by Sax Rohmer
CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE SONG OF SIN SIN WA
Mrs. Sin, aroused by her husband from the deep opium sleep, came outinto the fume-laden vault. Her dyed hair was disarranged, and her darkeyes stared glassily before her; but even in this half-drugged stateshe bore herself with the lithe carriage of a dancer, swinging her hipslazily and pointing the toes of her high-heeled slippers.
"Awake, my wife," crooned Sin Sin Wa. "Only a fool seeks the black smokewhen the jackals sit in a ring."
Mrs. Sin gave him a glance of smiling contempt--a glance which, passinghim, rested finally upon the prone body of Chief Inspector Kerry lyingstretched upon the floor before the stove. Her pupils contracted to merepin-points and then dilated blackly. She recoiled a step, fighting withthe stupor which her ill-timed indulgence had left behind.
At this moment Kerry groaned loudly, tossed his arm out with aconvulsive movement, and rolled over on to his side, drawing up hisknees.
The eye of Sin Sin Wa gleamed strangely, but he did not move, and SamTuk who sat huddled in his chair where his feet almost touched thefallen man, stirred never a muscle. But Mrs. Sin, who still moved ina semi-phantasmagoric world, swiftly raised the hem of her kimona,affording a glimpse of a shapely silk-clad limb. From a sheath attachedto her garter she drew a thin stilletto. Curiously feline, she crouched,as if about to spring.
Sin Sin Wa extended his hand, grasping his wife's wrist.
"No, woman of indifferent intelligence," he said in his queer sibilantlanguage, "since when has murder gone unpunished in these Britishdominions?"
Mrs. Sin snatched her wrist from his grasp, falling back wild-eyed.
"Yellow ape! yellow ape!" she said hoarsely. "One more does notmatter--now."
"One more?" crooned Sin Sin Wa, glancing curiously at Kerry.
"They are here! We are trapped!"
"No, no," said Sin Sin Wa. "He is a brave man; he comes alone."
He paused, and then suddenly resumed in pidgin English:
"You likee killa him, eh?"
Perhaps unconscious that she did so, Mrs. Sin replied also in English:
"No, I am mad. Let me think, old fool!"
She dropped the stiletto and raised her hand dazedly to her brow.
"You gotchee tired of knifee chop, eh?" murmured Sin Sin Wa.
Mrs. Sin clenched her hands, holding them rigidly against her hips; and,nostrils dilated, she stared at the smiling Chinaman.
"What do you mean?" she demanded.
Sin Sin Wa performed his curious oriental shrug.
"You putta topside pidgin on Sir Lucy alla lightee," he murmured. "Giveehim hell alla velly proper."
The pupils of the woman's eyes contracted again, and remained so. Shelaughed hoarsely and tossed her head.
"Who told you that?" she asked contemptuously. "It was the doll-womanwho killed him--I have said so."
"You tella me so--hoi, hoi! But old Sin Sin Wa catchee wonder. Lo!"--heextended a yellow forefinger, pointing at his wife--"Mrs. Sin make himcatchee die! No bhobbery, no palaber. Sin Sin Wa gotchee you sized upallee timee."
Mrs. Sin snapped her fingers under his nose then stooped, picked up thestiletto, and swiftly restored it to its sheath. Her hands resting uponher hips, she came forward, until her dark evil face almost touched theyellow, smiling face of Sin Sin Wa.
"Listen, old fool," she said in a low, husky voice; "I have done withyou, ape-man, for good! Yes! I killed Lucy, I killed him! He belongedto me--until that pink and white thing took him away. I am glad I killedhim. If I cannot have him neither can she. But I was mad all the same."
She glanced down at Kerry, and:
"Tie him up," she directed, "and send him to sleep. And understand, Sin,we've shared out for the last time--You go your way and I go mine. Nostinking Yellow River for me. New York is good enough until it's safe togo to Buenos Ayres."
"Smartest leg in Buenos Ayres," croaked the raven from his wicker cage,which was set upon the counter.
Sin Sin Wa regarded him smilingly.
"Yes, yes, my little friend," he crooned in Chinese, while Tling-a-Lingrattled ghostly castanets. "In Ho-Nan they will say that you are adevil and I am a wizard. That which is unknown is always thought to bemagical, my Tling-a-Ling."
Mrs. Sin, who was rapidly throwing off the effects of opium andrecovering her normal self-confident personality, glanced at her husbandscornfully.
