price as would justify his committing murder; furthermore, the presence of the unfortunate Jewess in the case was not accounted for by the ingenious narrative of Hi Wing Ho. I was standing staring at him and wondering what course to adopt, when yet again my restless door-bell clamoured in the silence.

Hi Wing Ho started nervously, exhibiting the first symptoms of alarm which I had perceived in him. My mind was made up in an instant. I took my revolver from the drawer and covered him.

“Be good enough to open the door, Hi Wing Ho,” I said coldly.

He shrank from me, pouring forth voluble protestations.

“Open the door!”

I clenched my left fist and advanced upon him. He scuttled away with his odd Chinese gait and threw open the door. Standing before me I saw my friend Detective Sergeant Durham, and with him a remarkably tall and very large-boned man whose square-jawed face was deeply tanned and whose aspect was dourly Scottish.

When the piercing eyes of this stranger rested upon Hi Wing Ho an expression which I shall never forget entered into them; an expression coldly murderous. As for the Chinaman, he literally crumpled up.

“You rat!” roared the stranger.

Taking one long stride he stooped upon the Chinaman, seized him by the back of the neck as a terrier might seize a rat, and lifted him to his feet.

“The mystery of the pigtail, Mr. Knox,” said the detective, “is solved at last.”

“Have ye got it?” demanded the Scotsman, turning to me, but without releasing his hold upon the neck of Hi Wing Ho.

I took the pigtail from my pocket and dangled it before his eyes.

“Suppose you come into my study,” I said, “and explain matters.”

We entered the room which had been the scene of so many singular happenings. The detective and I seated ourselves, but the Scotsman, holding the Chinaman by the neck as though he had been some inanimate bundle, stood just within the doorway, one of the most gigantic specimens of manhood I had ever set eyes upon.

“You do the talking, sir,” he directed the detective; “ye have all the facts.”

While Durham talked, then, we all listened—excepting the Chinaman, who was past taking an intelligent interest in anything, and who, to judge from his starting eyes, was being slowly strangled.

“The gentleman,” said Durham—“Mr. Nicholson—arrived two days ago from the East. He is a buyer for a big firm of diamond merchants, and some weeks ago a valuable diamond was stolen from him———”

“By this!” interrupted the Scotsman, shaking the wretched Hi Wing Ho terrier fashion.

“By Hi Wing Ho,” explained the detective, “whom you see before you. The theft was a very ingenious one, and the man succeeded in getting away with his haul. He tried to dispose of the diamond to a certain Isaac Cohenberg, a Singapore moneylender; but Isaac Cohenberg was the bigger crook of the two. Hi Wing Ho only escaped from the establishment of Cohenberg by dint of sandbagging the moneylender, and quitted the town by a boat which left the same night. On the voyage he was indiscreet enough to take the diamond from its hiding-place and surreptitiously to examine it. Another member of the Chinese crew, one Li Ping—otherwise Ah Fu, the accredited agent of old Huang Chow! —was secretly watching our friend, and, knowing that he possessed this valuable jewel, he also learned where he kept it hidden. At Suez Ah Fu attacked Hi Wing Ho and secured possession of the diamond. It was to secure possession of the diamond that Ah Fu had gone out East. I don't doubt it. He employed Hi Wing Ho—and Hi Wing Ho tried to double on him!

“We are indebted to you, Mr. Knox, for some of the data upon which we have reconstructed the foregoing and also for the next link in the narrative. A fireman ashore from the Jupiter intruded upon the scene at Suez and deprived Ah Fu of the fruits of his labours. Hi Wing Ho seems to have been badly damaged in the scuffle, but Ah Fu, the more wily of the two, evidently followed the fireman, and, deserting from his own ship, signed on with the Jupiter.”

While this story was enlightening in some respects, it was mystifying in others. I did not interrupt, however, for Durham immediately resumed:

“The drama was complicated by the presence of a fourth character—the daughter of Cohenberg. Realizing that a small fortune had slipped through his fingers, the old moneylender dispatched his daughter in pursuit of Hi Wing Ho, having learned upon which vessel the latter had sailed. He had no difficulty in obtaining this information, for he is in touch with all the crooks of the town. Had he known that the diamond had been stolen by an agent of Huang Chow, he would no doubt have hesitated. Huang Chow has an international reputation.

