The Daughter od Huang Chow

This Time its "The Daugher of Huang Chow" by Sax Rohmer.
Comments and requests would be greatly appreciated.






The Daughter Of Huang Chow
Chapter I
"Diamond Fred"
In the saloon bar of a public-house, situated only a few hundred yards from the official frontier of Chinatown, two men sat at a small table in a corner, engaged in earnest conversation. They afforded a sharp contrast. One was a thick-set and rather ruffianly looking fellow, not too cleanly in either person or clothing, and, amongst other evidences that at one time he had known the prize ring, possessing a badly broken nose. His companion was dressed with that spruceness which belongs to the successful East End Jew; he was cleanly shaven, of slight build, and alert in manner and address.
Having ordered and paid for two whiskies and sodas, the Jew, raising his glass, nodded to his companion and took a drink. The glitter of a magnificent diamond which he wore seemed to attract the other's attention almost hypnotically.
"Cheerio, Freddy!" said the thick-set man. "Any news?"
"Nothing much," returned the one addressed as Freddy, setting his glass upon the table and selecting a cigarette from a packet which he carried in his pocket.
"I'm not so sure," growled the other, watching him suspiciously. "You've been lying low for a long time, and it's not like you to slack off except when there's something big in sight."
"Hm!" said his companion, lighting his cigarette. "What do you mean exactly?"
Jim Poland -- for such was the big man's name--growled and spat reflectively into a spittoon.
"I've had my eye on you, Freddy," he replied; "I've had my eye on you!"
"Oh, have you?" murmured the other. "But tell me what you mean!"
Beneath his suave manner lay a threat, and, indeed, Freddy Cohen, known to his associates as "Diamond Fred," was in many ways a formidable personality. He had brought to his chosen profession of crook a first-rate American training, together with all that mental agility and cleverness which belong to his race, and was at once an object of envy and admiration amongst the fraternity which keeps Scotland Yard busy.
Jim Poland, physically a more dangerous character, was not in the same class with him; but he was not without brains of a sort, and Cohen, although smiling agreeably, waited with some anxiety for his reply.
"I mean," growled Poland, "that you're not wasting your time with Lala Huang for nothing."
"Perhaps not," returned Cohen lightly. "She's a pretty girl; but what business is it of yours?"
"None at all. I ain't interested in 'er good looks; neither are you."
Cohen shrugged and raised his glass again.
"Come on," growled Poland, leaning across the table. "I know, and I'm in on it. D'ye hear me? I'm in on it. These are hard times, and we've got to stick together."
"Oh," said Cohen, "that's the game, is it?"
"That's the game right enough. You won't go wrong if you bring me in, even at fifty-fifty, because maybe I know things about old Huang that you don't know."
The Jew's expression changed subtly, and beneath his drooping lids he glanced aside at the speaker. Then:
"It's no promise," he said, "but what do you know?"
Poland bent farther over the table.
"Chinatown's being watched again. I heard this morning that Red Kerry was down here."
Cohen laughed.
"Red Kerry!" he echoed. "Red Kerry means nothing in my young life, Jim."
"Don't 'e?" returned Jim, snarling viciously. "The way he cleaned up that dope crowd awhile back seemed to show he was no jug, didn't it?"
The Jew made a racial gesture as if to dismiss the subject.
"All right," continued Poland. "Think that way if you like. But the patrols have been doubled. I suppose you know that? And it's a cert there are special men on duty, ever since the death of that Chink."
Cohen shifted uneasily, glancing about him in a furtive fashion.
"See what I mean?" continued the other. "Chinatown ain't healthy just now."
He finished his whisky at a draught, and, standing up, lurched heavily across to the counter. He returned with two more glasses. Then, reseating himself and bending forward again:
"There's one thing I reckon you don't know," he whispered in Cohen's ear. "I saw that Chink talking to Lala Huang only a week before the time he was hauled out of Limehouse Reach. I'm wondering, Diamond, if, with all your cleverness, you may not go the same way."
"Don't try to pull the creep stuff on me, Jim," said Cohen uneasily. "What are you driving at, anyway?"
"Well," replied Poland, sipping his whisky reflectively, "how did that Chink get into the river?"
"How the devil do I know?"
"And what killed him? It wasn't drowning, although he was all swelled up."
"See here, old pal," said Cohen. "I know 'Frisco better than you know Limehouse. Let me tell you that this little old Chinatown of yours is pie to me. You're trying to get me figuring on Chinese death traps, secret poisons, and all that junk. Boy, you're wasting your poetry. Even if you did see the Chink with Lala, and I doubt it -- Oh, don't get excited, I'm speaking plain -- there's no connection that I can see between the death of said Chink and old Huang Chow."
"Ain't there?" growled Poland huskily. He grasped the other's wrist as in a vise and bent forward so that his battered face was close to the pale countenance of the Jew. "I've been covering old Huang for months and months. Now I'm going to tell you something. Since the death of that Chink Red Kerry's been covering him, too."
"See here!" Cohen withdrew his arm from the other's grasp angrily. "You can't freeze me out of this claim with bogey stuff. You're listed, my lad, and you know it. Chief Inspector Kerry is your pet nightmare. But if he walked in here right now I could ask him to have a drink. I wouldn't but I could. You've got the wrong angle, Jim. Lala likes me fine, and although she doesn't say much, what she does say is straight. I'll ask her to-night about the Chink."
"Then you'll be a damned fool."
"What's that?"
"I say you'll be a damned fool. I'm warning you, Freddy. There are Chinks and Chinks. All the boys know old Huang Chow has got a regular gold mine buried somewhere under the floor. But all the boys don't know what I know, and it seems that you don't either."
"What is that?"
Jim Poland bent forward more urgently, again seizing Cohen's wrist, and:
"Huang Chow is a mighty big bug amongst the Chinese," he whispered, glancing cautiously about him. "He's hellish clever and rotten with money. A man like that wants handling. I'm not telling you what I know. But call it fifty-fifty and maybe you'll come out alive."
The brow of Diamond Fred displayed beads of perspiration, and with a blue silk handkerchief which he carried in his breast pocket he delicately dried his forehead.
"You're an old hand at this stuff, Jim," he muttered. "It amounts to this, I suppose; that if I don't agree you'll queer my game?"
Jim Poland's brow lowered and he clenched his fists formidably. Then:
"Listen," he said in his hoarse voice. "It ain't your claim any more than mine. You've covered it different, that's all. Yours was always the petticoat lay. Mine's slower but safer. Is anyone else in with you?"
"No."
"Then we'll double up. Now I'll tell you something. I was backing out."
"What? You were going to quit?"
"I was."
"Why?"
"Because the thing's too dead easy, and a thing like that always looks like hell to me."
Freddy Cohen finished his glass of whisky.
"Wait while I get some more drinks," he said.
In this way, then, at about the hour of ten on a stuffy autumn night, in the crowded bar of that Wapping public-house, these two made a compact; and of its outcome and of the next appearance of Cohen, the Jewish-American cracksman, within the ken of man, I shall now proceed to tell.
Chapter II
The End Of Cohen
"I've been expecting this," said Chief Inspector Kerry. He tilted his bowler hat farther forward over his brow and contemplated the ghastly exhibit which lay upon the slab of the mortuary. Two other police officers -- one in uniform -- were present, and they treated the celebrated Chief Inspector with the deference which he had not only earned but had always demanded from his subordinates.
Earmarked for important promotion, he was an interesting figure as he stood there in the gloomy, ill-lighted place, his pose that of an athlete about to perform a long jump, or perhaps, as it might have appeared to some, that of a dancing-master about to demonstrate a new step.
His close-cropped hair was brilliantly red, and so was his short, wiry, aggressive moustache. He was ruddy of complexion, and he looked out unblinkingly upon the world with a pair of steel-blue eyes. Neat he was to spruceness, and while of no more than medium height he had the shoulders of an acrobat.
The detective who stood beside him, by name John Durham, had one trait in common with his celebrated superior. This was a quick keenness, a sort of alert vitality, which showed in his eyes, and indeed in every line of his thin, clean-shaven face. Kerry had picked him out as the most promising junior in his department.
"Give me the particulars," said the Chief Inspector. "It isn't robbery. He's wearing a diamond ring worth two hundred pounds."
His diction was rapid and terse -- so rapid as to create the impression that he bit off the ends of the longer words. He turned his fierce blue eyes upon the uniformed officer who stood at the end of the slab.
"They are very few, Chief Inspector," was the reply. "He was hauled out by the river police shortly after midnight, at the lower end of Limehouse Reach. He was alive then--they heard his cry--but he died while they were hauling him into the boat."
"Any statement?" rapped Kerry.
"He was past it, Chief Inspector. According to the report of the officer in charge, he mumbled something which sounded like: 'It has bitten me,' just before he became unconscious."
"'It has bitten me,'" murmured Kerry. "The divisional surgeon has seen him?"
"Yes, Chief Inspector. And in his opinion the man did not die from drowning, but from some form of virulent poisoning."
"Poisoning?"
"That's the idea. There will be a further examination, of course. Either a hypodermic injection or a bite."
"A bite?" said Kerry. "The bite of what?"
"That I cannot say, Chief Inspector. A venomous reptile, I suppose."
Kerry stared down critically at the swollen face of the victim, and then glanced sharply aside at Durham.
"Accounts for his appearance, I suppose," he murmured.
"Yes," said Durham quietly. "He hadn't been in the water long enough to look like that." He turned to the local officer. "Is there any theory as to the point at which he went in?"
"Well, an arrest has been made."
"By whom? of whom?" rapped Kerry.
"Two constables patrolling the Chinatown area arrested a man for suspicious loitering. He turned out to be a well-known criminal--Jim Poland, with a whole list of convictions against him. They're holding him at Limehouse Station, and the theory is that he was operating with -- " He nodded in the direction of the body.
"Then who's the smart with the swollen face?" inquired Kerry. "He's a new one on me."
"Yes, but he's been identified by one of the K Division men. He is an American crook with a clean slate, so far as this side is concerned. Cohen is his name. And the idea seems to be that he went in at some point between where he was found by the river police and the point at which Jim Poland was arrested."
Kerry snapped his teeth together audibly, and:
"I'm open to learn," he said, "that the house of Huang Chow is within that area."
"It is."
"I thought so. He died the same way the Chinaman died awhile ago," snapped Kerry savagely.
"It looks very queer." He glanced aside at the local officer. "Cover him up," he ordered, and, turning, he walked briskly out of the mortuary, followed by Detective Durham.
Although dawn was not far off, this was the darkest hour of the night, so that even the sounds of dockland were muted and the riverside slept as deeply as the great port of London ever sleeps. Vague murmurings there were and distant clankings, with the hum of machinery which is never still.
Few of London's millions were awake at that hour, yet Scotland Yard was awake in the person of the fierce-eyed Chief Inspector and his subordinate. Perhaps those who lightly criticize the Metropolitan Force might have learned a new respect for the tireless vigilance which keeps London clean and wholesome, had they witnessed this scene on the borders of Limehouse, as Kerry, stepping into a waiting taxi-cab accompanied by Durham, proceeded to Limehouse Police Station in that still hour when the City slept.
The arrival of Kerry created something of a stir amongst the officials on duty. His reputation in these days was at least as great as that of the most garrulous Labour member.
The prisoner was in cells, but the Chief Inspector elected to interview him in the office; and accordingly, while the officer in charge sat at an extremely tidy writing-table, tapping the blotting-pad with a pencil, and Detective John Durham stood beside him, Kerry paced up and down the little room, deep in reflection, until the door opened and the prisoner was brought in.
