by Sax Rohmer
One glimpse Kerry had of the pretty, fair head lying limply back against the cushions. The manager of the club was staring after the car.
Kerry stepped out from his hiding place. Durham had disappeared, and there was no cab in sight, but immediately beyond the illuminated entrance stood a Rolls-Royce which had been fifth in the rank of parked cars before the adjustment had been made to enable the coupe to reach the door. Kerry ran across, and:
“Whose car, my lad?” he demanded of the chauffeur.
The latter, resenting the curt tone of the inquiry, looked the speaker up and down, and:
“Captain. Egerton’s,” he replied slowly. “But what business may it be of yours?”
“I’m Chief Inspector Kerry, of New Scotland Yard,” came the rapid reply. “I want to follow the car that has just left.”
“What about running?” demanded the man insolently.
Kerry shot out a small, muscular hand and grasped the speaker’s wrist.
“I’ll say one thing to you,” he rapped. “I’m a police officer, and I demand your help. Refuse it, and you’ll wake up in Vine Street.”
The Chief Inspector was on the step now, bending forward so that his fierce red face was but an inch removed from that of the startled chauffeur. The quelling force of his ferocious personality achieved its purpose, as it rarely failed to do.
“I’m getting in,” added the Chief Inspector, jumping back on to the pavement. “Lose that French bus, and I’ll charge you with resisting and obstructing an officer of the law in the execution of his duty. Start.”
Kerry leaped in and banged the door — and the Rolls-Royce started.
II
AT MALAY JACK’S
When Kerry left Bond Street the mistiness of the night was developing into definite fog. It varied in different districts. Thus, St. Paul’s Churchyard had been clear of it at a time when it had lain impenetrably in Trafalgar Square. When, an hour and a half after setting out in the commandeered Rolls-Royce, Kerry groped blindly along Limehouse Causeway, it was through a yellow murk that he made his way — a vapour which could not only be seen, smelled and felt, but tasted.
He was in one of his most violent humours. He found some slight solace in the reflection that the impudent chauffeur, from whom he had parted in West India Dock Road, must experience great difficulty in finding his way back to the West End.
“Damn the fog!” he muttered, coughing irritably.
It had tricked him, this floating murk of London; for, while he had been enabled to keep the coupe in view right to the fringe of dockland, here, as if bred by old London’s river, the fog had lain impenetrably.
Chief Inspector Kerry was a man who took many risks, but because of this cursed fog he had no definite evidence that Chada’s car had gone to a certain house. Right of search he had not, and so temporarily he was baffled.
Now the nearest telephone was his objective, and presently, where a blue light dimly pierced the mist, he paused, pushed open a swing door, and stepped into a long, narrow passage. He descended three stairs, and entered a room laden with a sickly perfume compounded of stale beer and spirits; of greasy humanity — European, Asiastic, and African; of cheap tobacco and cheaper scents; and, vaguely, of opium.
It was fairly well lighted, but the fog had penetrated here, veiling some of the harshness of its rough appointments. An unsavoury den was Malay Jack’s, where flotsam of the river might be found. Yellow men there were, and black men and brown men. But all the women present were white.
Fan-tan was in progress at one of the tables, the four players being apparently the only strictly sober people in the room. A woman was laughing raucously as Kerry entered, and many coarse-voiced conversations were in progress; but as he pulled the rough curtain walls aside and walked into the room, a hush, highly complimentary to the Chief Inspector’s reputation, fell upon the assembly. Only the woman’s raucous laughter continued, rising, a hideous solo, above a sort of murmur, composed of the words “Red Kerry!” spoken in many tones.
Kerry ignored the sensation which his entrance had created, and crossed the room to a small counter, behind which a dusky man was standing, coatless and shirt sleeves rolled up. He had the skin of a Malay but the features of a stage Irishman of the old school. And, indeed, had he known his own pedigree, which is a knowledge beyond the ken of any man, partly Irish he might have found himself indeed to be.
This was Malay Jack, the proprietor of one of the roughest houses in Limehouse. His expression, while propitiatory, was not friendly, but:
“Don’t get hot and bothered,” snapped Kerry viciously. “I want to use your telephone, that’s all.”
“Oh,” said the other, unable to conceal his relief, “that’s easy. Come in.”
He raised a flap in the counter, and Kerry, passing through, entered a little room behind the bar. Here a telephone stood upon a dirty, littered table, and, taking it up:
“City four hundred,” called the Chief Inspector curtly. A moment later: “Hallo! Yes,” he said. “Chief Inspector Kerry speaking. Put me through to my department, please.”
He stood for a while waiting, receiver in hand, and smiled grimly to note that the uproar in the room beyond had been resumed. Evidently Malay Jack had given the “all clear” signal. Then:
“Chief Inspector Kerry speaking,” he said again. “Has Detective Sergeant Durham reported?”
“Yes,” was the reply, “half an hour ago. He’s standing-by at Limehouse Station. He followed you in a taxi, but lost you on the way owing to the fog.”
“I don’t wonder,” said Kerry. “His loss is not so great as mine. Anything else?”