“However, his daughter—a girl of great personal beauty—relied upon her diplomatic gifts to regain possession of the stone, but, poor creature, she had not counted with Ah Fu, who was evidently watching your chambers (while Hi Wing Ho, it seems, was assiduously shadowing Ah Fu!) . How she traced the diamond from point to point of its travels we do not know, and probably never shall know, but she was undeniably clever and unscrupulous. Poor girl! She came to a dreadful end. Mr. Nicholson, here, identified her at Bow Street to-night.”

Now the whole amazing truth burst upon me.

“I understand!” I cried. “This”—and I snatched up the pigtail—

“That my pigtail,” moaned Hi Wing Ho feebly.

Mr. Nicholson pitched him unceremoniously into a corner of the room, and taking the pigtail in his huge hand, clumsily unfastened it. Out from the thick part, some two inches below the point at which it had been cut from the Chinaman's head, a great diamond dropped upon the floor!

For perhaps twenty seconds there was perfect silence in my study. No one stooped to pick the diamond from the floor—the diamond which now had blood upon it. No one, so far as my sense informed me, stirred. But when, following those moments of stupefaction, we all looked up—Hi Wing Ho, like a phantom, had faded from the room!

THE HOUSE OF GOLDEN JOSS

I

THE BLOOD-STAINED IDOL

“Stop when we pass the next lamp and give me a light for my pipe.”

“Why?”

“No! don't look round,” warned my companion. “I think someone is following us. And it is always advisable to be on guard in this neighbourhood.”

We had nearly reached the house in Wade Street, Limehouse, which my friend used as a base for East End operations. The night was dark but clear, and I thought that presently when dawn came it would bring a cold, bright morning. There was no moon, and as we passed the lamp and paused we stood in almost total darkness.

Facing in the direction of the Council School I struck a match. It revealed my ruffianly looking companion—in whom his nearest friends must have failed to recognize Mr. Paul Harley of Chancery Lane.

He was glancing furtively back along the street, and when a moment later we moved on, I too, had detected the presence of a figure stumbling toward us.

“Don't stop at the door,” whispered Harley, for our follower was only a few yards away.

Accordingly we passed the house in which Harley had rooms, and had proceeded some fifteen paces farther when the man who was following us stumbled in between Harley and myself, clutching an arm of either. I scarcely knew what to expect, but was prepared for anything, when:

“Mates!” said a man huskily. “Mates, if you know where I can get a drink, take me there!”

Harley laughed shortly. I cannot say if he remained suspicious of the newcomer, but for my own part I had determined after one glance at the man that he was merely a drunken fireman newly recovered from a prolonged debauch.

“Where 'ave yer been, old son?” growled Harley, in that wonderful dialect of his which I had so often and so vainly sought to cultivate. “You look as though you'd 'ad one too many already.”

“I ain't,” declared the fireman, who appeared to be in a semi-dazed condition. “I ain't 'ad one since ten o'clock last night. It's dope wot's got me, not rum.”

“Dope!” said Harley sharply; “been 'avin' a pipe, eh?”

“If you've got a corpse-reviver anywhere,” continued the man in that curious, husky voice, “'ave pity on me, mate. I seen a thing to-night wot give me the jim-jams.”

“All right, old son,” said my friend good-humouredly; “about turn! I've got a drop in the bottle, but me an' my mate sails to-morrow, an' it's the last.”

“Gawd bless yer!” growled the fireman; and the three of us—an odd trio, truly—turned about, retracing our steps.

As we approached the street lamp and its light shone upon the haggard face of the man walking between us, Harley stopped, and:

“Wot's up with yer eye?” he inquired.

He suddenly tilted the man's head upward and peered closely into one of his eyes. I suppressed a gasp of surprise for I instantly recognized the fireman of the Jupiter!

“Nothin' up with it, is there?” said the fireman.

“Only a lump o' mud,” growled Harley, and with a very dirty handkerchief he pretended to remove the imaginary stain, and then, turning to me:

“Open the door, Jim,” he directed.

His examination of the man's eyes had evidently satisfied him that our acquaintance had really been smoking opium.

We paused immediately outside the house for which we had been bound, and as I had the key I opened the door and the three of us stepped into a little dark room. Harley closed the door and we stumbled upstairs to a low first-floor apartment facing the street. There was nothing in its appointments, as revealed in the light of an oil lamp burning on the solitary table, to distinguish it from a thousand other such apartments which may be leased for a few shillings a week in the neighbourhood. That adjoining might have told a different story, for it more closely resembled an actor's dressing-room than a seaman's lodging; but the door of this sanctum was kept scrupulously locked.