One swift glance the Chief Inspector gave at the battle-scarred face, and recognized instantly that this was a badly frightened man. Crossing to the table he took up a typewritten slip which lay there, and:
"Your name is James Poland?" he said. "Four convictions; one, robbery with violence."
Jim Poland nodded sullenly.
"You were arrested at the corner of Pekin Street about midnight. What were you doing there?"
"Taking a walk."
"I'll say it again," rapped Kerry, fixing his fierce eyes upon the man's face. "What were you doing there?"
"I've told you."
"And I tell you you're a liar. Where did you leave the man Cohen?"
Poland blinked his small eyes, cleared his throat, and looked down at the floor uneasily. Then:
"Who's Cohen?" he grunted.
"You mean, who was Cohen?" cried Kerry.
The shot went home. The man clenched his fists and looked about the room from face to face.
"You don't tell me -- " he began huskily.
"I've told you," said Kerry. "He's on the slab. Spit out the truth; it'll be good for your health."
The man hesitated, then looked up, his eyes half closed and a cunning expression upon his face.
"Make out your own case," he said. "You've got nothing against me."
Kerry snapped his teeth together viciously.
"I've told you what happened to your pal," he warned. "If you're a wise man you'll come in on our side, before the same thing happens to you."
"I don't know what you're talking about," growled Poland.
Kerry nodded to the constable at the doorway.
"Take him back," he ordered.
Jim Poland being returned to his cell, Kerry, as the door closed behind the prisoner and his guard, stared across at Durham where he stood beside the table.
"An old hand," he said. "But there's another way." He glanced at the officer in charge. "Hold him till the morning. He'll prove useful."
From his waistcoat pocket he took out a slip of chewing gum, unwrapped it, and placed the mint-flavoured wafer between his large white teeth. He bit upon it savagely, settled his hat upon his head, and, turning, walked toward the door. In the doorway he paused.
"Come with me, Durham," he said. "I am leaving the conduct of the case entirely in your hands from now onward."
Detective Durham looked surprised and not a little anxious.
"I am doing so for two reasons," continued the Chief Inspector. "These two reasons I shall now explain."
Chapter III
The Secret Treasure-House
Unlike its sister colony in New York, there are no show places in Limehouse. The visitor sees nothing but mean streets and dark doorways. The superficial inquirer comes away convinced that the romance of the Asiatic district has no existence outside the imaginations of writers of fiction. Yet here lies a secret quarter, as secret and as strange, in its smaller way, as its parent in China which is called the Purple Forbidden City.
On a morning when mist lay over the Thames reaches, softening the harshness of the dock buildings and lending an air of mystery to the vessels stealing out upon the tide, a man walked briskly along Limehouse Causeway, looking about him inquiringly, as one unfamiliar with the neighbourhood. Presently he seemed to recognize a turning to the right, and he pursued this for a time, now walking more slowly.
A European woman, holding a half-caste baby in her arms, stood in an open doorway, watching him uninterestedly. Otherwise, except for one neatly dressed young Chinaman, who passed him about halfway along the street, there was nothing which could have told the visitor that he had crossed the borderline dividing West from East and was now in an Oriental town.
A very narrow alleyway between two dingy houses proved to be the spot for which he was looking; and, having stared about him for a while, he entered this alleyway. At the farther end it was crossed T-fashion, by another alley, the only object of interest being an iron post at the crossing, and the scenery being made up entirely of hideous brick walls.
About halfway along on the left, set in one of these walls, were strong wooden gates, apparently those of a warehouse. Beside them was a door approached by two very dirty steps. There was a bell-push near the door, but upon neither of these entrances was there any plate to indicate the name of the proprietor of the establishment.
From his pocket-book the visitor extracted a card, consulted something written upon it, and then pressed the bell.
It was very quiet in this dingy little court. No sound of the busy thoroughfares penetrated here; and although the passage forming the top of the "T" practically marked the river bank, only dimly could one discern the sounds which belong to a seaport.
Presently the door was opened by a Chinese boy who wore the ordinary native working dress, and who regarded the man upon the step with oblique, tired-looking eyes.
"Mr. Huang Chow?" asked the caller.
The boy nodded.
"You wantchee him see?"
"If he is at home."
The boy glanced at the card, which the visitor still held between finger and thumb, and extended his hand silently. The card was surrendered. It was that of an antique dealer of Dover Street, Piccadilly, and written upon the back was the following: "Mr. Hampden would like to do business with you." The signature of the dealer followed.
The boy turned and passed along a dim and perfectly unfurnished passage which the opening of the door had revealed, while Mr. Hampden stood upon the step and lighted a cigarette.
In less than a minute the boy returned and beckoned to him to come in. As he did so, and the door was closed, he almost stumbled, so dark was the passage.
Presently, guided by the boy, he found himself in a very business-like little office, where a girl sat at an American desk, looking up at him inquiringly.
She was of a dark and arresting type. Without being pretty in the European sense, there was something appealing in her fine, dark eyes, and she possessed the inviting smile which is the heritage of Eastern women. Her dress was not unlike that of any other business girl, except that the neck of her blouse was cut very low, a fashion affected by many Eurasians, and she wore a gaily coloured sash, and large and very costly pearl ear-rings. As Mr. Hampden paused in the doorway:
"Good morning," said the girl, glancing down at the card which lay upon the desk before her. "You come from Mr. Isaacs, eh?"
She looked at him with a caressing glance from beneath half- lowered lashes, but missed no detail of his appearance. She did not quite like his moustache, and thought that he would have looked better cleanshaven. Nevertheless, he was a well-set-up fellow, and her manner evidenced approval.
"Yes," he replied, smiling genially. "I have a small commission to execute, and I am told that you can help me."
The girl paused for a moment, and then:
"Yes, very likely," she said, speaking good English but with an odd intonation. "It is not jade? We have very little jade."
"No, no. I wanted an enamelled casket."
"What kind?"
"Cloisonne."
"Cloisonne? Yes, we have several."
She pressed a bell, and, glancing up at the boy who had stood throughout the interview at the visitor's elbow, addressed him rapidly in Chinese. He nodded his head and led the way through a second doorway. Closing this, he opened a third and ushered Mr. Hampden into a room which nearly caused the latter to gasp with astonishment.
One who had blundered from Whitechapel into the Khan Khalil, who had been transported upon a magic carpet from a tube station to the Taj Mahal, of dropped suddenly upon Lebanon hills to find himself looking down upon the pearly domes and jewelled gardens of Damascus, could not well have been more surprised. This great treasure-house of old Huang Chow was one of Chinatown's secrets -- a secret shared only by those whose commercial interests were identical with the interests of Huang Chow.
The place was artificially lighted by lamps which themselves were beautiful objects of art, and which swung from the massive beams of the ceiling. The floor of the warehouse, which was partly of stone, was covered with thick matting, and spread upon it were rugs and carpets of Karadagh, Kermanshah, Sultan-abad, and Khorassan, with lesser-known loomings of almost equal beauty. Skins of rare beasts overlay the divans. Furniture of ivory, of ebony and lemonwood, preciously inlaid, gave to the place an air of cunning confusion. There were tall cabinets, there were caskets and chests of exquisite lacquer and enamel, loot of an emperor's palace; robes heavy with gold; slippers studded with jewels; strange carven ivories; glittering weapons; pots, jars, and bowls, as delicate and as fragile as the petals of a lily.
Last, but not least, sitting cross-legged upon a low couch, was old Huang Chow, smoking a great curved pipe, and peering half blindly across the place through large horn-rimmed spectacles. This couch was set immediately beside a wide ascending staircase, richly carpeted, and on the other side of the staircase, in a corresponding recess, upon a gilded trestle carved to represent the four claws of a dragon, rested perhaps the strangest exhibit of that strange collection -- a Chinese coffin of exquisite workmanship.
The boy retired, and Mr. Hampden found himself alone with Huang Chow. No word had been exchanged between master and servant, but:
"Good morning, Mr. Hampden," said the Chinaman in a high, thin voice. "Please be seated. It is from Mr. Isaacs you come?"
Chapter IV
Personal Report Of Detective John Durham To Chief Inspector Kerry, Officer In Charge Of Limehouse Inquiry
Dear Chief Inspector, -- Following your instructions I returned and interviewed the prisoner Poland in his cell. I took the line which you had suggested, pointing out to him that he had nothing to gain and everything to lose by keeping silent.
"Answer my questions," I said, "and you can walk straight out. Otherwise, you'll be up before the magistrate, and on your record alone it will mean a holiday which you probably don't want."
He was very truculent, but I got him in a good humour at last, and he admitted that he had been cooperating with the dead man, Cohen, in an attempt to burgle the house of Huang Chow. His reluctance to go into details seemed to be due rather to fear of Huang Chow than to fear of the law, and I presently gathered that he regarded Huang as responsible for the death not only of Cohen, but also of the Chinaman who was hauled out of the river about three weeks ago, as you well remember. The post-mortem showed that he had died of some kind of poisoning, and when we saw Cohen in the mortuary, his swollen appearance struck me as being very similar to that of the Chinaman. (See my report dated 31st ultimo.)
He finally agreed to talk if I would promise that he should not be charged and that his name should never be mentioned to anyone in connection with what he might tell me. I promised him that outside the ordinary official routine I would respect his request, and he told me some very curious things, which no doubt have a bearing on the case.
For instance, he had discovered -- I don't know in what way -- that the dead Chinaman, whose name was Pi Lung, had been in negotiation with Huang Chow for some sort of job in his warehouse. Poland had seen the man talking to Huang's daughter, at the end of the alley which leads to the place. He seemed to attach extraordinary importance to this fact. At last:
"I'll tell you what it is," he said. "That Chink was a stranger to Limehouse; I can swear to it. He was a gent of his hands; I reckon they've got 'em in China as well as here. He went out for the old boy's money-box, and finished like Cohen finished."
"Make your meaning clearer," I said.
"My meaning's this: Old Huang Chow is the biggest dealer in stolen and smuggled valuables from overseas we've got in London. He's something else as well; he's a big swell in China. But here's the point. He's got business with buyers all over London, and they have to pay cash -- no checks. He doesn't bank it: I've proved that. He's got it in gold, or diamonds, or something, being wise to present conditions, hidden there in the house. Pi Lung was after his hoard. He didn't get it. Cohen and me was after it. Where's Cohen?"
I agreed that it looked very suspicious, and presently:
"When I went in with Cohen," continued Poland, "I knew one thing he didn't know -- a short cut into the warehouse. He's been playing pretty-like with Lala, old Huang's daughter, and it's my belief that he knew where the store was hidden; but he never told me. We knew there were special men on duty, and we'd arranged that I was to give a signal when the patrol had passed. Cohen all the time had planned to double on me. While I was watching down on the Causeway end he climbed up and got in through the skylight I'd shown him. When I got there he was missing, but the skylight was open. I started off after him."
Then Poland clutched me, and his fright was very real.
"I heard a shriek like nothing I ever heard in my life. I saw a light shine through the trap, and then I heard a sort of moaning. Last, I heard a bang, and the light went out. I staggered down the passage half silly, started to run, and ran straight into the arms of two coppers."
This evidence I thought was conclusive, and in accordance with your instructions I proceeded to Mr. Isaacs in Dover Street. He didn't seem too pleased at my suggestion, but when I pointed out to him that one good turn deserved another, he agreed to give me an introduction to Huang Chow.
I adopted a very simple disguise, just altering my complexion and sticking on a moustache with spirit gum, hair by hair, and trimming it down military fashion. Everything ran smoothly, and I seemed to make a fairly favourable impression upon Lala Huang, the Chinaman's daughter, who evidently interviews prospective customers before they are admitted to the warehouse.
