by Sax Rohmer
“You catchee sleepee, Tling-a-Ling,” murmured the Chinaman. “Mrs. Sin no likee you palaber, lo!”
“Burn it!” cried the woman, “burn the one-eyed horror!”
But when, carrying a lighted lantern, Sin Sin Wa presently came into the inner room, he smiled as imperturbably as ever, and was unmoved so far as external evidence showed.
Sin Sin Wa set the lantern upon a Moorish coffee-table which once had stood beside the divan in Mrs. Sin’s sanctum at the House of a Hundred Raptures. A significant glance — its significance an acute puzzle to the recipient — he cast upon Chief Inspector Kerry. His hands tucked in the loose sleeves of his blouse, he stood looking down at the woman who lay moaning on the bed; and:
“Tchee, tchee,” he crooned softly, “you hate no catchee die, my beautiful. You sniffee plenty too muchee ‘white snow,’ hoi, hoi! Velly bad woman tly makee you catchee die, but Sin Sin Wa no hate got for killee chop. Topside pidgin no good enough, lo!”
His thick, extraordinary long pigtail hanging down his back and gleaming in the rays of the lantern, he stood, head bowed, watching Rita Irvin. Because of his position on the floor, Mrs. Irvin was invisible from Kerry’s point of view, but she continued to moan incessantly, and he knew that she must be unconscious of the Chinaman’s scrutiny.
“Hurry, old fool!” came Mrs. Sin’s harsh voice from the outer room. “In ten minutes Ah Fung will give the signal. Is she dead yet — the doll-woman?”
“She hate no catchee die,” murmured Sin Sin Wa, “She still vella beautiful — tchee!”
It was at the moment that he spoke these words that Seton Pasha entered the empty building above and found the spaniel scratching at the paved floor. So that, as Sin Sin Wa stood looking down at the wan face of the unfortunate woman who refused to die, the dog above, excited by Seton’s presence, ceased to whine and scratch and began to bark.
Faintly to the vault the sound of the high-pitched barking penetrated.
Kerry tensed his muscles and groaned impotently feeling his heart beating like a hammer in his breast. Complete silence reigned in the outer room. Sin Sin Wa never stirred. Again the dog barked, then:
“Hello, hello!” shrieked the raven shrilly. “Number one p’lice chop, lo! Sin Sin Wa! Sin Sin Wa!”
There came a fierce exclamation, the sound of something being hastily overturned, of a scuffle, and:
“Sin — Sin — Wa!” croaked the raven feebly.
The words ended in a screeching cry, which was followed by a sound of wildly beating wings. Sin Sin Wa, hands tucked in sleeves, turned and walked from the inner room, closing the sliding door behind him with a movement of his shoulder.
Resting against the empty shelves, he stood and surveyed the scene in the vault.
Mrs. Sin, who had been kneeling beside the wicker cage, which was upset, was in the act of standing upright. At her feet, and not far from the motionless form of old Sam Tuk who sat like a dummy figure in his chair before the stove, lay a palpitating mass of black feathers. Other detached feathers were sprinkled about the floor. Feebly the raven’s wings beat the ground once, twice — and were still.
Sin Sin Wa uttered one sibilant word, withdrew his hands from his sleeves, and, stepping around the end of the counter, dropped upon his knees beside the raven. He touched it with long yellow fingers, then raised it and stared into the solitary eye, now glazed and sightless as its fellow. The smile had gone from the face of Sin Sin Wa.
“My Tling-a-Ling!” he moaned in his native mandarin tongue. “Speak to me, my little black friend!”
A bead of blood, like a ruby, dropped from the raven’s beak. Sin Sin Wa bowed his head and knelt awhile in silence; then, standing up, he reverently laid the poor bedraggled body upon a chest. He turned and looked at his wife.
Hands on hips, she confronted him, breathing rapidly, and her glance of contempt swept him up and down.
“I’ve often threatened to do it,” she said in English. “Now I’ve done it. They’re on the wharf. We’re trapped — thanks to that black, squalling horror!”
“Tchee, tchee!” hissed Sin Sin Wa.
His gleaming eye fixed upon the woman unblinkingly, he began very deliberately to roll up his loose sleeves. She watched him, contempt in her glance, but her expression changed subtly, and her dark eyes grew narrowed. She looked rapidly towards Sam Tuk but Sam Tuk never stirred.