“Sit down, old son,” said my friend heartily, pushing forward an old arm-chair. “Fetch out the grog, Jim; there's about enough for three.”

I walked to a cupboard, as the fireman sank limply down in the chair, and took out a bottle and three glasses. When the man, who, as I could now see quite plainly, was suffering from the after effects of opium, had eagerly gulped the stiff drink which I handed to him, he looked around with dim, glazed eyes, and:

“You've saved my life, mates,” he declared. “I've 'ad a 'orrible nightmare, I 'ave—a nightmare. See?”

He fixed his eyes on me for a moment, then raised himself from his seat, peering narrowly at me across the table.

“I seed you before, mate. Gaw, blimey! if you ain't the bloke wot I giv'd the pigtail to! And wot laid out that blasted Chink as was scraggin' me! Shake, mate!”

I shook hands with him, Harley eyeing me closely the while, in a manner which told me that his quick brain had already supplied the link connecting our doped acquaintance with my strange experience during his absence. At the same time it occurred to me that my fireman friend did not know that Ah Fu was dead, or he would never have broached the subject so openly.

“That's so,” I said, and wondered if he required further information.

“It's all right, mate. I don't want to 'ear no more about blinking pigtails—not all my life I don't,” and he sat back heavily in his chair and stared at Harley.

“Where have you been?” inquired Harley, as if no interruption had occurred, and then began to reload his pipe: “at Malay Jack's or at Number Fourteen?”

“Neither of 'em!” cried the fireman, some evidence of animation appearing in his face; “I been at Kwen Lung's.”

“In Pennyfields?”

“That's 'im, the old bloke with the big joss. I allers goes to see Ma Lorenzo when I'm in Port o' London. I've seen 'er for the last time, mates.”

He banged a big and dirty hand upon the table.

“Last night I see murder done, an' only that I know they wouldn't believe me, I'd walk across to Limehouse P'lice Station presently and put the splits on 'em, I would.”

Harley, who was seated behind the speaker, glanced at me significantly.

“Sure you wasn't dreamin'?” he inquired facetiously.

“Dreamin'!” cried the man. “Dreams don't leave no blood be'ind, do they?”

“Blood!” I exclaimed.

“That's wot I said—blood! When I woke up this mornin' there was blood all on that grinnin' joss—the blood wot 'ad dripped from 'er shoulders when she fell.”

“Eh!” said Harley. “Blood on whose shoulders? Wot the 'ell are you talkin' about, old son?”

“Ere”—the fireman turned in his chair and grasped Harley by the arm—“listen to me, and I'll tell you somethink, I will. I'm goin' in the Seahawk in the mornin' see? But if you want to know somethink, I'll tell yer. Drunk or sober I bars the blasted p'lice, but if you like to tell 'em I'll put you on somethink worth tellin'. Sure the bottle's empty, mates?”

I caught Harley's glance and divided the remainder of the whisky evenly between the three glasses.

“Good 'ealth,” said the fireman, and disposed of his share at a draught. “That's bucked me up wonderful.”

He lay back in his chair and from a little tobacco-box began to fill a short clay pipe.

“Look 'ere, mates, I'm soberin' up, like, after the smoke, an' I can see, I can see plain, as nobody'll ever believe me. Nobody ever does, worse luck, but 'ere goes. Pass the matches.”

He lighted his pipe, and looking about him in a sort of vaguely aggressive way:

“Last night,” he resumed, “after I was chucked out of the Dock Gates, I made up my mind to go and smoke a pipe with old Ma Lorenzo. Round I goes to Pennyfields, and she don't seem glad to see me. There's nobody there only me. Not like the old days when you 'ad to book your seat in advance.”

He laughed gruffly.

“She didn't want to let me in at first, said they was watched, that if a Chink 'ad an old pipe wot 'ad b'longed to 'is grandfather it was good enough to get 'im fined fifty quid. Anyway, me bein' an old friend she spread a mat for me and filled me a pipe. I asked after old Kwen Lung, but, of course, 'e was out gamblin', as usual; so after old Ma Lorenzo 'ad made me comfortable an' gone out I 'ad the place to myself, and presently I dozed off and forgot all about bloody ship's bunkers an' nigger-drivin' Scotchmen.”

He paused and looked about him defiantly.