She is a Eurasian and extremely good looking. But when I found myself in the room where old Huang keeps his treasures, I really thought I was dreaming. It's a collection that must be worth thousands. He showed me snuff-bottles, cut out of gems, and with a little opening no bigger than the hole in a pipe-stem, but with wonderful paintings done inside the bottles. He'd got a model of a pagoda made out of human teeth, and a big golden rug woven from the hair of Circassian slave girls. Excuse this, Chief Inspector; I know it is what you call the romantic stuff; but I think it would have impressed you if you had seen it.
Anyway, I bought a little enamelled box, in accordance with Mr. Isaacs's instructions, although whether I succeeded in convincing Huang Chow that I knew anything about the matter is more than doubtful. He got up from a sort of throne he sits on, and led the way up a broad staircase to a private room above.
"Of course, you have brought the cash, Mr. Hampden?" he said.
He speaks quite faultless English. He walked up three steps to a sort of raised writing-table in this upstairs room, and I counted out the money to him. When he sat at the table he faced toward the room, and I couldn't help thinking that, in his horn-rimmed spectacles, he looked like some old magistrate. He explained that he would pack the purchase for me, but that I must personally take it away. And:
"You understand," said he, "that you bought it from a gentleman who had purchased it abroad."
I said I quite understood. He bowed me out very politely, and presently I found myself back in the office with Lala Huang.
She seemed quite disposed to talk, and I chatted with her while the box was being packed for me to take away. I knew I must make good use of my time, but you have never given me a job I liked less. I mean, there is something very appealing about her, and I hated to think that I was playing a double game. However, without actually agreeing to see me again, she told me enough to enable me to meet her "accidentally," if I wanted to. Therefore, I am going to look out for her this evening, and probably take her to a picture palace, or somewhere where we can have a quiet talk. She seems to be fancy free, and for some reason I feel sorry for the girl. I don't altogether like the job, but I hope to justify your faith in me, Chief.
I will prepare my official report this evening when I return.
Yours obediently, -- John Durham.
Chapter V
Lala Huang
"No," said Lala Huang, "I don't like London -- not this part of London."
"Where would you rather be?" asked Durham. "In China?"
Dusk had dropped its merciful curtain over Limehouse, and as the two paced slowly along West India Dock Road it seemed to the detective that a sort of glamour had crept into the scene.
He was a clever man within his limitations, and cultured up to a point; but he was not philosopher enough to know that he viewed the purlieus of Limehouse through a haze of Oriental mystery conjured up by the conversation of his companion. Temple bells there were in the clangour of the road cars. The smoke-stacks had a semblance of pagodas. Burma she had conjured up before him, and China, and the soft islands where she had first seen the light. For as well as a streak of European, there was Kanaka blood in Lala, which lent her an appeal quite new to Durham, insidious and therefore dangerous.
"Not China," she replied. "Somehow I don't think I shall ever see China again. But my father is rich, and it is dreadful to think that we live here when there are so many more beautiful places to live in."
"Then why does he stay?" asked Durham with curiosity.
"For money, always for money," answered Lala, shrugging her shoulders. "Yet if it is not to bring happiness, what good is it?"
"What good indeed?" murmured Durham.
"There is no fun for me," said the girl pathetically. "Sometimes someone nice comes to do business, but mostly they are Jews, Jews, always Jews, and -- " Again she shrugged eloquently.
Durham perceived the very opening for which he had been seeking..
"You evidently don't like Jews," he said endeavouring to speak lightly.
"No," murmured the girl, "I don't think I do. Some are nice, though. I think it is the same with every kind of people -- there are good and bad."
"Were you ever in America?" asked Durham.
"No."
"I was just thinking," he explained, "that I have known several American Jews who were quite good fellows."
"Yes?" said Lala, looking up at him naively, "I met one not long ago. He was not nice at all."
"Oh!" exclaimed Durham, startled by this admission, which he had not anticipated. "One of your father's customers?"
"Yes, a man named Cohen."
"Cohen?"
"A funny little chap," continued the girl. "He tried to make love to me." She lowered her lashes roguishly. "I knew all along he was pretending. He was a thief, I think. I was afraid of him."
Durham did some rapid thinking, then:
"Did you say his name was Cohen?" he asked.
"That was the name he gave."
"A man named Cohen, an American, was found dead in the river quite recently."
Lala stopped dead and clutched his arm.
"How do you know?" she demanded.
"There was a paragraph in this morning's paper."
She hesitated, then:
"Did it describe him?" she asked.
"No," replied Durham, "I don't think it did in detail. At least, the only part of the description which I remember is that he wore a large and valuable diamond on his left hand."
"Oh!" whispered Lala.
She released her grip of Durham's arm and went on.
"What?" he asked. "Did you think it was someone you knew?"
"I did know him," she replied simply. "The man who was found drowned. It is the same. I am sure now, because of the diamond ring. What paper did you read it in? I want to read it myself."
"I'm afraid I can't remember. It was probably the Daily Mail."
"Had he been drowned?"
"I presume so -- yes," replied Durham guardedly.
Lala Huang was silent for some time while they paced on through the dusk. Then:
"How strange!" she said in a low voice.
"I am sorry I mentioned it," declared Durham. "But how was I to know it was your friend?"
"He was no friend of mine," returned the girl sharply. "I hated him. But it is strange nevertheless. I am sure he intended to rob my father."
"And is that why you think it strange?"
"Yes," she said, but her voice was almost inaudible.
They were come now to the narrow street communicating with the courtway in which the great treasure-house of Huang Chow was situated, and; Lala stopped at the corner.
"It was nice of you to walk along with me," she said. "Do you live in Limehouse?"
"No," replied Durham, "I don't. As a matter of fact, I came down here to-night in the hope of seeing you again."
"Did you?"
The girl glanced up at him doubtfully, and his distaste for the task set him by his superior increased with the passing of every moment. He was a man of some imagination, a great reader, and ambitious professionally. He appreciated the fact that Chief Inspector Kerry looked for great things from him, but for this type of work he had little inclination.
There was too much chivalry in his make-up to enable him to play upon a woman's sentiments, even in the interests of justice. By whatever means the man Cohen had met his death, and whether or no the Chinaman Pi Lung had died by the same hand, Lala Huang was innocent of any complicity in these matters, he was perfectly well assured.
Doubts were to come later when he was away from her, when he had had leisure to consider that she might regard him in the light of a third potential rifler of her father's treasure-house. But at the moment, looking down into her dark eyes, he reproached himself and wondered where his true duty lay.
"It is so gray and dull and sordid here," said the girl, looking down the darkened street. "There is no one much to talk to."
"But you have your business interests to keep you employed during the day, after all."
"I hate it all. I hate it all."
"But you seem to have perfect freedom?"
"Yes. My mother, you see, was not Chinese."
"But you wish to leave Limehouse?"
"I do. I do. Just now it is not so bad, but in the winter how I tire of the gray skies, the endless drizzling rain. Oh!" She shrank back into the shadow of a doorway, clutching at Durham's arm. "Don't let Ah Fu see me."
"Ah Fu? Who is Ah Fu?" asked Durham, also drawing back as a furtive figure went slinking down the opposite side of the street.
"My father's servant. He let you in this morning."
"And why must he not see you?"
"I don't trust him. I think he tells my father things."
"What is it that he carries in his hand?"
"A birdcage, I expect."
"A birdcage?"
"Yes!"
He caught the gleam of her eyes as she looked up at him out of the shadow.
"Is he, then, a bird-fancier?"
"No, no, I can't explain because I don't understand myself. But Ah Fu goes to a place in Shadwell regularly and buys young birds, always very young ones and very little ones."
"For what or for whom?"
"I don't know."
"Have you an aviary in your house?"
"No."
"Do you mean that they disappear, these purchases of Ah Fu's?"
"I often see him carrying a cage of young birds, but we have no birds in the house."
"How perfectly extraordinary!" muttered Durham.
"I distrust Ah Fu," whispered the girl. "I am glad he did not see me with you."
"Young birds," murmured Durham absently. "What kind of young birds? Any particular breed?"
"No; canaries, linnets -- all sorts. Isn't it funny?" The girl laughed in a childish way. "And now I think Ah Fu will have gone in, so I must say good night."
But when presently Detective Durham found himself walking back along West India Dock Road, his mind's eye was set upon the slinking figure of a Chinaman carrying a birdcage.
Chapter VI
A Hint Of Incense
One Chinaman more or less does not make any very great difference to the authorities responsible for maintaining law and order in Limehouse. Asiatic settlers are at liberty to follow their national propensities, and to knife one another within reason. This is wisdom. Such recreations are allowed, if not encouraged, by all wise rulers of Eastern peoples.
"Found drowned," too, is a verdict which has covered many a dark mystery of old Thames, but "Found in the river, death having been due to the action of some poison unknown," is a finding which even in the case of a Chinaman is calculated to stimulate the jaded official mind.
New Scotland Yard had given Durham a roving commission, and had been justified in the fact that the second victim, and this time not a Chinaman, had been found under almost identical conditions. The link with the establishment of Huang Chow was incomplete, and Durham fully recognized that it was up to him to make it sound and incontestable.
Jim Poland was not the only man in the East End who knew that the dead Chinaman had been in negotiation with Huang Chow. Kerry knew it, and had passed the information on to Durham.
Some mystery surrounded the life of the old dealer, who was said to be a mandarin of high rank, but his exact association with the deaths first of the Chinaman Pi Lung, and second of Cohen, remained to be proved. Certain critics have declared the Metropolitan detective service to be obsolete and inefficient. Kerry, as a potential superintendent, resented these criticisms, and in his protege Durham, perceived a member of the new generation who was likely in time to produce results calculated to remove this stigma.
Durham recognized that a greater responsibility rested upon his shoulders than the actual importance of the case might have indicated; and now, proceeding warily along the deserted streets, he found his brain to be extraordinarily active and his imagination very much alive.
There is a night life in Limehouse, as he had learned, but it is a mole life, a subterranean life, of which no sign appears above ground after a certain hour. Nevertheless, as he entered the area which harbours those strange, hidden resorts the rumour of which has served to create the glamour of Chinatown, he found himself to be thinking of the great influence said to be wielded by Huang Chow, and wondering if unseen spies watched his movements.
Lala was Oriental, and now, alone in the night, distrust leapt into being within him. He had been attracted by her and had pitied her. He told himself now that this was because of her dark beauty and the essentially feminine appeal which she made. She was perhaps a vampire of the most dangerous sort, one who lured men to strange deaths for some sinister object beyond reach of a Western imagination.
He found himself doubting the success of those tactics upon which, earlier in the day, he had congratulated himself. Perhaps beneath the guise of Hampden, who bought antique furniture on commission, those cunning old eyes beneath the horn-rimmed spectacles had perceived the detective hidden, or at least had marked subterfuge.
While he could not count Lala a conquest -- for he had not even attempted to make love to her -- the ease with which he had developed the acquaintance now, afforded matter for suspicion.
At the entrance to the court communicating with the establishment of Huang Chow he paused, looking cautiously about him. The men on the Limehouse beats had been warned of the investigation afoot tonight, and there was a plain-clothes man on point duty at no great distance away, although carefully hidden, so that Durham had quite failed to detect his presence.
Durham wore rough clothes and rubber-soled shoes; and now, as he entered the court, he was thinking of the official report of the police sergeant who, not so many hours before, had paid a visit to the house of Huang Chow in order to question him respecting his knowledge of the dead man Cohen, and to learn when last he had seen him.