“Old fool!” she cried at Sin Sin Wa. “What are you doing?”
But Sin Sin Wa, his sleeves rolled up above his yellow, sinewy forearms, now tossed his pigtail, serpentine, across his shoulder and touched it with his fingers, an odd, caressing movement.
“Ho!” laughed Mrs. Sin in her deep scoffing fashion, “it is for me you make all this bhobbery, eh? It is me you are going to chastise, my dear?”
She flung back her head, snapping her fingers before the silent Chinaman. He watched her, and slowly — slowly — he began to crouch, lower and lower, but always that unblinking regard remained fixed upon the face of Mrs. Sin.
The woman laughed again, more loudly. Bending her lithe body forward in mocking mimicry, she snapped her fingers, once — again — and again under Sin Sin Wa’s nose. Then:
“Do you think, you blasted yellow ape, that you can frighten me?” she screamed, a swift flame of wrath lighting up her dark face.
In a flash she had raised the kimona and had the stiletto in her hand. But, even swifter than she, Sin Sin Wa sprang...
Once, twice she struck at him, and blood streamed from his left shoulder. But the pigtail, like an executioner’s rope, was about the woman’s throat. She uttered one smothered shriek, dropping the knife, and then was silent...
Her dyed hair escaped from its fastenings and descended, a ruddy torrent, about her as she writhed, silent, horrible, in the death-coil of the pigtail.
Rigidly, at arms-length, he held her, moment after moment, immovable, implacable; and when he read death in her empurpled face, a miraculous thing happened.
The “blind” eye of Sin Sin Wa opened!
A husky rattle told of the end, and he dropped the woman’s body from his steely grip, disengaging the pigtail with a swift movement of his head. Opening and closing his yellow fingers to restore circulation, he stood looking down at her. He spat upon the floor at her feet.
Then, turning, he held out his arms and confronted Sam Tuk.
“Was it well done, bald father of wisdom?” he demanded hoarsely.
But old Sam Tuk seated lumpish in his chair like some grotesque idol before whom a human sacrifice has been offered up, stirred not. The length of loaded tubing with which he had struck Kerry lay beside him where it had fallen from his nerveless hand. And the two oblique, beady eyes of Sin Sin Wa, watching, grew dim. Step by step he approached the old Chinaman, stooped, touched him, then knelt and laid his head upon the thin knees.
“Old father,” he murmured, “Old bald father who knew so much. Tonight you know all.”
For Sam Tuk was no more. At what moment he had died, whether in the excitement of striking Kerry or later, no man could have presumed to say, since, save by an occasional nod of his head, he had often simulated death in life — he who was so old that he was known as “The Father of Chinatown.”
Standing upright, Sin Sin Wa looked from the dead man to the dead raven. Then, tenderly raising poor Tling-a-Ling, he laid the great dishevelled bird — a weird offering — upon the knees of Sam Tuk.
“Take him with you where you travel tonight, my father,” he said. “He, too, was faithful.”
A cheap German clock commenced a muted clangor, for the little hammer was muffled.
Sin Sin Wa walked slowly across to the counter. Taking up the gleaming joss, he unscrewed its pedestal. Then, returning to the spot where Mrs. Sin lay, he coolly detached a leather wallet which she wore beneath her dress fastened to a girdle. Next he removed her rings, her bangles and other ornaments. He secreted all in the interior of the joss — his treasure-chest. He raised his hands and began to unpl
ait his long pigtail, which, like his “blind” eye, was camouflage — a false queue attached to his own hair, which he wore but slightly longer than some Europeans and many Americans. With a small pair of scissors he clipped off his long, snake-like moustaches....
CHAPTER XLI. THE FINDING OF KAZMAH
At a point just above the sweep of Limehouse Reach a watchful river police patrol observed a moving speck of light on the right bank of the Thames. As if in answer to the signal there came a few moments later a second moving speck at a point not far above the district once notorious in its possession of Ratcliff Highway. A third light answered from the Surrey bank, and a fourth shone out yet higher up and on the opposite side of the Thames.