“I dunno 'ow long I slept,” he continued, “but some time in the night I kind of 'alf woke up.”

At that he twisted violently in his chair and glared across at Harley:

“You been a pal to me,” he said; “but tell me I was dreamin' again and I'll smash yer bloody face!”

He glared for a while, then addressing his narrative more particularly to me, he resumed:

“It was a scream wot woke me—a woman's scream. I didn't sit up; I couldn't. I never felt like it before. It was the same as bein' buried alive, I should think. I could see an' I could 'ear, but I couldn't move one muscle in my body. Foller me? An' wot did I see, mates, an' wot did I 'ear? I'm goin' to tell yer. I see old Kwen Lung's daughter———”

“I didn't know 'e 'ad one,” murmured Harley.

“Then you don't know much!” shouted the fireman. “I knew years ago, but 'e kept 'er stowed away somewhere up above, an' last night was the first time I ever see 'er. It was 'er shriek wot 'ad reached me, reached me through the smoke. I don't take much stock in Chink gals in general, but this one's mother was no Chink, I'll swear. She was just as pretty as a bloomin' ivory doll, an' as little an' as white, and that old swine Kwen Lung 'ad tore the dress off of 'er shoulders with a bloody great whip!”

Harley was leaning forward in his seat now, intent upon the man's story, and although I could not get rid of the idea that our friend was relating the events of a particularly unpleasant opium dream, nevertheless I was fascinated by the strange story and by the strange manner of its telling.

“I saw the blood drip from 'er bare shoulders, mates,” the man continued huskily, and with his big dirty hands he strove to illustrate his words. “An' that old yellow devil lashed an' lashed until the poor gal was past screamin'. She just sunk down on the floor all of a 'cap, moanin' and moanin'—Gawd! I can 'ear 'er moanin' now!”

“Meanwhile, 'ere's me with murder in me 'eart lyin' there watchin', an' I can't speak, no! I can't even curse the yellow rat, an' I can't move—not a 'and, not a foot! Just as she fell there right up against the joss an' 'er blood trickled down on 'is gilded feet, old Ma Lorenzo comes staggerin' in. I remember all this as clear as print, mates, remember it plain, but wot 'appened next ain't so good an' clear. Somethink seemed to bust in me 'ead. Only just before I went off, the winder—there's only one in the room—was smashed to smithereens an' somebody come in through it.”

“Are you sure?” said Harley eagerly. “Are you sure?”

That he was intensely absorbed in the story he revealed by a piece of bad artistry, very rare in him. He temporarily forgot his dialect. Our marine friend, however, was too much taken up with his own story to notice the slip, and:

“Dead sure!” he shouted.

He suddenly twisted around in his chair.

“Tell me I was dreamin', mate,” he invited, “and if you ain't dreamin' in 'arf a tick it won't be because I 'aven't put yer to sleep!”

“I ain't arguin', old son,” said Harley soothingly. “Get on with your yarn.”

“Ho!” said the fireman, mollified, “so long as you ain't. Well, then, it's all blotted out after that. Somebody come in at the winder, but 'oo it was or wot it was I can't tell yer, not for fifty quid. When I woke up, which is about 'arf an hour before you see me, I'm all alone—see? There's no sign of Kwen Lung nor the gal nor old Ma Lorenzo nor anybody. I sez to meself, wot you keep on sayin'. I sez, 'You're dreamin', Bill.' ”

“But I don't think you was,” declared Harley. “Straight I don't.”

“I know I wasn't!” roared the fireman, and banged the table lustily. “I see 'er blood on the joss an' on the floor where she lay!”

“This morning?” I interjected.

“This mornin', in the light of the little oil lamp where old Ma Lorenzo 'ad roasted the pills! It's all still an' quiet an' I feel more dead than alive. I'm goin' to give 'er a hail, see? When I sez to myself, 'Bill,' I sez, 'put out to sea; you're amongst Kaffirs, Bill.' It occurred to me as old Kwen Lung might wonder 'ow much I knew. So I beat it. But when I got in the open air I felt I'd never make my lodgin's without a tonic. That's 'ow I come to meet you, mates.

