Works of Sax Rohmer

by Sax Rohmer

  PART FOURTH — THE EYE OF SIN SIN WA

  CHAPTER XXXIII. CHINESE MAGIC

  Detective-Sergeant Coombes and three assistants watched the house of Sin Sin Wa, and any one of the three would have been prepared to swear “on the Book” that Sin Sin Wa was sleeping. But he who watches a Chinaman watches an illusionist. He must approach his task in the spirit of a psychical inquirer who seeks to trap a bogus medium. The great Robert Houdin, one of the master wizards of modern times, quitted Petrograd by two gates at the same hour according to credible witnesses; but his performance sinks into insignificance beside that of a Chinese predecessor who flourished under one of the Ming emperors. The palace of this potentate was approached by gates, each having twelve locks, and each being watched by twelve guards. Nevertheless a distinguished member of the wizard family not only gained access to the imperial presence but also departed again unseen by any of the guards, and leaving all the gates locked behind him! If Detective-Sergeant Coombes had known this story he might not have experienced such complete confidence.

  That door of Sin Sin Wa’s establishment which gave upon a little backyard was oiled both lock and hinge so that it opened noiselessly. Like a shadow, like a ghost, Sin Sin Wa crept forth, closing the door behind him. He carried a sort of canvas kit-bag, so that one observing him might have concluded that he was “moving.”

  Resting his bag against the end wall, he climbed up by means of holes in the neglected brickwork until he could peer over the top. A faint smell of tobacco smoke greeted him: a detective was standing in the lane below. Soundlessly, Sin Sin Wa descended again. Raising his bag he lifted it lovingly until it rested upright upon the top of the wall and against the side of the house. The night was dark and still. Only a confused beating sound on the Surrey bank rose above the murmur of sleeping London.

  From the rubbish amid which he stood, Sin Sin Wa selected a piece of rusty barrel-hoop. Cautiously he mounted upon a wooden structure built against the end wall and raised himself upright, surveying the prospect. Then he hurled the fragment of iron far along the lane, so that it bounded upon a strip of corrugated roofing in a yard twice removed from his own, and fell clattering among a neighbor’s rubbish.

  A short exclamation came from the detective in the lane. He could be heard walking swiftly away in the direction of the disturbance. And ere he had gone six paces, Sin Sin Wa was bending like an inverted U over the wall and was lowering his precious bag to the ground. Like a cat he sprang across and dropped noiselessly beside it.

  “Hello! Who’s there?” cried the detective, standing by the wall of the house which Sin Sin Wa had selected as a target.

  Sin Sin Wa, bag in hand, trotted, soft of foot, across the lane and into the shadow of the dock-building. By the time that the C.I.D. man had decided to climb up and investigate the mysterious noise, Sin Sin Wa was on the other side of the canal and rapping gently upon the door of Sam Tuk’s hairdressing establishment.

  The door was opened so quickly as to suggest that someone had been posted there for the purpose. Sin Sin Wa entered and the door was closed again.

  “Light, Ah Fung,” he said in Chinese. “What news?”

  The boy who had admitted him took a lamp from under a sort of rough counter and turned to Sin Sin Wa.

  “George came with the boat, master, but I signalled to him that the red policeman and the agent who has hired the end room were watching.”

  “They are gone?”

  “They gather men at the head depot and are searching house from house. She who sleeps below awoke and cried out. They heard her cry.”

  “George waits?”

  “He waits, master. He will wait long if the gain is great.”

  “Good.”

  Sin Sin Wa shuffled across to the cellar stairs, followed by Ah Fung with the lamp. He descended, and, brushing away the carefully spread coal dust, inserted the piece of bent wire into the crevice and raised the secret trap. Bearing his bag upon his shoulder he went down into the tunnel.

  “Reclose the door, Ah Fung,” he said softly; “and be watchful.”

  As the boy replaced the stone trap, Sin Sin Wa struck a match. Then, having the lighted match held in one hand and carrying the bag in the other, he crept along the low passage to the door of the cache. Dropping the smouldering match-end, he opened the door and entered that secret warehouse for which so many people were seeking.

  Seated in a cane chair by the oil-stove was the shrivelled figure of Sam Tuk, his bald head lolling sideways so that his big horn-rimmed spectacles resembled a figure 8. On the counter was set a ship’s lantern. As Sin Sin Wa came in Sam Tuk slowly raised his head.