Old Huang, who had received his caller in the large room upstairs, the room which boasted the presence of the writing- dais, had exhibited no trace of confusion, assuring the sergeant that he had not seen the man Cohen for several days. Cohen had come to him with an American introduction, which he, Huang, believed to be forged, and had wanted him to undertake a shady agency, respecting the details of which he remained peculiarly reticent. In short, nothing had been gained by this official interrogation, and Huang blandly denied any knowledge of an attempted burglary of his establishment.
"What have I to lose?" he had asked the inquirer. "A lot of old lumber which I have accumulated during many years, and a reputation for being wealthy, due to my lonely habits and to the ignorance of those who live around me."
Durham, mentally reviewing the words of the report, reconstructed the scene in his mind; and now, having come to the end of the lane where the iron post rested, he stood staring up at a place in the ancient wall where several bricks had decayed, and where it was possible, according to the statement of the man Poland, to climb up on to a piece of sloping roof, and thence gain the skylight through which Cohen had obtained admittance on the night of his death.
He made sure that his automatic pistol was in his pocket, questioned the dull sounds of the riverside for a moment, looking about him anxiously, and then, using the leaning post as a stepping-stone, he succeeded in wedging his foot into a crevice in the wall. By the exercise of some agility he scrambled up to the top, and presently found himself lying upon a sloping roof.
The skylight remained well out of reach, but his rubber-soled shoes enabled him to creep up the slates until he could grasp the framework with his hands. Presently he found himself perched upon the trap which, if his information could be relied upon, possessed no fastener, or one so faulty that the trap could be raised by means of a brad-awl. He carried one in his pocket, and, screwing it into the framework, he lifted it cautiously, making very little noise.
The trap opened, and up to his nostrils there stole a queer, indefinable odour, partly that which belongs to old Oriental furniture and stuffs, but having mingled with it a hint of incense and of something else not so easily named. He recognized the smell of that strange store-room, which, as Mr. Hampden, he had recently visited.
For one moment he thought he could detect the distant note of a bell. But, listening, he heard nothing, and was reassured.
He rested the trap back against the frame, and shone the ray of an electric torch down into the darkness beneath him. The light fell upon the top of a low carven table, dragon-legged and gilded. Upon it rested the model pagoda constructed of human teeth, and there was something in this discovery which made Durham feel inclined to shudder. However, the impulse was only a passing one.
He measured the distance with his eye. The little table stood beside a deep divan, and he saw that with care it would be possible to drop upon this divan without making much noise. He calculated its exact position before replacing the torch in his pocket, and then, resting back against one side of the frame, he clutched the other with his hands. He wriggled gradually down until further purchase became impossible. He then let himself drop, and swung for a moment by his hands before releasing his hold.
He fell, as he had calculated, upon the divan. It creaked ominously. Catching his foot in the cushions, he stumbled and lay forward for a moment upon his face, listening intently.
The room was very hot but nothing stirred.
Chapter VII
The Scuffling Sound
Detective Durham, as he lay there inhaling the peculiar perfume of the place, recognized that he had put himself outside the pale of official protection, and was become technically a burglar.
He wondered if Chief Inspector Kerry would have approved; but he had outlined this plan of investigation for himself, and knew well that, if it were crowned by success, the end would be regarded as having justified the means. On the other hand, in the event of detention he must personally bear the consequences of such irregular behaviour. He knew well, however, that his celebrated superior had achieved promotion by methods at least as irregular; and he knew that if he could but obtain evidence to account for the death of the man Cohen, and of the Chinaman Pi Lung, who had preceded him by the same mysterious path, the way of his obtaining it would not be too closely questioned.
He was an ambitious man, and consequently one who took big chances. Nothing disturbed the silence; he sat upon the divan and again pressed the button of his torch, shining it all about the low-beamed apartment and peering curiously into the weird shadows of the place. He calculated he was now in the position which Cohen had occupied during the last moments of his life, and a sense of the uncanny touched him coldly.
As he thought of the unnatural screams spoken of by Poland, some strange instinct prompted him to curl up his feet upon the divan again, as though a secret menace crawled upon the floor amid its many rugs and carpets.
He must now endeavour to reconstruct the plan upon which the American cracksman had operated. Poland had a persistent belief that Cohen had known where the fabled hoard of Huang Chow was concealed.
Durham began a deliberate inspection of the place. He thought it unlikely that a wily old Chinaman, assuming that he possessed hidden wealth, would keep it in so accessible a spot as this. It was far more probable that he had a fireproof safe in the room upstairs, perhaps built into the wall. Yet, according to Poland's account, it was in this room and not in any other that death came to Diamond Fred.
The wall-hangings first engaged Durham's attention. He moved them aside systematically, one after another, seeking for any hiding-place, but failing to find one. The door communicating with the outer office he found to be locked, but he did not believe for a moment that the office would be worthy of inspection.
There were cases containing jewelled weapons and cups and goblets inlaid with precious stones, but none of these seemed to have been tampered with, and all were locked, as was the big cabinet filled with snuff bottles.
Many of the larger pieces about the place contained drawers and cupboards, and these he systematically opened one after another, without making any discovery of note. Some of the cupboards contained broken pieces of crockery, and more or less damaged curios of one kind and another, but none of them gave him the clue for which he was seeking.
He examined the couch upon which Huang Chow had been seated when first he had met him, but although he searched it scientifically he was rewarded by no discovery.
A very fusty and unpleasant smell was more noticeable at this point than elsewhere in the room, and he found himself staring speculatively up the wide, carpeted stairs. Next he turned his attention to the lacquered coffin which occupied the corresponding recess to that filled by the couch. It was an extraordinarily ornate piece of lacquer work and probably of great value.
The lid appeared to be screwed on, and Durham stood staring at the thing, half revolted and half fascinated. He failed to discover any means of opening it, however, and when he tried to move it bodily found it very heavy. He came to the conclusion that all the portable valuables were contained in locked cases or cabinets, and out of this discovery grew an idea.
The case containing the snuff bottles stood too close to the wall to enable him t test his new theory, but a square case near the office door, in which were five of six small but almost priceless pieces of porcelain, afforded the very evidence for which he was looking.
Thin electric flex descended from somewhere inside the case down one of the legs of the pedestal, and through a neatly drilled hole in the floor, evidently placed there to accommodate it.
"Burglar alarm!" he muttered.
The opening of this case, and doubtless of any of the others, would set alarm bells ringing. This was not an unimportant discovery, but it brought him very little nearer to a solution of the chief problem which engaged his mind. Assuming that Cohen had opened one of the cases and had alarmed old Huang Chow, what steps had the latter taken to deal with the intruder which had resulted in so ghastly a death? And how had he disposed of the body?
As Durham stood there musing and looking down through the plate- glass at the delicate porcelain beneath, a faint sound intruded itself upon the stillness. It gave him another idea. Part of the floor was stone-paved, but part was wood.
Upon a portion of the latter, where no carpet rested, Durham dropped flat, pressing his ear to the floor.
A faint swishing and trickling sound was perceptible from some place beneath.
"Ah!" he murmured.
Remembering that the premises almost overhung the Thames, he divined that the cellars were flooded at high tide, or that there was some kind of drain or cutting running underneath the house.
He stood up again, listening intently for any sound within the building. He thought he had detected something, and now, as he stood there alert, he heard it again -- a faint scuffling, which might have been occasioned by rats or even mice, but which, in some subtle and very unpleasant way, did not suggest the movements of these familiar rodents.
Even as he perceived it, it ceased, leaving him wondering, and uncomfortably conscious of a sudden dread of his surroundings. He wondered in what part of this mysterious house Lala resided, and recognizing that his departure must leave traces, he determined to prosecute his inquiries as far as possible, since another opportunity might not arise.
He was baffled but still hopeful. Something there was in the smell of the place which threatened to unnerve him; or perhaps in its silence, which remained quite unbroken save when, by acute listening, one detected the dripping of water.
That unexplained scuffling sound, too, which he had failed to trace or identify, lingered in his memory insistently, and for some reason contained the elements of fear.
He crossed the room and began softly to mount the stair. It creaked only slightly, and the door at the top proved to be ajar. He peeped in, to find the place empty. It was a typical Chinese apartment, containing very little furniture, the raised desk being the most noticeable item, except for a small shrine which faced it on the other side of the room.
He mounted the steps to the desk and inspected a number of loose papers which lay upon it. Without exception they were written in Chinese. A sort of large, dull white blotting-pad lay upon the table, but its surface was smooth and glossy.
Over it was suspended what looked like a lampshade, but on inspection it proved to contain no lamp, but to communicate, by a sort of funnel, with the ceiling above.
At this contrivance Durham stared long and curiously, but without coming to any conclusion respecting its purpose. He might have investigated further, but he became aware of a dull and regular sound in the room behind him.
He turned in a flash, staring in the direction of two curtains draped before what he supposed to be a door.
On tiptoe he crossed and gently drew the curtains aside.
He looked into a small, cell-like room, lighted by one window, where upon a low bed Huang Chow lay sleeping peacefully!
Durham almost held his breath; then, withdrawing as quietly as he had approached, he descended the stair. At the foot his attention was again arrested by the faint scuffling sound. It ceased as suddenly as it had begun, leaving him wondering and conscious anew of a chill of apprehension.
He had already made his plans for departure, but knew that they must leave evidence, when discovered, of his visit.
A large and solid table stood near the divan, and he moved this immediately under the trap. Upon it he laid a leopard-skin to deaden any noise he might make, and then upon the leopard-skin he set a massive chair: he replaced his torch in his pocket and drew himself up on to the roof again. Reclosing the trap by means of the awl which he had screwed into it, he removed the awl and placed it in his pocket.
Then, sliding gently down the sloping roof, he dropped back into the deserted court.
Chapter VIII
A Cage Of Birds
"No," said Lala, "we have never had robbers in the house." She looked up at Durham naively. "You are not a thief, are you?" she asked.
"No, I assure you I am not," he answered, and felt himself flushing to the roots of his hair.
They were seated in a teashop patronized by the workers of the district; and as Durham, his elbows resting on the marble-topped table, looked into the dark eyes of his companion, he told himself again that whatever might be the secrets of old Huang Chow, his daughter did not share them.
The Chinaman had made no report to the authorities, although the piled up furniture beneath the skylight must have afforded conclusive evidence that a burglarious entry had been made into the premises.
"I should feel very nervous," Durham declared, "with all those valuables in the house."
"I feel nervous about my father," the girl answered in a low voice. "His room opens out of the warehouse, but mine is shut away in another part of the building. And Ah Fu sleeps behind the office."
"Were you not afraid when you suspected that Cohen was a burglar? You told me yourself that you did suspect him."
"Yes, I spoke to my father about it."
"And what did he say?"
"Oh" -- she shrugged her shoulders -- "he just smiled and told me not to worry."
"And that was the last you heard about the matter?"
"Yes, until you told me he was dead."
Again he questioned the dark eyes and again was baffled. He felt tempted, and not for the first time, to throw up the case. After all, it rested upon very slender data -- the mysterious death of a Chinaman whose history was unknown and the story of a crook whose word was worth nothing.
Finally he asked himself, as he had asked himself before, what did it matter? If old Huang Chow had disposed of these people in some strange manner, they had sought to rob him. The morality of the case was complicated and obscure, and more and more he was falling under the spell of Lala's dark eyes.
But always it was his professional pride which came to the rescue. Murder had been done, whether justifiably or otherwise, and to him had been entrusted the discovery of the murderer. It seemed that failure was to be his lot, for if Lala knew anything she was a most consummate actress, and if she did not, his last hope of information was gone.
He would have liked nothing better than to be rid of the affair, provided he could throw up the case with a clear conscience. But when presently he parted from the attractive Eurasian, and watched her slim figure as, turning, she waved her hand and disappeared round a corner, he knew that rest was not for him.