“Listen—I'm away in the old Seahawk in the mornin', but I'll tell you somethink. That yellow bastard killed his daughter last night! Beat 'er to death. I see it plain. The sweetest, prettiest bit of ivory as Gawd ever put breath into. If 'er body ain't in the river, it's in the 'ouse. Drunk or sober, I never could stand the splits, but mates”—he stood up, and grasping me by the arm, he drew me across the room where he also seized Harley in his muscular grip—“mates,” he went on earnestly, “she was the sweetest, prettiest little gal as a man ever clapped eyes on. One of yer walk into Limehouse Station an' put the koppers wise. I'd sleep easier at sea if I knew old Kwen Lung 'ad gone west on a bloody rope's end.”

II

AT KWEN LUNG'S

For fully ten minutes after the fireman had departed Paul Harley sat staring abstractedly in front of him, his cold pipe between his teeth, and knowing his moods I intruded no words upon this reverie, until:

“Come on, Knox,” he said, standing up suddenly, “I think this matter calls for speedy action.”

“What! Do you think the man's story was true?”

“I think nothing. I am going to look at Kwen Lung's joss.”

Without another word he led the way downstairs and out into the deserted street. The first gray halftones of dawn were creeping into the sky, so that the outlines of Limehouse loomed like dim silhouettes about us. There was abundant evidence in the form of noises, strange and discordant, that many workers were busy on dock and riverside, but the streets through which our course lay were almost empty. Sometimes a furtive shadow would move out of some black gully and fade into a dimly seen doorway in a manner peculiarly unpleasant and Asiatic. But we met no palpable pedestrian throughout the journey.

Before the door of a house in Pennyfields which closely resembled that which we had left in Wade Street, in that it was flatly uninteresting, dirty and commonplace, we paused. There was no sign of life about the place and no lights showed at any of the windows, which appeared as dim cavities—eyeless sockets in the gray face of the building, as dawn proclaimed the birth of a new day.

Harley seized the knocker and knocked sharply. There was no response, and he repeated the summons, but again without effect. Thereupon, with a muttered exclamation, he grasped the knocker a third time and executed a veritable tattoo upon the door. When this had proceeded for about half a minute or more:

“All right, all right!” came a shaky voice from within. “I'm coming.”

Harley released the knocker, and, turning to me:

“Ma Lorenzo,” he whispered. “Don't make any mistakes.”

Indeed, even as he warned me, heralded by a creaking of bolts and the rattling of a chain, the door was opened by a fat, shapeless, half-caste woman of indefinite age; in whose dark eyes, now sunken in bloated cheeks, in whose full though drooping lips, and even in the whole overlaid contour of whose face and figure it was possible to recognize the traces of former beauty. This was Ma Lorenzo, who for many years had lived at that address with old Kwen Lung, of whom strange stories were told in Chinatown.

As Bill Jones, A. B. , my friend, Paul Harley, was well known to Ma Lorenzo as he was well known to many others in that strange colony which clusters round the London docks. I sometimes enjoyed the privilege of accompanying my friend on a tour of investigation through the weird resorts which abound in that neighbourhood, and, indeed, we had been returning from one of these Baghdad nights when our present adventure had been thrust upon us. Assuming a wild and boisterous manner which he had at command:

“'Urry up, Ma!” said Harley, entering without ceremony; “I want to introduce my pal Jim 'ere to old Kwen Lung, and make it all right for him before I sail.”

Ma Lorenzo, who was half Portuguese, replied in her peculiar accent:

“This no time to come waking me up out of bed!”

But Harley, brushing past her, was already inside the stuffy little room, and I hastened to follow.

“Kwen Lung!” shouted my friend loudly. “Where are you? Brought a friend to see you.”

“Kwen Lung no hab,” came the complaining tones of Ma Lorenzo from behind us.

It was curious to note how long association with the Chinese had resulted in her catching the infection of that pidgin-English which is a sort of esperanto in all Asiatic quarters.

“Eh!” cried my friend, pushing open a door on the right of the passage and stumbling down three worn steps into a very evil-smelling room. “Where is he?”

“Go play fan-tan. Not come back.”

Ma Lorenzo, having relocked the street door, had rejoined us, and as I followed my friend down into the dim and uninviting apartment she stood at the top of the steps, hands on hips, regarding us.

The place, which was quite palpably an opium den, must have disappointed anyone familiar with the more ornate houses of Chinese vice in San Francisco and elsewhere. The bare floor was not particularly clean, and the few decorations which the room boasted were garishly European for the most part. A deep divan, evidently used sometimes as a bed, occupied one side of the room, and just to the left of the steps reposed the only typically Oriental object in the place.