  No greetings were exchanged, but Sin Sin Wa untied the neck of his kit-bag and drew out a large wicker cage. Thereupon: “Hello! hello!” remarked the occupant drowsily. “Number one p’lice chop lo! Sin Sin Wa — Sin Sin....”

  “Come, my Tling-a-Ling,” crooned Sin Sin Wa.

  He opened the front of the cage and out stepped the raven onto his wrist. Sin Sin Wa raised his arm and Tling-a-Ling settled himself contentedly upon his master’s shoulder.

  Placing the empty cage on the counter. Sin Sin Wa plunged his hand down into the bag and drew out the gleaming wooden joss. This he set beside the cage. With never a glance at the mummy figure of Sam Tuk, he walked around the counter, raven on shoulder, and grasping the end of the laden shelves, he pulled the last section smoothly to the left, showing that it was attached to a sliding door. The establishments of Sin Sin Wa were as full of surprises as a Sicilian trinketbox.

  The double purpose of the timbering which had been added to this old storage vault was now revealed. It not only served to enlarge the store-room, but also shut off from view a second portion of the cellar, smaller than the first, and containing appointments which indicated that it was sometimes inhabited.

  There was an oil-stove in the room, which, like that adjoining it, was evidently unprovided with any proper means of ventilation. A paper-shaded lamp hung from the low roof. The floor was covered with matting, and there were arm-chairs, a divan and other items of furniture, which had been removed from Mrs. Sin’s sanctum in the dismantled House of a Hundred Raptures. In a recess a bed was placed, and as Sin Sin Wa came in Mrs. Sin was standing by the bed looking down at a woman who lay there.

  Mrs. Sin wore her kimona of embroidered green silk and made a striking picture in that sordid setting. Her black hair she had dyed a fashionable shade of red. She glanced rapidly across her shoulder at Sin Sin Wa — a glance of contempt with which was mingled faint distrust.

  “So,” she said, in Chinese, “you have come at last.” Sin Sin Wa smiled. “They watched the old fox,” he replied. “But their eyes were as the eyes of the mole.”

  Still aside, contemptuously, the woman regarded him, and:

  “Suppose they are keener than you think?” she said. “Are you sure you have not led them — here?”

  “The snail may not pursue the hawk,” murmured Sin Sin Wa; “nor the eye of the bat follow his flight.”

  “Smartest leg,” remarked the raven.

  “Yes, yes, my little friend,” crooned Sin Sin Wa, “very soon now you shall see the paddy-fields of Ho-Nan and watch the great Yellow River sweeping eastward to the sea.”

  “Pah!” said Mrs. Sin. “Much — very much — you care about the paddy-fields of Ho-Nan, and little, oh, very little, about the dollars and the traffic! You have my papers?”

  “All are complete. With those dollars for which I care not, a man might buy the world — if he had but enough of the dollars. You are well known in Poplar as ‘Mrs. Jacobs,’ and your identity is easily established — as ‘Mrs. Jacobs.’ You join the Mahratta at the Albert Dock. I have bought you a post as stewardess.”

  Mrs. Sin tossed her head. “And Juan?”

  “What can they prove against your Juan if you are missing?”

  Mrs. Sin nodded towards the bed.

  With slow and shuffling steps Sin Sin Wa approached. He continued to smi
le, but his glittering eye held even less of mirth than usual. Tucking his hands into his sleeves, he stood and looked down — at Rita Irvin.

  Her face had acquired a waxen quality, but some of her delicate coloring still lingered, lending her a ghastly and mask-like aspect. Her nostrils and lips were blanched, however, and possessed a curiously pinched appearance. It was impossible to detect the fact that she breathed, and her long lashes lay motionless upon her cheeks.

  Sin Sin Wa studied her silently for some time, then:

  “Yes,” he murmured, “she is beautiful. But women are like adder’s eggs. He is a fool who warms them in his bosom.” He turned his slow regard upon Mrs. Sin. “You have stained your hair to look even as hers. It was discreet, my wife. But one is beautiful and many-shadowed like a copper vase, and the other is like a winter sunset on the poppy-fields. You remind me of the angry red policeman, and I tremble.”

  “Tremble as much as you like,” said Mrs. Sin scornfully, “but do something, think; don’t leave everything to me. She screamed tonight — and someone heard her. They are searching the river bank from door to door.”