He had discovered the emporium of a Shadwell live-stock dealer with whom Ah Fu had a standing order for newly fledged birds of all descriptions. Purchases apparently were always made after dusk, and Ah Fu with his birdcage was due that evening.
A scheme having suggested itself to Durham, he now proceeded to put it into execution, so that when dusk came, and Ah Fu, carrying an empty birdcage, set out from the house of Huang Chow, a very dirty-looking loafer passed the corner of the street at about the time that the Chinaman came slinking out.
Durham had mentally calculated that Ah Fu would be gone about half an hour upon his mysterious errand, but the Chinaman travelled faster than he had calculated.
Just as he was about to climb up once more on to the sloping roof, he heard the pattering footsteps returning to the courtyard, although rather less than twenty minutes had elapsed since the man had set out.
Durham darted round the corner and waited until he heard the door closed; then, returning, he scrambled up on to the roof, creeping forward until he was lying looking down through the skylight into the darkened room below.
For ten minutes or more he waited, until he began to feel cramped and uncomfortable. Then that happened which he had hoped and anticipated would happen. The place beneath became illuminated, not fully, by means of the hanging lamps, but dimly so that distorted shadows were cast about the floor. Someone had entered carrying a lantern.
Durham's view-point limited his area of vision, but presently, as the light came nearer and nearer, he discerned Ah Fu, carrying a lantern in one hand and a birdcage in the other. He could hear nothing, for the trap fitted well and the glass was thick. Moreover, it was very dirty. He was afraid, however, to attempt to clean a space.
Ah Fu apparently had set the lantern upon a table, and into the radius of its light there presently moved a stooping figure. Durham recognized Huang Chow, and felt his heart beats increasing in rapidity.
Clutching the framework of the trap with his hands, he moved his head cautiously, so that presently he was enabled to see the two Chinamen. They were standing beside the lacquered coffin upon its dragon-legged pedestal. Durham stifled an exclamation.
One end of the ornate sarcophagus had been opened in some way!
Now, to the watcher's unbounded astonishment, Ah Fu placed the birdcage in the opening, and apparently reclosed the trap in the end of the coffin. He made other manipulations with his bony yellow fingers, which Durham failed to comprehend. Finally the birdcage was withdrawn again, and as it was passed before the light of the lantern he saw that it was empty, whereas previously it had contained a number of tiny birds all huddled up together!
The light gleamed upon the spectacles of Huang Chow. Watching him, Durham saw him take out from a hidden drawer in the pedestal a long, slender key, insert it in a lock concealed by the ornate carving, and then slightly raise the lid which had so recently defied his own efforts.
He raised it only a few inches, and then, taking up the lantern, peered into the interior of the coffin, at the same time waving his hand in dismissal to Ah Fu. For a while he stood there, peering into the interior, and then, lowering the lid again, he relocked this gruesome receptacle and, lantern in hand, began to mount the stair.
Durham inhaled deeply. He realized that during the last few seconds he had been holding his breath. Now, as he began to creep back down the slope, he discovered that his hands were shaking.
He dropped down into the court again, and for several minutes leaned against the wall, endeavouring to reason out an explanation of what he had seen, and in a measure to regain his composure.
There was a horror underlying it all which he was half afraid to face. But the real clue to the mystery still eluded him.
Whether what he had witnessed were some kind of obscene ceremony, or whether an explanation more vile must be sought, he remained undetermined. He must repeat his exploit, if possible, and once more gain access to the room which contained the lacquer coffin.
But the adventure was very distasteful. He recollected the smell of the place, and the memory brought with it a sense of nausea. He thought of Lala Huang, and his ideas became grotesque and chaotic. Yet the solution of the mystery lay at last within his grasp, and to the zest of the investigator everything else became subjugated.
He walked slowly away, silent in his rubber-soled shoes.
Chapter IX
The Picture On The Pad
Lala Huang lay listening to the vague sounds which disturbed the silence of the night. Presently her thoughts made her sigh wearily. During the lifetime of her mother, who had died while Lala was yet a little girl, life had been different and so much brighter.
She imagined that in the mingled sounds of dock and river which came to her she could hear the roar of surf upon a golden beach. The stuffy air of Limehouse took on the hot fragrance of a tropic island, and she sighed again, but this time rapturously, for in spirit she was a child once more, lulled by the voice of the great Pacific.
Young as she was, the death of her mother had been a blow from which it had taken her several years to recover. Then had commenced those long travels with her father, from port to port, from ocean to ocean, sometimes settling awhile, but ever moving onward, onward.
He had had her educated after a fashion, and his love for her she did not doubt. But her mother's blood spoke more strongly than that part of her which was Chinese, and there was softness and a delicious languor in her nature which her father did not seem to understand, and of which he did not appear to approve.
She knew that he was wealthy. She knew that his ways were not straight ways, although that part of his business to which he had admitted her as an assistant, and an able one, was legitimate enough, or so it seemed.
Consignments of goods arrived at strange hours of the night at the establishment in Limehouse, and from this side of her father's transactions she was barred. The big double doors opening on the little courtyard would be opened by Ah Fu, and packing cases of varying sizes be taken in. Sometimes the sounds of these activities would reach her in her room in a distant part of the house; but only in the morning would she recognize their significance, when in the warehouse she would discover that some new and choice pieces had arrived.
She wondered with what object her father accumulated wealth, and hoped, against the promptings of her common sense, that he designed to return East, there to seek a retirement amidst the familiar and the beautiful things of the Orient which belonged to Lala's dream of heaven.
Stories about her father often reached her ears. She knew that he had held high rank in China before she had been born; but that he had sacrificed his rights in some way had always been her theory. She had been too young to understand the stories which her mother had told her sometimes; but that there were traits in the character of Huang Chow which it was not good for his daughter to know she appreciated and accepted as a secret sorrow.
He allowed her all the freedom to which her education entitled her. Her life was that of a European and not of an Oriental woman. She loved him in a way, but also feared him. She feared the dark and cruel side of his character, of which, at various periods during their life together, she had had terrifying glimpses.
She had decided that cruelty was his vice. In what way he gratified it she had never learned, nor did she desire to do so. There were periodical visits from the police, but she had learned long ago that her father was too clever to place himself within reach of the law.
However crooked one part of his business methods might be, his dealings with his clients were straight enough, so that no one had any object in betraying him; and the legality or otherwise of his foreign relations evidently afforded no case against him upon which the authorities could act, or upon which they cared to act.
In America it had been graft which had protected him. She had learned this accidentally, but never knew whether he bought his immunity in the same way in London.
Some of the rumours which reached her were terrifying. Latterly she had met many strange glances in her comings and goings about Limehouse. This peculiar atmosphere had always preceded the break-up of every home which they had shared. She divined the fact that in some way Huang Chow had outstayed his welcome in Chinatown, London. Where their next resting-place would be she could not imagine, but she prayed that it might be in some more sunny clime.
She found herself to be thinking over much of John Hampden. His bona fides were not above suspicion, but she could scarcely expect to meet a really white man in such an environment.
Lala would have liked to think that he was white, but could not force herself to do so. She would have liked to think that he sought her company because she appealed to him personally; but she had detected the fact that another motive underlay his attentions. She wondered if he could be another of those moths drawn by the light of that fabled wealth of her father.
It was curious, she reflected, that Huang Chow never checked -- indeed, openly countenanced -- her friendship with the many chance acquaintances she had made, even when her own instincts told her that the men were crooked; so that, knowing the acumen of her father, she was well aware that he must know it too.
Several of these pseudo lovers of hers had died. It was a point which often occurred to her mind, but upon which she did not care to dwell even now. But John Hampden -- John Hampden was different. He was not wholly sincere. She sighed wearily. But nevertheless he was not like some of the others.
She started up in bed, seized with a sudden dreadful idea. He was a detective!
She understood now why she had found so much that was white in him, but so much that was false. His presence seemed to be very near her. Something caressing in his voice echoed in her mind. She found herself to be listening to the muted sounds of Limehouse and of the waterway which flowed so close beside her.
That old longing for the home of her childhood returned tenfold, and tears began to trickle down her cheeks. She was falling in love with this man whose object was her father's ruin. A cold terror clutched at her heart. Even now, while their friendship was so new, so strange, there was a query, a stark, terrifying query, to stand up before her.
If put to the test, which would she choose?
She was unable to face that issue, and dropped back upon her pillow, stifling a sob.
Yes, he was a detective. In some way her father had at last attracted the serious attention of the law. Rumours of this were flying round Chinatown, to which she had not been entirely deaf. She thought of a hundred questions, a hundred silences, and grew more and more convinced of the truth.
What did he mean to do? Before her a ghostly company uprose -- the shadows of some she had known with designs upon her father. John Hampden's design was different. But might he not join that mysterious company?
Now again she suddenly sprang upright, this time because of a definite sound which had reached her ears from within the house: a very faint, bell-like tinkling which ceased almost immediately. She had heard it one night before, and quite recently; indeed, on the night before she had met John Hampden. Cohen -- Cohen, the Jew, had died that night!
She sprang lightly on to the floor, found her slippers, and threw a silk kimono over her nightrobe. She tiptoed cautiously to the door and opened it.
It was at this very moment that old Huang Chow, asleep in his cell-like apartment, was aroused by the tinkling of a bell set immediately above his head. He awoke instantly, raised his hand and stopped the bell. His expression, could anyone have been present to see it, was a thing unpleasant to behold. Triumph was in it, and cunning cruelty.
His long yellow fingers reached out for his hornrimmed spectacles which lay upon a little table beside him. Adjusting them, he pulled the curtains aside and shuffled silently across the large room.
Mounting the steps to the raised writing-table, he rested his elbows upon it, and peered down at that curious blotting-pad which had so provoked the curiosity of Durham. Could Durham have seen it now the mystery must have been solved. It was an ingenious camera obscura apparatus, and dimly depicted upon its surface appeared a reproduction of part of the storehouse beneath! The part of it which was visible was that touched by the light of an electric torch, carried by a man crossing the floor in the direction of the lacquered coffin upon the gilded pedestal!
Old Huang Chow chuckled silently, and his yellow fingers clutched the table edge as he moved to peer more closely into the picture.
"Poor fool!" he whispered in Chinese. "Poor fool!"
It was the man who had come with the introduction from Mr. Isaacs -- a new impostor who sought to rob him, who sought to obtain information from his daughter, who had examined his premises last night, and had even penetrated upstairs, so that he, old Huang Chow, had been compelled to disconnect the apparatus and to feign sleep under the scrutiny of the intruder.
To-night it would be otherwise. To-night it would be otherwise.
Chapter X
The Lacquered Coffin
Durham gently raised the trap in the roof of Huang Chow's treasure-house. He was prepared for snares and pitfalls. No sane man, on the evidence which he, Durham, had been compelled to leave behind, would have neglected to fasten the skylight which so obviously afforded a means of entrance into his premises.
Therefore, he was expected to return. The devilish mechanism was set ready to receive him. But the artist within him demanded that he should unmask the mystery with his own hands.
Moreover, he doubted that an official visit, even now, would yield any results. Old Huang Chow was too cunning for that. If he was to learn how the man Cohen had died, he must follow the same path to the bitter end. But there were men on duty round the house, and he believed that he had placed them so secretly as to deceive even this master of cunning with whom he was dealing.
He repeated his exploit, dropping with a dull thud upon the cushioned divan. Then, having lain there listening awhile, he pressed the button of his torch, and, standing up, crept across the room in the direction of the stairway.
Here he paused awhile, listening intently. The image of Lala Huang arose before his mind's eye reproachfully, but he crushed the reproach, and advanced until he stood beside the lacquered coffin.