It was a strange thing to see in so sordid a setting; a great gilded joss, more than life-size, squatting, hideous, upon a massive pedestal; a figure fit for some native temple but strangely out of place in that dirty little Limehouse abode.

I had never before visited Kwen Lung's, but the fame of his golden joss had reached me, and I know that he had received many offers for it, all of which he had rejected. It was whispered that Kwen Lung was rich, that he was a great man among the Chinese, and even that some kind of religious ceremony periodically took place in his house. Now, as I stood staring at the famous idol, I saw something which made me stare harder than ever.

The place was lighted by a hanging lamp from which depended bits of coloured paper and several gilded silk tassels; but dim as the light was it could not conceal those tell-tale stains.

There was blood on the feet of the golden idol!

All this I detected at a glance, but ere I had time to speak:

“You can't tell me that tale, Ma!” cried Harley. “I believe 'e was smokin' in 'ere when we knocked.”

The woman shrugged her fat shoulders.

“No, hab,” she repeated. “You two johnnies clear out. Let me sleep.”

But as I turned to her, beneath the nonchalant manner I could detect a great uneasiness; and in her dark eyes there was fear. That Harley also had seen the bloodstains I was well aware, and I did not doubt that furthermore he had noted the fact that the only mat which the room boasted had been placed before the joss—doubtless to hide other stains upon the boards.

As we stood so I presently became aware of a current of air passing across the room in the direction of the open door. It came from a window before which a tawdry red curtain had been draped. Either the window behind the curtain was wide open, which is alien to Chinese habits, or it was shattered. While I was wondering if Harley intended to investigate further:

“Come on, Jim!” he cried boisterously, and clapped me on the shoulder; “the old fox don't want to be disturbed.”

He turned to the woman:

“Tell him when he wakes up, Ma,” he said, “that if ever my pal Jim wants a pipe he's to 'ave one. Savvy? Jim's square.”

“Savvy,” replied the woman, and she was wholly unable to conceal her relief. “You clear out now, and I tell Kwen Lung when he come in.”

“Righto, Ma!” said Harley. “Kiss 'im on both cheeks for me, an' tell 'im I'll be 'ome again in a month.”

Grasping me by the arm he lurched up the steps, and the two of us presently found ourselves out in the street again. In the growing light the squalor of the district was more evident than ever, but the comparative freshness of the air was welcome after the reek of that room in which the golden idol sat leering, with blood at his feet.

“You saw, Harley?” I exclaimed excitedly. “You saw the stains? And I'm certain the window was broken!”

Harley nodded shortly.

“Back to Wade Street!” he said. “I allow myself fifteen minutes to shed Bill Jones, able seaman, and to become Paul Harley, of Chancery Lane.”

As we hurried along:

“What steps shall you take?” I asked.

“First step: search Kwen Lung's house from cellar to roof. Second step: entirely dependent upon result of first. The Chinese are subtle, Knox. If Kwen Lung has killed his daughter, it may require all the resources of Scotland Yard to prove it.”

“But———”

“There is no 'but' about it. Chinatown is the one district of London which possesses the property of swallowing people up.”

III

“CAPTAIN DAN”

Half an hour later, as I sat in the inner room before the great dressing-table laboriously removing my disguise—for I was utterly incapable of metamorphosing myself like Harley in seven minutes—I heard a rapping at the outer door. I glanced nervously at my face in the mirror.

Comparatively little of “Jim” had yet been removed, for since time was precious to my friend I had acted as his dresser before setting to work to remove my own make-up. There were two entrances to the establishment, by one of which Paul Harley invariably entered and invariably went out, and from the other of which “Bill Jones” was sometimes seen to emerge, but never Paul Harley. That my friend had made good his retirement I knew, but, nevertheless, if I had to open the door of the outer room it must be as “Jim.”

Thinking it impolite not to do so, since the one who knocked might be aware that we had come in but not gone out again, I hastily readjusted that side of my moustache which I had begun to remove, replaced my cap and muffler, and carefully locking the door of the dressing-room, crossed the outer apartment and opened the door.

It was Harley's custom never to enter or leave these rooms except under the mantle of friendly night, but at so early an hour I confess I had not expected a visitor. Wondering whom I should find there I opened the door.