The tide had just turned. As Chief Inspector Kerry had once observed, “there are no pleasure parties punting about that stretch,” and, consequently, when George Martin tumbled into his skiff on the Surrey shore and began lustily to pull up stream, he was observed almost immediately by the River Police.
Pulling hard against the stream, it took him a long time to reach his destination — stone stairs near the point from which the second light had been shown. Rain had ceased and the mist had cleared shortly after dusk, as often happens at this time of year, and because the night was comparatively clear the pursuing boats had to be handled with care.
George did not disembark at the stone steps, but after waiting there for some time he began to drop down on the tide, keeping close inshore.
“He knows we’ve spotted him,” said Sergeant Coombes, who was in one of the River Police boats. “It was at the stairs that he had to pick up his man.”
Certainly, the tactics of George suggested that he had recognized surveillance, and, his purpose abandoned, now sought to efface himself without delay. Taking advantage of every shadow, he resigned his boat to the gentle current. He had actually come to the entrance of Greenwich Reach when a dock light, shining out across the river, outlined the boat yellowly.
“He’s got a passenger!” said Coombes amazedly.
Inspector White, who was in charge of the cutter, rested his arm on Coombes’ shoulder and stared across the moving tide.
“I can see no one,” he replied. “You’re over anxious, Detective-Sergeant — and I can understand it!”
Coombes smiled heroically.
“I may be over anxious, Inspector,” he replied, “but if I lost Sin Sin Wa, the River Police had never even heard of him till the C.I.D. put ’em wise.”
“H’m!” muttered the Inspector. “D’you suggest we board him?”
“No,” said Coombes, “let him land, but don’t trouble to hide any more. Show him we’re in pursuit.”
No longer drifting with the outgoing tide, George Martin had now boldly taken to the oars. The River Police boat close in his wake, he headed for the blunt promontory of the Isle of Dogs. The grim pursuit went on until:
“I bet I know where he’s for,” said Coombes.
“So do I,” declared Inspector White; “Dougal’s!”
Their anticipations were realized. To the wooden stairs which served as a water-gate for the establishment on the Isle of Dogs, George Martin ran in openly; the police boat followed, and:
“You were right!” cried the Inspector, “he has somebody with him!”
A furtive figure, bearing a burden upon its shoulder, moved up the slope and disappeared. A moment later the police were leaping ashore. George deserted his boat and went running heavily after his passenger.
“After them!” cried Coombes. “That’s Sin Sin Wa!”
Around the mazey, rubbish-strewn paths the pursuit went hotly. In sight of Dougal’s Coombes saw the swing door open and a silhouette — that of a man who carried a bag on his shoulder — pass in. George Martin followed, but the Scotland Yard man had his hand upon his shoulder.
“Police!” he said sharply. “Who’s your friend?”
George turned, red and truculent, with clenched fists.
“Mind your own bloody business!” he roared.
“Mind yours, my lad!” retorted Coombes warningly. “You’re no Thames waterman. Who’s your friend?”
“Wotcher mean?” shouted George. “You’re up the pole or canned you are!”
“Grab him!” said Coombes, and he kicked open the door and entered the saloon, followed by Inspector White and the boat’s crew.
As they appeared, the Inspector conspicuous in his uniform, backed by the group of River Police, one of whom grasped George Martin by his coat collar:
“Splits!” bellowed Dougal in a voice like a fog-horn.
Twenty cups of tea, coffee and cocoa, too hot for speedy assimilation, were spilled upon the floor.
The place as usual was crowded, more particularly in the neighborhood of the two stoves. Here were dock laborers, seamen and riverside loafers, lascars, Chinese, Arabs, negroes and dagoes. Mrs. Dougal, defiant and red, brawny arms folded and her pose as that of one contemplating a physical contest, glared from behind the “solid” counter. Dougal rested his hairy hands upon the “wet” counter and revealed his defective teeth in a vicious snarl. Many of the patrons carried light baggage, since a P and O boat, an oriental, and the S. S. Mahratta, were sailing that night or in the early morning, and Dougal’s was the favorite house of call for a doch-an-dorrich for sailormen, particularly for sailormen of color.
Upon the police group became focussed the glances of light eyes and dark eyes, round eyes, almond-shaped eyes, and oblique eyes. Silence fell.
“We are police officers,” called Coombes formally. “All papers, please.”