He remembered where the key was hidden, and, stooping, he fumbled for a while and then found it. He was acutely conscious of an unnameable fear. He felt that he was watched, and yet was unwilling to believe it. The musty and unpleasant smell which he had noticed before became extremely perceptible.
He quietly sought for the hidden lock, and, presently finding it, inserted the key, then paused awhile. He rested his torch upon the cushions of the divan where the light shone directly upon the coffin. Then, having his automatic in his left hand, he turned the key.
He had expected now to be able to raise the lid as he had seen Huang Chow do; but the result was far more surprising.
The lid, together with a second framework of fine netting, flew open with a resounding bang; and from the interior of the coffin uprose a most abominable stench.
Durham started back a step, and as he did so witnessed a sight which turned him sick with horror.
Out on to the edge of the coffin leapt the most gigantic spider which he had ever seen in his life! It had a body as big as a man's fist, jet black, with hairy legs like the legs of a crab and a span of a foot or more!
A moment it poised there, while he swayed, sick with horror. Then, unhesitatingly, it leapt for his face!
He groaned and fired, missed the horror, but diverted its leap, so that it fell with a sickening thud a yard behind him. He turned, staggering back towards the stair, and aware that a light had shone out from somewhere.
A door had been opened only a few yards from where he stood, and there, framed in the opening, was Lala Huang, her eyes wide with terror and her gaze set upon him across the room.
"You!" she whispered. "You!"
"Go back!" he cried hoarsely. "Go back! Close the door. You don't understand -- close the door!"
Her gaze set wildly upon him, Lala staggered forward; stopped dead; looked down at her bare ankle, and then, seeing the thing which had fastened upon her, uttered a piercing shriek which rang throughout the place.
At which moment the floor slid away beneath Durham, and he found himself falling -- falling -- and then battling for life in evil- smelling water, amidst absolute darkness.
Police whistles were skirling around the house of Huang Chow. As the hidden men came running into the court:
"You heard the shot?" cried the sergeant in charge. "I warned him not to go alone. Don't waste time on the door. One man stay on duty there; the rest of you follow me."
In a few moments, led by the sergeant, the party came dropping heavily through the skylight into the treasure-house of Huang Chow, in which every lamp was now alight. A trap was open near the foot of the stairs, and from beneath it muffled cries proceeded. In this direction the sergeant headed. Craning over the trap:
"Hallo, Mr. Durham!" he called. "Mr. Durham!"
"Get a rope and a ladder," came a faint cry from below. "I can just touch bottom with my feet and keep my head above water, but the tide's coming in. Look to the girl, though, first. Look to the girl!"
The sergeant turned to where, stretched upon a tiger skin before a half-open door, Lala Huang lay, scantily clothed and white as death.
Upon one of her bare ankles was a discoloured mark.
As the sergeant and another of the men stooped over her a moaning sound drew their attention to the stair, and there, bent and tottering slowly down, was old Huang Chow, his eyes peering through the owl-like glasses vacantly across the room to where his daughter lay.
"My God!" whispered the sergeant, upon one knee beside her. He looked blankly into the face of the other man. "She's dead!"
Two plain-clothes men were busy knotting together tapestries and pieces of rare stuff with which to draw Durham out of the pit; but at these old Huang Chow looked not at all, but gropingly crossed the room, as if he saw imperfectly, or could not believe what he saw. At last he reached the side of the dead girl, stooped, touched her, laid a trembling yellow hand over her heart, and then stood up again, looking from face to face.
Ignoring the mingled activities about him, he crossed to the open coffin and began to fumble amongst the putrefying mass of bones and webbing which lay therein. Out from this he presently drew an iron coffer.
Carrying it across the room he opened the lid. It was full almost to the top with uncut gems of every variety -- diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, topaz, amethysts, flashing greenly, redly, whitely. In handfuls he grasped them and sprinkled them upon the body of the dead girl.
"For you," he crooned brokenly in Chinese. "They were all for you!"
The extemporized rope had just been lowered to Durham, when:
"My God!" cried the sergeant, looking over Huang Chow's shoulder. "What's that?"
He had seen the giant spider, the horror from Surinam, which the Chinaman had reared and fed to guard his treasure and to gratify his lust for the strange and cruel. The insect, like everything else in that house, was unusual, almost unique. It was one of the Black Soldier spiders, by some regarded as a native myth, but actually existing in Surinam and parts of Brazil. A member of the family, Mygale, its sting was more quickly and certainly fatal than that of a rattle-snake. Its instinct was fearlessly to attack any creature, great or small, which disturbed it in its dark hiding-place.
Now, with feverish, horrible rapidity it was racing up the tapestries on the other side of the room.
"Merciful God!" groaned the sergeant.
Snatching a revolver from his pocket he fired shot after shot. The third hit the thing but did not kill it. It dropped back upon the floor and began to crawl toward the coffin. The sergeant ran across and at close quarters shot it again.
Red blood oozed out from the hideous black body and began to form a deep stain upon the carpet.
When Durham, drenched but unhurt, was hauled back into the treasure-house, he did not speak, but, scrambling into the room stood -- pallid -- staring dully at old Huang Chow.
Huang Chow, upon his knees beside his daughter, was engaged in sprinkling priceless jewels over her still body, and murmuring in Chinese:
"For you, for you, Lala. They were all for you."

The Zayat Kiss

In honor of the announcement that a new Fu Manchu novel will be published later this year.
"The Zayat Kiss" by Sax Rohmer



"A GENTLEMAN TO SEE YOU, DOCTOR." From across the common a clock sounded the half hour. "Ten-thirty !" I said. "A late visitor. Show him up, if you please." I pushed my writing aside and tilted the lamp shade as footsteps sounded on the landing. The next moment I had jumped to my feet, for a tall, lean man, with his square-cut, clean-shaven face sun baked to the hue of coffee, entered and extended both hands with a cry: "Good old Petrie! Didn't expect me, I'll swear!" It was Nayland Smith, whom I had thought to be in Burma! "Smith," I said, and gripped his hands hard, "this is a delightful surprise! Whatever—however—" "Excuse me, Petrie!" he broke in. "Don't put it down to the sun!" And he put out the lamp, plunging the room into darkness. I was too surprised to speak. "No doubt you will think me mad," he continued, and dimly I could see him at the window, peering out into the road, but before you are many hours older you will know that I have good reason to be cautious. Ah, nothing suspicious! Perhaps I am first this time." And stepping back to the writing table, he relighted the lamp. "Mysterious enough for you?" he laughed, and glanced at my unfinished MS. "A story, eh? From which I gather that the district is beastly healthy—what, Petrie? Well, I can put some material in your way that, if sheer uncanny mystery is a marketable commodity, ought to make you independent of influenza and broken legs and shattered nerves and all the rest." I surveyed him doubtfully, but there was nothing in his appearance to justify me in supposing him to suffer from delusions. His eyes were too bright, certainly, and a hardness now had crept over his face. I got out the whisky and siphon, saying: "You have taken your leave early?" "I am not on leave," he replied, and slowly filled his pipe. "I am on duty." "On duty!" I exclaimed. "What, are you moved to London, or something?" "I have got a roving commission, Petrie, and it doesn't rest with me where I am to-day, nor where I shall be to-morrow." There was something ominous in the words, and putting down my glass, I faced round and looked him squarely in the eyes. "Out with it!" I said. "What is it all about?" Smith suddenly stood up and stripped off his coat. Rolling back his left shirt sleeve he revealed a wicked-looking wound in the fleshy part of the forearm. It was quite healed, but curiously striated for an inch or so around. "Ever seen one like it?" he asked. "Not exactly," I confessed. "It appears to have been deeply cauterized." "Right! Very deeply! A barb steeped in the venom of a hamadryad went in there!" A shudder I could not repress ran through me at mention of that most deadly of all the reptiles of the East. "There's only one treatment," he continued, rolling his sleeve down again, "and that's with a sharp knife, a match, and a broken cartridge. I lay on my back raving for three days afterward in a forest that stank with malaria, but I should have been lying there now if I had hesitated. Here's the point. It was not an accident!" "What do you mean?" "I mean that it was a deliberate attempt on my life, and I am hard upon the tracks of the man who extracted that venom—patiently, drop by drop—from the poison glands of the snake, who prepared the arrow, and who caused it to be shot at me." "What fiend is this?" "A fiend who, unless my calculations are at fault, is now in London, and who regularly wars with pleasant weapons of that kind. Petrie, I have traveled from Burma not in the interest of the British Government merely, but in the interests of the entire white race, and I honestly believe—though I pray I may be wrong—that its survival depends largely upon the success of my mission." To say that I was perplexed conveys no idea of the mental chaos created by these extraordinary statements, for into my humdrum suburban life Nayland Smith had brought fantasy of the wildest. I did not know what to think, what to believe. "I am wasting precious time!" he rapped decisively, and, draining his glass, he stood up. "I came straight to you because you are the only man I dare to trust. Except the big chief at headquarters, you are the only person in England, I hope, who knows that Nayland Smith has quitted Burma. I must have some one with me, Petrie, all the time—it's imperative! Can you put me up here, and spare a few days to the strangest business, I promise you, that ever was recorded in fact or fiction?" I agreed readily enough, for, unfortunately, my professional dudes were not onerous. "Good man!" he cried, wringing my hand in his impetuous way. "We start now." "What, to-night?" "To-night! I had thought of turning in, I must admit. I have not dared to sleep for forty-eight hours, except in fifteen-minute stretches. But there is one move that must be made to-night and immediately. I must warn Sir Crichton Davey." "Sir Crichton Davey—of the India—" "Petrie, he is a doomed man! Unless he follows my instructions without question, without hesitation—before Heaven, nothing can save him! I do not know when the blow will fall, how it will fall, nor from whence, but I know that my first duty is to warn him. Let us walk down to the corner of the common and get a taxi." * "What's this?" muttered my friend hoarsely. Constables were moving on a little crowd of carious idlers who pressed about the steps of Sir Crichton Davy's house and sought to peer in at the open door. Without waiting for the cab to draw up to the curb, Nayland Smith recklessly leaped out, and I followed closely at his heels. "What has happened?" he demanded breathlessly of a constable. The latter glanced at him doubtfully, but something in his voice and bearing commanded respect. "Sir Crichton Davey has been killed, sir." Smith lurched back as though he had received a physical blow, and clutched my shoulder convulsively. Beneath the heavy tan his face had blanched, and his eyes were set in a stare of horror. "My God!" he whispered. "Just too late!" * With clenched fists he turned and, pressing through the group of loungers, bounded up the steps. In the hall a man who unmistakably was a Scotland Yard official stood talking to a footman. Other members of the household were moving about, more or less aimlessly, and the chilly hand of, King Fear had touched one and all, for, as they came and went, they glanced ever over their shoulders, as if each shadow cloaked a menace, and listened, as it seemed, for some sound which they dreaded to hear. Smith strode up to the detective and showed him a card, upon glancing at which the Scotland Yard man said something in a low voice, and, nodding, touched his hat to Smith in a respectful manner. A few brief questions and answers, and, in gloomy silence, we followed the detective up the heavily carpeted stair, along a corridor lined with pictures and busts, and into a large library. A group of people were in this room, and one, in whom I recognized Chalmers Cleeve of Harley Street, was bending over a motionless form stretched upon a couch. Another door communicated with a small study, and through the opening I could see a man on all fours examining the carpet. The uncomfortable sense of hush, the group about the physician, the bizarre figure crawling, beetlelike, across the inner room, and the grim hub, around which all this ominous activity turned, made up a scene that etched itself indelibly on my mind. As we entered. Dr. Cleeve straightened himself, frowning thoughtfully. "Frankly, I do not care to venture any opinion at present regarding the immediate cause of death," he said. "Sir Crichton was addicted to cocaine, but there are indications which are not in accordance with cocaine poisoning. I fear that only a post-mortem can establish the facts—if," he added, "we ever arrive at