Standing on the landing was a fellow-lodger who permanently occupied the two top rooms of the house. Paul Harley had taken the trouble to investigate the man's past, for “Captain Dan,” the name by which he was known in the saloons and worse resorts which he frequented, was palpably a broken-down gentleman; a piece of flotsam caught in the yellow stream. Opium had been his downfall. How he lived I never knew, but Harley believed he had some small but settled income, sufficient to enable him to kill himself in comfort with the black pills.

As he stood there before me in the early morning light, I was aware of some subtle change in his appearance. It was fully six months since I had seen him last, but in some vague way he looked younger. Haggard he was, with an ugly cut showing on his temple, but not so lined as I remembered him. Some former man seemed to be struggling through the opium-scarred surface. His eyes were brighter, and I noted with surprise that he wore decent clothes and was clean shaved.

“Good morning, Jim,” he said; “you remember me, don't you?”

As he spoke I observed, too, that his manner had altered. He who had consorted with the sweepings af the doss-houses now addressed me as a courteous gentleman addresses an inferior—not haughtily or patronizingly, but with a note of conscious superiority and self-respect wholly unfamiliar. Almost it threw me off my guard, but remembering in the nick of time that I was still “Jim”:

“Of course I remember you, Cap'n,” I said. “Step inside.”

“Thanks,” he replied, and followed me into the little room.

I placed for him the arm-chair which our friend the fireman had so recently occupied, but:

“I won't sit down,” he said.

And now I observed that he was evidently in a condition of repressed excitement. Perhaps he saw the curiosity in my glance, for he suddenly rested both his hands on my shoulders, and:

“Yes, I have given up the dope, Jim,” he said—-“done with it for ever. There's not a soul in this neighbourhood I can trust, yet if ever a man wanted a pal, I want one to-day. Now, you're square, my lad. I always knew that, in spite of the dope; and if I ask you to do a little thing that means a lot to me, I think you will do it. Am I right?”

“If it can be done, I'll do it,” said I.

“Then, listen. I'm leaving England in the Patna for Singapore. She sails at noon to-morrow, and passengers go on board at ten o'clock. I've got my ticket, papers in order, but”—he paused impressively, grasping my shoulders hard—“I must get on board to-night.”

I stared him in the face.

“Why?” I asked.

He returned my look with one searching and eager; then:

“If I show you the reason,” said he, “and trust you with all my papers, will you go down to the dock—it's no great distance—and ask to see Marryat, the chief officer? Perhaps you've sailed with him?”

“No,” I replied guardedly. “I was never in the Patna.”

“Never mind. When you give him a letter which I shall write he will make the necessary arrangements for me to occupy my state-room to-night. I knew him well,” he explained, “in—the old days. Will you do it, Jim?”

“I'll do it with pleasure,” I answered.

“Shake!” said Captain Dan.

We shook hands heartily, and:

“Now I'll show you the reason,” he added. “Come upstairs.”

Turning, he led the way upstairs to his own room, and wondering greatly, I followed him in. Never having been in Captain Dan's apartments I cannot say whether they, like their occupant, had changed for the better. But I found myself in a room surprisingly clean and with a note of culture in its appointments which was even more surprising.

On a couch by the window, wrapped in a fur rug, lay the prettiest half-caste girl I had ever seen, East or West. Her skin was like cream rose petals and her abundant hair was of wonderful lustrous black. Perhaps it was her smooth warm colour which suggested the idea, but as her cheeks flushed at sight of Captain Dan and the long dark eyes lighted up in welcome, I thought of a delicate painting on ivory and I wondered more and more what it all could mean.

“I have brought Jim to see you,” said Captain Dan. “No, don't trouble to move dear.”

But even before he had spoken I had seen the girl wince with pain as she had endeavoured to sit up to greet us. She lay on her side in a rather constrained attitude, but although her sudden movement had brought tears to her eyes she smiled bravely and extended a tiny ivory hand to me.

“This is my wife, Jim!” said Captain Dan.

I could find no words at all, but merely stood there looking very awkward and feeling almost awed by the indescribable expression of trust in the eyes of the little Eurasian, as with her tiny fingers hidden in her husband's clasp she lay looking up at him.

“Now you know, Jim,” said he, “why we must get aboard the Patna to-night. My wife is really too ill to travel; in fact, I shall have to carry her down to the cab, and such a proceeding in daylight would attract an enormous crowd in this neighbourhood!”

“Give me the letters and the papers,” I answered. “I will start now.”

His wife disengaged her hand and extended it to me.

“Thank you,” she said, in a queer little silver-bell voice; “you are good. I shall always love you.”