  “Lo!” murmured Sin Sin Wa, “even this I had learned, nor failed to heed the beating of a distant drum. And why did she scream?”

  “I was — keeping her asleep; and the prick of the needle woke her.”

  “Tchee, tchee,” crooned Sin Sin Wa, his voice sinking lower and lower and his eye nearly closing. “But still she lives — and is beautiful.”

  “Beautiful!” mocked Mrs. Sin. “A doll-woman, bloodless and nerveless!”

  “So — so. Yet she, so bloodless and nerveless, unmasked the secret of Kazmah, and she, so bloodless and nerveless, struck down—”

  Mrs. Sin ground her teeth together audibly.

  “Yes, yes!” she said in sibilant Chinese. “She is a robber, a thief, a murderess.” She bent over the unconscious woman, her jewel-laden fingers crooked and menacing. “With my bare hands I would strangle her, but—”

  “There must be no marks of violence when she is found in the river. Tchee, chee — it is a pity.”

  “Number one p’lice chop, lo!” croaked the raven, following this remark with the police-whistle imitation.

  Mrs. Sin turned and stared fiercely at the one-eyed bird.

  “Why do you bring that evil, croaking thing here?” she demanded. “Have we not enough risks?”

  Sin Sin Wa smiled patiently.

  “Too many,” he murmured. “For failure is nothing but the taking of seven risks when six were enough. Come — let us settle our affairs. The ‘Jacobs’ account is closed, but it is only a question of hours or days before the police learn that the wharf as well as the house belongs to someone of that name. We have drawn our last dollar from the traffic, my wife. Our stock we are resigned to lose. So let us settle our affairs.”

  “Smartest — smartest,” croaked Tling-a-Ling, and rattled ghostly castanets.

  CHAPTER XXXIV. ABOVE AND BELOW

  “Thank the guid God I see ye alive, Dan,” said Mary Kerry.

  Having her husband’s dressing-gown over her night attire, and her usually neat hair in great disorder, she stood just within the doorway of the little dining-room at Spenser Road, her face haggard and the fey light in her eyes. Kerry, seated in the armchair dressed as he had come in from the street, a parody of his neat self with mud on his shoes and streaks of green slime on his overall, raised his face from his hands and stared at her wearily.

  “I awakened wi’ a cry at some hour afore the dawn,” she whispered stretching out her hands and looking like a wild-eyed prophetess of old. “My hairt beat sair fast and then grew caud. I droppit on my knees and prayed as I ha’ ne’er prayed afore. Dan, Dan, I thought ye were gene from me.”

  “I nearly was,” said Kerry, a faint spark of his old truculency lighting up the weary eyes. “The man from Whitehall only missed me by a miracle.”

  “’Twas the miracle o’ prayer, Dan,” declared his wife in a low, awe-stricken voice. “For as I prayed, a great comfort came to me an’ a great peace. The second sight was wi’ me, Dan, and I saw, no’ yersel’ — whereby I seemed to ken that ye were safe — but a puir dying soul stretched on a bed o’ sorrow. At the fuit o’ the bed was standing a fearsome figure o’ a man — yellow and wicked, wi’ his hands tuckit in his sleeves. I thought ’twas a veesion that was opening up tee me and that a’ was about to be made clear, when as though a curtain had been droppit before my een, it went awe’ an’ I kenned it nae more; but plain — plain, I heerd the howling o’ a dog.”

  Kerry started and clutched the arms of the chair.

  “A dog!” he said. “A dog!”

  “The howling o’ a sma’ dog,” declared his wife; “and I thought ’twas a portent, an’ the great fear came o’er me again. But as I prayed ’twas unfolder to me that the portent was no’ for yersel’ but for her — the puir weak hairt ye ha’ tee save.”

  She ceased speaking and the strange fey light left her eyes. She dropped upon her knees beside Kerry, bending her head and throwing her arms about him. He glanced down at her tenderly and laid his hands upon her shoulders; but he was preoccupied, and the next moment, his jaws moving mechanically, he was staring straight before him.

  “A dog,” he muttered, “a dog!”

  Mary Kerry did not move; until, a light of understanding coming into Kerry’s fierce eyes, he slowly raised her and stood upright himself.

  “I have it!” he said. “Mary, the case is won! Twenty men have spent the night and early morning beating the river bank so that the very rats have been driven from their holes. Twenty men have failed where a dog would have succeeded. Mary, I must be off.”