them. A most mysterious case!" Smith stepping forward and engaging the famous pathologist in conversation, I seized the opportunity to examine Sir Crichton's body. The dead man was in evening dress, but wore an old smoking jacket. He had been of spare but hardy build, with thin, aquiline features, which now were oddly puffy, as were his clenched hands. I pushed back his sleeve and saw the marks of the hypodermic syringe upon his left arm. Quite mechanically I turned my attention to the right arm. It was unscarred, but on the back of the hand was a faint red mark, not unlike the imprint of painted lips. I examined it closely, and even tried to rub it off, but it evidently was caused by some morbid process of local inflammation if it were not a birthmark. Turning to a pale young man whom I had understood to be Sir Crichton's private secretary, I drew his attention to this mark and inquired if it were constitutional. "It is not, sir," answered Dr. Cleeve, overhearing my question. "I have already made that inquiry. Does it suggest anything to your mind? I must confess that it afforded me no assistance." "Nothing," I replied. "It is most curious." "Excuse me, Mr. Burboyne," said Smith, now turning to the secretary, "but Inspector Weymouth will tell you that I act with authority. I understand that Sir Crichton was—seized with illness in his study?" "Yes, at half-past ten. I was working here in the library and he inside, as was our custom." "The communicating door was kept closed?" "Yes, always. It was open for a minute or less about ten-twenty-five, when a message came for Sir Crichton. I took it in to him, and he then seemed in his usual health." "What was the message?" "I could not say. It was brought by a district messenger, and he placed it beside him on the table. It is there now, no doubt." "And at half-past ten?" "Sir Crichton suddenly burst open the door and threw himself, with a scream, into the library. I ran to him, but he waved me back. His eyes were glaring horribly. I had just reached his side when he fell, writhing, upon the floor. He seemed past speech, but as I raised him and laid him upon the couch he gasped something that sounded like 'The red hand!' Before I could get to the bell or telephone he was dead!" Mr. Burboyne's voice shook as he spoke the words, and Smith seemed to find this evidence confusing. "You do not think he referred to the mark on his hand?" "I think not. From the direction of his last glance I feel sure he referred to something in the study." "What did you do?" "Having summoned the servants, I ran into the study. But there was nothing unusual to be seen. The windows were closed and fastened. He worked with closed windows in the hottest weather. There is no other door, for the study occupies the end of a narrow wing, so that no one could possibly have gained access to it while I was in the library unseen by me. Had some one concealed himself in the study earlier in the evening—and I am convinced that it offers no hiding place—he could only have come out again by passing through here." Nayland Smith tugged at the lobe of his left ear, as was his habit when meditating. "You had been at work here in this way for some time?" "Yes. Sir Crichton was preparing an important book." "Had anything unusual occurred prior to this evening?" "Yes," said Mr. Burboyne with evident perplexity, "though I attached no importance to it at the time. Three nights ago Sir Crichton came out to me and appeared very nervous; but at times his nerves—you know? Well, on this occasion he asked me to search the study. He had an idea that something was concealed there." "Something or some one?" "'Something' was the word he used. I searched, but fruitlessly, and he seemed quite satisfied and returned to his work." "Thank you, Mr. Burboyne. My friend and I would like a few minutes private investigation in the study."(End Chapter 1) Sir Crichton Davey's study was a small one, and a glance sufficed to show that, as the secretary had said, it offered no hiding place. It was heavily carpeted, and overfull of Burmese and Chinese ornaments and curios, and upon the mantelpiece stood several framed photographs which showed this to be the sanctum of a wealthy bachelor who was no misogynist. A map of the Indian Empire occupied the larger part of one wall. The grate was empty, for the weather was extremely warm, and a green-shaded lamp on the littered writing table afforded the only light. The air was stale, for both windows were closed and fastened. Smith immediately pounced upon a large, square envelope that lay beside the blotting pad. Sir Crichton had not even troubled to open it, but my friend did so. It contained a blank sheet of paper! "Smell!" he directed, handing the letter to me. I raised it to my nostrils. It was scented with some pungent perfume. "What is it?" I asked. "It is a rather rare essential oil," was the reply, "which I have met with before, though never in Europe. I begin to understand, Petrie." He tilted the lamp shade and made a close examination of the scraps of paper, matches, and other debris that lay in the grate and on the hearth. I took up a copper vase from the mantelpiece, and was examining it curiously when he turned, a strange expression on his face. "Put that back, old man," he said quietly. Much surprised, I did as he directed. "Don't touch anything in the room. It may be dangerous." Something in the tone of his voice chilled me, and I hastily replaced the vase and stood by the door of the study, watching him search methodically every inch of the room—behind the books, in all the ornaments, in table drawers, in cupboards, on shelves. "That will do," he said at last. "There is nothing here and I have no time to search further." We returned to the library. "Inspector Weymouth," said my friend, "I have a particular reason for asking that Sir Crichton's body be removed from this room at once and the library locked. Let no one be admitted on any pretense whatever until you hear from me." It spoke volumes for the mysterious credentials borne by my friend that the man from Scotland Yard accepted his orders without demur, and, after a brief chat with Mr. Burboyne, Smith passed briskly downstairs. In the hall a man who looked like a groom out of livery was waiting. "Are you Wills?" asked Smith. "Yes, sir." "It was you who heard a cry of some kind at the rear of the house about the time of Sir Crichton's death?" "Yes, sir. I was locking the garage door, and, happening to look up at the window of Sir Crichton's study, I saw him jump out of his chair. Where he used to sit at his writing, sir, you could see his shadow on the blind. Next minute I heard a call out in the lane." "What kind of call?" The man whom the uncanny happening clearly had frightened seemed puzzled for a suitable description. "A sort of wail, sir," he said at last. "I never heard anything like it before and don't want to again." "Like this?" inquired Smith, and he littered a low, wailing cry, impossible to describe. "The same, sir, I think," Wills said, "but much louder." "That will do," said Smith, and I thought I detected a note of triumph in his voice. "But stay! Take us through to the back of the house." The man bowed and led the way, so that shortly we found ourselves in a small, paved courtyard. It was a perfect summer's night, and the deep blue vault above was jeweled with myriads of starry points. "Up yonder are the study windows, sir. Over that wall on your left is the back lane from which the cry came, and beyond is Regent's Park." "Are the study windows visible from there?" "Oh, yes, sir." "Who occupies the adjoining house?" "Major General Platt-Houston, sir, but the family is out of town." "Those iron stairs are a means of communication between the domestic offices and the servants' quarters, I take it?" "Yes, sir." "Then send some one to make my business known to the Major General's housekeeper; I want to examine those stairs." Singular though my friend's proceedings appeared to me, I had ceased to wonder at anything. Since Nayland Smith's arrival at my rooms I seemed to have been moving through the fitful phases of a nightmare. My friend's account of how he came by the wound in his arm; the scene on our arrival at the house of Sir Crichton Davey; the secretary's story of the dying man's cry. "The red hand!"; the hidden perils of the study; the wail in the lane—all were fitter incidents of delirium than of sane reality. So, when a white-faced butler made us known to a nervous old lady who proved to be the housekeeper of the next-door residence, I was not surprised at Smith's saying: "Lounge up and down outside, Petrie. Everyone has cleared off now. It is getting late. Keep your eyes open and be on your guard. I thought I had the start, but he is here before me, and, what is worse, he probably knows by now that I am here, too." With which he entered the house and left me out in the square, with leisure to think, to try to understand. The crowd which usually haunts the scene of a sensational crime had been cleared away, and it had been circulated that Sir Crichton had died from natural causes. The intense heat having driven most of the residents out of town, practically I had the square to myself, and I gave myself up to a brief consideration of the mystery in which I so suddenly had found myself involved. By what agency had Sir Crichton met his death? Did Nayland Smith know? I rather suspected that he did. What was the hidden significance of die perfumed envelope? Who was that mysterious personage whom Smith so evidently dreaded, who had attempted his life, who presumably had murdered Sir Crichton? Sir Crichton Davey, during the time that he had held office in India and during his long term of service at home, had earned the good will of all, British and native alike. Who was his secret enemy? Something touched me lightly on the shoulder. I turned, with my heart fluttering like a child's. This night's work had imposed a severe strain even upon my callous nerves. A girl wrapped in a hooded opera cloak stood at my elbow, and, as she glanced up at me, I thought that I never had seen a face so seductively lovely nor of so unusual a type. With the skin of a perfect blonde, she had eyes and lashes as black as a Creole's, which, together with her full red lips, told me that this beautiful stranger, whose touch had so startled me, was not a child of our northern shores. "Forgive me," she said, speaking with an odd, pretty accent, and laying a slim hand with jeweled fingers confidingly upon my arm, "if I startled you. But—is it true that Sir Crichton Davey has been murdered?" I looked into her big, questioning eyes, a harsh suspicion laboring in my mind, but could read nothing in their mysterious depths—only I wondered anew at my questioner's beauty. The grotesque idea momentarily possessed me that, were the bloom of her. red lips due to art and not to nature, their kiss would leave—though not indelibly—just such a mark as I had seen upon the dead man's hand. But I dismissed the fantastic notion as bred of the night's horrors, and worthy only of a medieval legend. No doubt she was some friend or acquaintance of Sir Crichton's who lived close by. "I cannot say that he has been murdered," I replied, acting upon the latter supposition and seeking to tell her what she asked as gently as possible. "But he is—" "Dead?" I nodded. She closed her eyes and uttered a low, moaning sound, swaying dizzily. Thinking she was about to swoon, I threw my arm round her shoulders to support her, but she smiled sadly and pushed me gently away. "I am quite well, thank you," she said. "You are certain? Let me walk with you until you feel quite sure of yourself." She shook her head, flashed a rapid glance at me with her beautiful eyes, and looked away in a sort of sorrowful embarrassment, for which I was entirely at a loss to account. Suddenly she resumed: "I cannot let my name be mentioned in this dreadful matter, but—1 think I have some information—for the police. Will you give this to—whomever you think proper?" She handed me a sealed envelope, again met my eyes with one of her dazzling glances, and hurried away. She had gone no more than ten or twelve yards, and I still was standing bewildered, watching her graceful, retreating figure, when she turned abruptly and came back. Without looking directly at me, but alternately glancing toward a distant corner of the square and toward the house of Major General Platt-Houston, she made the following extraordinary request: "If you would do me a very great service, for which I always would be grateful"—she glanced at me with passionate intentness—"when you have given my message to the proper person, leave him and do not go near him any more to-night!" Before I could find words to reply she gathered up her cloak and ran. Before I could determine whether or not to follow her (for her words had aroused anew all my worst suspicions she had disappeared! I heard the whirr of a restarted motor at no great distance, and in the instant that Nayland Smith came running down the steps I knew that I had nodded at my post. "Smith!" I cried as he joined me, "tell me what we must do!" And rapidly I acquainted him with the incident. My friend looked very grave; then a grim smile crept round his lips. "She was a big card to play," he said; "but he did not know that I held one to beat it." "What! You know this girl? Who is she?" "She is one of the finest weapons in the enemy's armory, Petrie. But a woman is a two-edged sword, and treacherous. To our great good fortune, she has formed a sudden predilection, characteristically Oriental, for yourself. Oh, you may smile, but it is evident. She was employed to get this letter placed in my hands. Give it to me." I did so. "She has succeeded. Smell." He held the envelope under my nose, and, with a sudden sense of nausea, I recognized the strange perfume. "You know what this presaged in Sir Crichton's case? Can you doubt any longer? She did not want you to share my fate, Petrie." "Smith," I