Thereupon, without disturbance, the inspection began, and among the papers scrutinized were those of one, Chung Chow, an able-bodied Chinese seaman. But since his papers were in order, and since he possessed two eyes and wore no pigtail, he excited no more interest in the mind of Detective-Sergeant Coombes than did any one of the other Chinamen in the place.
A careful search of the premises led to no better result, and George Martin accounted for his possession of a considerable sum of money found upon him by explaining that he had recently been paid off after a long voyage and had been lucky at cards.
The result of the night’s traffic, then, spelled failure for British justice, the S.S. Mahratta sailed one stewardess short of her complement; but among the Chinese crew of another steamer Eastward bound was one, Chung Chow, formerly known as Sin Sin Wa. And sometimes in the night watches there arose before him the picture of a black bird resting upon the knees of an aged Chinaman. Beyond these figures dimly he perceived the paddy-fields of Ho-Nan and the sweeping valley of the Yellow River, where the opium poppy grows.
It was about an hour before the sailing of the ship which numbered Chung Chow among the yellow members of its crew that Seton Pasha returned once more to the deserted wharf whereon he had found Mrs. Monte Irvin’s spaniel. Afterwards, in the light of ascertained facts, he condemned himself for a stupidity passing the ordinary. For while he had conducted a careful search of the wharf and adjoining premises, convinced that there was a cellar of some kind below, he had omitted to look for a water-gate to this hypothetical cache.
Perhaps his self-condemnation was deserved, but in justice to the agent selected by Lord Wrexborough, it should be added that Chief Inspector Kerry had no more idea of the existence of such an entrance, and exit, than had Seton Pasha.
Leaving the dog at Leman Street then, and learning that there was no news of the missing Chief Inspector, Seton had set out once more. He had been informed of the mysterious signals flashed from side to side of the Lower Pool, and was hourly expecting a report to the effect that Sin Sin Wa had been apprehended in the act of escaping. That Sin Sin Wa had dropped into the turgid tide from his underground hiding-place, and pushing his property — which was floatable — before him, encased in a waterproof bag, had swum out and clung to the stern of George Martin’s boat as it passed close to the empty wharf, neither Seton Pasha nor any other man knew — except George Martin and Sin Sin Wa.
&n
bsp; At a suitably dark spot the Chinaman had boarded the little craft, not without difficulty, for his wounded shoulder pained him, and had changed his sodden attire for a dry outfit which awaited him in the locker at the stern of the skiff. The cunning of the Chinese has the simplicity of true genius.
Not two paces had Seton taken on to the mystifying wharf when:
“Sam Tuk barber! Entrance in cellar!” rapped a ghostly, muffled voice from beneath his feet. “Sam Tuk barber! Entrance in cellar!”
Seton Pasha stood still, temporarily bereft of speech. Then, “Kerry!” he cried. “Kerry! Where are you?”
But apparently his voice failed to reach the invisible speaker, for:
“Sam Tuk barber! Entrance in cellar!” repeated the voice.
Seton Pasha wasted no more time. He ran out into the narrow street. A man was on duty there.
“Call assistance!” ordered Seton briskly, “Send four men to join me at the barber’s shop called Sam Tuk’s! You know it?”
“Yes, sir; I searched it with Chief Inspector Kerry.”
The note of a police whistle followed.
Ten minutes later the secret of Sam Tuk’s cellar was unmasked. The place was empty, and the subterranean door locked; but it succumbed to the persistent attacks of axe and crowbar, and Seton Pasha was the first of the party to enter the vault. It was laden with chemical fumes....
He found there an aged Chinaman, dead, seated by a stove in which the fire had burned very low. Sprawling across the old man’s knees was the body of a raven. Lying at his feet was a woman, lithe, contorted, the face half hidden in masses of bright red hair.
“End case near the door!” rapped the voice of Kerry. “Slides to the left!”
Seton Pasha vaulted over the counter, drew the shelves aside, and entered the inner room.
By the dim light of a lantern burning upon a moorish coffee-table he discerned an untidy bed, upon which a second woman lay, pallid.
“God!” he muttered; “this place is a morgue!”
“It certainly isn’t healthy!” said an irritable voice from the floor. “But I think I might survive it if you could spare a second to untie me.”