  “Ye’re no goin’ out again, Dan. Ye’re weary tee death.”

  “I must, my dear, and it’s you who send me.”

  “But, Dan, where are ye goin’?”

  Kerry grabbed his hat and cane from the sideboard upon which they lay, and:

  “I’m going for the dog!” he rapped.

  Weary as he was and travel-stained, for once neglectful of that neatness upon which he prided himself, he set out, hope reborn in his heart. His assertion that the very rats had been driven from their holes was scarce an exaggeration. A search-party of twenty men, hastily mustered and conducted by Kerry and Seton Pasha, had explored every house, every shop, every wharf, and, as Kerry believed, every cellar adjoining the bank, between Limehouse Basin and the dock gates. Where access had been denied them or where no one had resided they had never hesitated to force an entrance. But no trace had they found of those whom they sought.

  For the first time within Kerry’s memory, or, indeed, within the memory of any member of the Criminal Investigation Department, Detective-Sergeant Coombes had ceased to smile when the appalling truth was revealed to him that Sin Sin Wa had vanished — that Sin Sin Wa had mysteriously joined that invisible company which included Kazmah, Mrs. Sin and Mrs. Monte Irvin. Not a word of reprimand did the Chief Inspector utter, but his eyes seemed to emit sparks. Hands plunged deeply in his pockets he had turned away, and not even Seton Pasha had dared to speak to him for fully five minutes.

  Kerry began to regard the one-eyed Chinaman with a superstitious fear which he strove in vain to stifle. That any man could have succeeded in converting a chandu-khan such as that described by Mollie Gretna into a filthy deserted dwelling such as that visited by Kerry, within the space of some thirty-six hours, was well nigh incredible. But the Chief Inspector had deduced (correctly) that the exotic appointments depicted by Mollie were all of a detachable nature — merely masking the filthiness beneath; so that at the shortest notice the House of a Hundred Raptures could be dismantled. The communicating door was a larger proposition, but that it was one within the compass of Sin Sin Wa its effectual disappearance sufficiently demonstrated.

  Doubtless (Kerry mused savagely) the appointments of the opium-house had been smuggled into that magically hidden cache which now concealed the conjurer Sin Sin Wa as well as the other memb
ers of the Kazmah company. How any man of flesh and blood could have escaped from a six-roomed house surrounded by detectives surpassed Kerry’s powers of imagination. How any apartment large enough to contain a mouse, much less half a dozen human beings, could exist anywhere within the area covered by the search-party he failed to understand, nor was he prepared to admit it humanly possible.

  Kerry chartered a taxicab by Brixton Town Hall and directed the man to drive to Prince’s Gate. To the curious glances of certain of his neighbors who had never before seen the Chief Inspector otherwise than a model of cleanliness and spruceness he was indifferent. But the manner in which the taxi-driver looked him up and down penetrated through the veil of abstraction which hitherto had rendered Kerry impervious to all external impressions, and:

  “Give me another look like that, my lad,” he snapped furiously, “and I’ll bash your head through your blasted wind-screen.”

  A ready retort trembled upon the cabman’s tongue, but a glance into the savage blue eyes reduced him to fearful silence. Kerry entered the cab and banged the door; and the man drove off positively trembling with indignation.

  Deep in reflection the Chief Inspector was driven westward through the early morning traffic. Fine rain was falling, and the streets presented that curiously drab appearance which only London streets can present in all its dreary perfection. Workers bound Cityward fought for places inside trams and buses. A hundred human comedies and tragedies were to be witnessed upon the highways; but to all of them Kerry was blind as he was deaf to the din of workaday Babylon. In spirit he was roaming the bank of old Father Thames where the river sweeps eastward below Limehouse Causeway — wonder-stricken before the magic of the one-eyed wizard who could at will efface himself as an artist rubs out a drawing, who could camouflage a drug warehouse so successfully that human skill, however closely addressed to the task, failed utterly to detect its whereabouts. Above the discord of the busy streets he heard again and again that cry in the night which had come from a hapless prisoner whom they were powerless to succor. He beat his cane upon the floor of the cab and swore savagely and loudly. The intimidated cabman, believing these demonstrations designed to urge him to a greater speed, performed feats of driving calculated to jeopardize his license. But still the savage passenger stamped and cursed, so that the cabby began to believe that a madman was seated behind him.