said unsteadily, "I have followed your lead blindly in this horrible business and have not pressed for an explanation, but I must insist before I go one step farther upon knowing what it all means." "Just a few steps farther," he rejoined. "As far as a cab. We are hardly safe here. Oh, you need not fear shot or knives. The man whose servants are watching us now scorns to employ such clumsy tell-tale weapons." * "Pull up the window on your side, Petrie, and look oat behind. Good! We've started." The cab moved off with a metallic jerk, and I turned and looked back through the little window in the rear. "Some one has got into another cab. It is following ours, I think." Nayland Smith lay back and laughed unmirthfully. "Petrie," he said, "if I escape alive from this business I shall know that I bear a charmed life." I made no reply as he pulled out the dilapidated pouch and filled his pipe. "You have asked me to explain matters," he continued, "and I will do so to the best of my ability. You no doubt wonder why a servant of the British Government, lately stationed in Burma, suddenly appears in London in the character of a detective. I am here, Petrie—and I bear credentials from the very highest sources—because, quite by accident, I came upon a clue. Following it up in the ordinary course of routine, I obtained evidence of the existence and malignant activity of a certain man. At the present stage of the case I should not be justified in terming him the emissary of an Eastern power, but I may say that representations are shortly to be made to that power's ambassador in London." He paused and glanced back toward the pursuing cab. "There is little to fear until we arrive home," he said calmly. "Afterward there is much. To continue; This man, whether a fanatic or a duly appointed agent, is, unquestionably, the most malign and formidable personality existing in the known world to-day. He is a linguist who speaks with almost equal facility in any of the civilized languages and in most of the barbaric. He is an adept in all the arts and sciences which a great university could teach him. He also is an adept in certain obscure arts and sciences which no university of to-day can teach. He has the brains of any three men of genius. Petrie, he is a mental giant." "You amaze me!" I said. "As to his mission among men. Why did M. Jules Fumeaux fall dead in a Paris opera house? Because of heart failure? No! Because his last speech had shown that he held the key to the secret of Tongking. What became of the Grand Duke Stanislaus? Elopement? Suicide? Nothing of the kind. He alone was fully alive to Russia's growing peril. He alone knew the truth about Mongolia. Why was Sir Crichton Davey murdered? Because had the work he was engaged upon ever seen the light, it would have shown him to be die only living Englishman who understood the importance of the Tibetan frontiers. Is there a man who would arouse the West to a sense of the awakening of the East, that the millions only await their leader? He will die. And this is only one phase of the devilish campaign. The others I can merely surmise." "But, Smith, this is almost incredible! What perverted genius controls this awful secret movement?" "Imagine a person, tall, lean, and feline, high shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present. Imagine that awful being and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man."(End Chapter 2) I sank into an armchair in my rooms and gulped down a strong peg of brandy. "We have been followed here," I said. "Why did you make no attempt to throw the pursuers off the track, to have them intercepted?" Smith laughed. "Useless, in the first place. Wherever we went he would find us. And of what use to arrest his creatures? We could prove nothing against them. Further, it is evident that an attempt is to be made upon my life to-night—and by the same means that proved so successful in the case of poor Sir Crichton." His square jaw grew truculently prominent, and he leaped stormily to his feet, shaking his clenched fists toward the window. "The villain!" he cried. "The fiendishly clever villain! I suspected that Sir Crichton was next, and I was right. But I came too late, Petrie! That hits me hard, old man. To think that I knew and yet failed to save him!" He resumed his seat, smoking hard. "Fu-Manchu has made the blunder common to all men of unusual genius," he said. "He has underrated his adversary. He has not given me credit for perceiving the meaning of the scented messages. He has thrown away one powerful weapon—to get such a message into my hands—and he thinks that, once safe within doors, I shall sleep, unsuspecting, and die as Sir Crichton died. But without the indiscretion of your charming friend I should have known what to expect when I received her 'information,' which, by the way, consists of a blank sheet of paper." "Smith," I broke in, "who is she?" "She is either Fu-Manchu's daughter, his wife, or his slave. I am inclined to believe the latter, for she has no will but his will, except"—with a quizzical glance—"in a certain instance." "How can you jest with some awful thing—Heaven knows what—hanging over your head? What is the meaning of these perfumed envelopes? How did Sir Crichton die?" "He died of the Zayat Kiss. Ask me what that is and I reply 'I do not know.' The zayats are the Burmese caravansaries, or rest houses. Along a certain route—upon which I set eyes for the first and only time upon Dr. Fu-Manchu—travelers who use them sometimes die as Sir Crichton died, with nothing to show the cause of death but a little mark upon the neck, face, or limb, which has earned in those parts the title of the 'Zayat Kiss.' The rest houses along that route are shunned now. I have my theory, and I hope to prove it to-night if I live. This was my principal reason for not enlightening Dr. Cleeve. Even walls have ears where Fu-Manchu is concerned. I wanted an opportunity to study the Zayat Kiss in operation, and I shall have one." "But the scented envelopes?" "In the swampy forests of the district I have referred to a rare species of orchid, almost green and with a peculiar scent, is sometimes met with. I recognized the heavy perfume at once. I take it that the thing which kills the travelers is attracted by this orchid. You will notice that the perfume clings to whatever it touches. I doubt if it can be washed off in the ordinary way. After at least one unsuccessful attempt to kill Sir Crichton—you recall that he thought there was something concealed in his study on a previous occasion?—Fu-Manchu hit upon the perfumed envelopes. He may have a supply of these green orchids in his possession—possibly to feed the creature." "What creature? How could any creature have got into Sir Crichton's room to-night?" "You no doubt observed that I examined the grate of the study. I found a fair quantity of fallen soot. I at once assumed, since it appeared to be the only means of entrance, that something had been dropped down; and I took it for granted that the thing, whatever it was, must still be concealed either in the study or in the library. But when I had obtained the evidence of the groom. Wills, I perceived that the cry from the lane or from the park was a signal. I noted that the movements of anyone seated at the study table were visible, in shadow, on the blind, and that the study occupied the corner of a two-storied wing and, therefore, had a short chimney. What did the signal mean? That Sir Crichton had leaped up from his chair and either had received the Zayat Kiss or had seen the thing which some one on the roof had lowered down the straight chimney. It was the signal to withdraw that deadly thing. By means of the iron stairway at the rear of Major General Platt-Houston's I quite easily gained access to the roof above Sir Crichton's study—and I found this." Out from his pocket Nayland Smith drew a tangled piece of silk, mixed up with which were a brass ring and a number of unusually large-sized split shot, nipped on in the manner usual on a fishing line. "My theory proven," he resumed. "Not anticipating a search on the roof, they had been careless. This was to weight the line and to prevent the creature's clinging to the walls of the chimney. Directly it had dropped in the grate, however, by means of this ring I assume that the weighted line was withdrawn, and the thing was only held by a slender thread, which sufficed, though, to draw it back again when it had done its work. It might have got tangled, of coarse, but they reckoned on its making straight up the carved leg of the writing table for the prepared envelope. From there to the hand of Sir Crichton—which, from having touched the envelope, would also be scented with the perfume—was a certain move." "My God! How horrible!" I exclaimed, and glanced apprehensively into the dusky shadows of the room. "What is your theory respecting this creature—what shape, what color?" "It is something that moves rapidly and silently. I have observed that the rear of this house is ivy covered right up to and above your bedroom. Let us make ostentatious preparations to retire, and I think we may rely upon Fu-Manchu's servants to attempt my removal, at any rate—if not yours." "But, my dear fellow, it is a climb of thirty-five feet at the very least!" "You remember the cry in the back lane? It suggested something to me, and I tested my idea—successfully. It was the cry of a dacoit. Oh, dacoity, though quiescent, is by no means extinct. Fu-Manchu has dacoits in his train, and probably it is one who operates the Zayat Kiss, since it was a dacoit who watched the window of the study this evening. To such a man an ivy-covered wall is a grand staircase." * The clock across the common struck two. Having removed all traces of the scent of the orchid from our hands with a solution of ammonia. Smith and I had followed the program laid down. It was an easy matter to reach the rear of the house, by simply climbing a fence, and we did not doubt that, seeing the light go out in the front, our unseen watcher would proceed to the back. The room was a large one, and we had made up my camp bed at one end, stuffing odds and ends under the clothes to lend the appearance of a sleeper, which device we also had adopted in the case of the larger bed. The perfumed envelope lay upon a little coffee table in the center of the floor, and Smith, with an electric pocket lamp, a revolver, and a brassy beside him, sat on cushions in the shadow of the wardrobe. I occupied a post between the windows. The distant clock struck a quarter-past two. A slight breeze stirred the ivy. * Something rose, inch by inch, above the sill of the westerly window. I could see only its shadow, but a sharp, sibilant breath from Smith told me that he, from his post, could see the cause of the shadow. Every nerve in my body seemed to be strung tensely. I was icily cold, expectant, and prepared for whatever horror was upon us. The shadow became stationary. The dacoit was studying the interior of the room. Then it suddenly lengthened, and, craning my neck to the left, I saw a lithe, black-clad form, surmounted by a yellow face, sketchy in the moonlight, pressed against the window panes! One thin, brown hand appeared over the edge of the lowered sash, which it grasped, and then another. The man made absolutely no sound whatever. The second hand disappeared—and reappeared. It held a small square box. There was a very faint click. The dacoit swung himself below the window with the agility of an ape as, with a dull, sickening thud, something dropped upon the carpet! "Stand still, for your life!" came Smith's voice, high pitched. A beam of white light leaped out across the room and played fully upon the coffee table in the center. Prepared as I was for something horrible, I know that I paled at sight of the thing that was running round the edge of the envelope. It was an insect, full six inches long, and of a vivid, venomous red color! It had something of the appearance of a great ant, with its long, quivering antennae and its febrile, horrible vitality; but it was proportionately longer of body and smaller of head, and had numberless rapidly moving legs. In short, it was a giant centipede, apparently of the Scolopendra group, but of a form quite new to me. These things I realized in one breathless instant; in the next—Smith had dashed the thing's poisonous life out with one straight, true blow of the golf club! I leaped to the window and threw it widely open, feeling a silk thread brush my hand as I did so. A black shape was dropping with incredible agility from branch to branch of the ivy, and without once offering a mark for a revolver shot, it merged into the shadows beneath, the trees of the garden. As I turned and switched on the light Nayland Smith dropped limply into a chair, leaning his head upon his hands. Even that grim courage had been tried sorely. "Never mind the dacoit, Petrie," he said. "Nemesis will know where to find him. We know now what causes the mark of the Zayat Kiss. Therefore science is richer for our first brush with the enemy, and the enemy is poorer-—unless he has any more unclassified centipedes. I understand now something that has been puzzling me since I heard of it—Sir Crichton's stifled cry. When we remember that he was almost past speech, it is reasonable to suppose that his cry was not "The red hand!' but 'The red ant!' Petrie, to think that I failed by less than an hour to save him from such an end!"(End Chapter 3)
The body of a lascar, dressed in the manner usual on the P.& 0. boats, was recovered from the Thames off Tilbury by the river police at 6 a.m. this morning. It is supposed that the man met with an accident in leaving his ship.
Nayland Smith passed me the evening paper and pointed to the above paragraph. "For 'lascar' read 'dacoit,'" he said. "Our last night's visitor, fortunately for us, failed to follow his instructions. Also, he lost the centipede and left a clue behind him. Dr. Fu-Manchu does not overlook such lapses."