"Tell me," she said, "what has happened? How did he come here?"
"Blinga filly doggy," murmured Sin Sin Wa. "Knockee Ah Fung on him headand comee down here, lo. Ah Fung allee lightee now--topside. Chaseefilly doggy. Allee velly proper. No bhobbery."
"Talk less and act more," said Mrs. Sin. "Tie him up, and if you musttalk, talk Chinese. Tie him up."
She pointed to Kerry. Sin Sin Wa tucked his hands into his sleeves andshuffled towards the masked door communicating with the inner room.
"Only by intelligent speech are we distinguished from the otheranimals," he murmured in Chinese.
Entering the inner room, he began to extricate a long piece of thin ropefrom amid a tangle of other materials with which it was complicated.Mrs. Sin stood looking down at the fallen man. Neither Kerry nor Sam Tukgave the slightest evidence of life. And as Sin Sin Wa disentangled yardupon yard of rope from the bundle on the floor by the bed where RitaIrvin lay in her long troubled sleep, he crooned a queer song. It was inthe Ho-Nan dialect and intelligible to himself alone.
"Shoa, the evil woman (he chanted), the woman of many strange loves.... Shoa, the ghoul.... Lo, the Yellow River leaps forth from the nostrils of the mountain god.... Shoa, the betrayer of men.... Blood is on her brow. Lo, the betrayer is betrayed. Death sits at her elbow. See, the Yellow River bears a corpse upon its tide... Dead men hear her secret. Shoa, the ghoul.... Shoa, the evil woman. Death sits at her elbow. Black, the vultures flock about her.... Lo, the Yellow River leaps forth from the nostrils of the mountain god."
Meanwhile Kerry, lying motionless at the feet of Sam Tuk was doing somehard and rapid thinking. He had recovered consciousness a few momentsbefore Mrs. Sin had come into the vault from the inner room. There werethose, Seton Pasha among them, who would have regarded the groan and theconvulsive movements of Kerry's body with keen suspicion. And becausethe Chief Inspector suffered from no illusions respecting the genius ofSin Sin Wa, the apparent failure of the one-eyed Chinaman to recognizethese preparations for attack nonplussed the Chief Inspector. Hisoutstanding vice as an investigator was the directness of his ownmethods and of his mental outlook, so that he frequently experiencedgreat difficulty in penetrating to the motives of a tortuous brain suchas that of Sin Sin Wa.
That Sin Sin Wa thought him to be still unconscious he did not believe.He was confident that his tactics had deceived the Jewess, but heentertained an almost superstitious respect for the cleverness of theChinaman. The trick with the ball of leaf opium was painfully fresh inhis memory.
Kerry, in common with many members of the Criminal InvestigationDepartment, rarely carried firearms. He was a man with a profound beliefin his bare hands--aided when necessary by his agile feet. At themoment that Sin Sin Wa had checked the woman's murderous and half insaneoutburst Kerry had been contemplating attack. The sudden change oflanguage on the part of the Chinaman had arrested him in the act;and, realizing that he was listening to a confession which placed thehangman's rope about the neck of Mrs. Sin, he lay still and wondered.
Why had Sin Sin Wa forced his wife to betray herself? To clear Mareno?To clear Mrs. Irvin--or to save his own skin?
It was a frightful puzzle for Kerry. Then--where was Kazmah? That Mrs.Irvin, probably in a drugged condition, lay somewhere in that mysteriousinner room Kerry felt fairly sure. His maltreated skull was humming likea bee-hive and aching intensely, but the man was tough as men aremade, and he could not only think clearly, but was capable of swift anddangerous action.
He believed that he could tackle the Chinaman with fair prospects ofsuccess; and w
omen, however murderous, he habitually disregarded asadversaries. But the mummy-like, deceptive Sam Tuk was not negligible,and Kazmah remained an unknown quantity.
From under that protective arm, cast across his face, Kerry's fierceeyes peered out across the dirty floor. Then quickly he shut his eyesagain.
Sin Sin Wa, crooning his strange song, came in carrying a coil ofrope--and a Mauser pistol!
"P'licemanee gotchee catchee sleepee," he murmured, "or maybe he catcheedie!"
He tossed the rope to his wife, who stood silent tapping the floor withone slim restless foot.
"Number one top-side tie up," he crooned. "Sin Sin Wa watchee withumgun!"
Kerry lay like a dead man; for in the Chinaman's voice were menace andwarning.