“Nothing else.”
“Good. I’ll speak to Limehouse. Good-bye.”
He replaced the receiver and paused for a moment, reflecting. Extracting a piece of tasteless gum from between his teeth, he deposited it in the grate, where a sickly fire burned; then, tearing the wrapper from a fresh slip, he resumed his chewing and stood looking about him with unseeing eyes. Fierce they were as ever, but introspective in expression.
Famous for his swift decisions, for once in a way he found himself in doubt. Malay Jack had keen ears, and there were those in the place who had every reason to be interested in the movements of a member of the Criminal Investigation Department, especially of one who had earned the right to be dreaded by the rats of Limehouse. London’s peculiar climate fought against him, but he determined to make no more telephone calls but to proceed to Limehouse police station.
He stepped swiftly into the bar, and, as he had anticipated, nearly upset the proprietor, who was standing listening by the half-open door. Kerry smiled fiercely into the ugly face, lifted the flap, and walked down the room, through the aisle between the scattered tables, where the air was heavy with strange perfumes, touched now with the bite of London fog, and where slanting eyes and straight eyes, sober eyes and drunken eyes, regarded him furtively. Something of a second hush there was, but one not so complete as the first.
Kerry pulled the curtain aside, mounted the stair, walked along the passage and out through the swing door into the yellow gloom of the Causeway. Ten slow steps he had taken when he detected a sound of pursuit. Like a flash he turned, clenching his fists. Then:
“Inspector!” whispered a husky voice.
“Yes! Who are you? What do you want?”
A dim form loomed up through the fog.
“My name is Peters, sir. Inspector Preston knows me.”
Kerry had paused immediately under a street lamp, and now he looked into the pinched, lean face of the speaker, and:
“I’ve heard of you,” he snapped. “Got some information for me?”
“I think so; but walk on.”
Chief Inspector Kerry hesitated. Peters belonged to a class which Kerry despised with all the force of his straightforward character. A professional informer has his uses from the police point of view; and while evidence of this kind often figured in reports made to the Chief Inspector, he
personally avoided contact with such persons, as he instinctively and daintily avoided contact with personal dirt. But now, something so big was at stake that his hesitation was only momentary.
A vision of the pale face of Lady Rourke, of the golden head leaning weakly back upon the cushions of the coupe, as he had glimpsed it in Bond Street, rose before his mind’s eye as if conjured up out of the fog. Peters shuffled along beside him, and:
“Young Chada’s done himself in to-night,” continued the husky voice. “He brought a swell girl to the old man’s house an hour ago. I was hanging about there, thinking I might get some information. I think she was doped.”
“Why?” snapped Kerry.
“Well, I was standing over on the other side of the street. Lou Chada opened the door with a key; and when the light shone out I saw him carry her in.”
“Carry her in?”
“Yes. She was in evening dress, with a swell cloak.”
“The car?”
“He came out again and drove it around to the garage at the back.”
“Why didn’t you report this at once?”
“I was on my way to do it when I saw you coming out of Malay Jack’s.”
The man’s voice shook nervously, and:
“What are you scared about?” asked Kerry savagely. “Got anything else to tell me?”
“No, no,” muttered Peters. “Only I’ve got an idea he saw me.”
“Who saw you?”
“Lou Chada.”
“What then?”
“Well, only — don’t leave me till we get to the station.”
Kerry blew down his nose contemptuously, then stopped suddenly.
“Stand still,” he ordered. “I want to listen.”
Silent, they stood in a place of darkness, untouched by any lamplight. Not a sound reached them through the curtain of fog. Asiatic mystery wrapped them about, but Kerry experienced only contempt for the cowardice of his companion, and:
“You need come no farther,” he said coldly. “Good night.”
“But —— —” began the man.
“Good night,” repeated Kerry.
He walked on briskly, tapping the pavement with his malacca. The sneaking figure of the informer was swallowed up in the fog. But not a dozen paces had the Chief Inspector gone when he was arrested by a frenzied scream, rising, hollowly, in a dreadful, muffled crescendo. Words reached him.
“My God, he’s stabbed me!”
Then came a sort of babbling, which died into a moan.
“Hell!” muttered Kerry, “the poor devil was right!”
He turned and began to run back, fumbling in his pocket for his electric torch. Almost in the same moment that he found it he stumbled upon Peters, who lay half in the road and half upon the sidewalk.
Kerry pressed the button, and met the glance of upturned, glazing eyes. Even as he dropped upon his knee beside the dying man, Peters swept his arm around in a convulsive movement, having the fingers crooked, coughed horribly, and rolled upon his face.
Switching off the light of the torch, Kerry clenched his jaws in a tense effort of listening, literally holding his breath. But no sound reached him through the muffling fog. A moment he hesitated, well knowing his danger, then viciously snapping on the light again, he quested in the blood-stained mud all about the body of the murdered man.
“Ah!”
It was an exclamation of triumph.
One corner hideously stained, for it had lain half under Peters’s shoulder, Kerry gingerly lifted between finger and thumb a handkerchief of fine white silk, such as is carried in the breast pocket of an evening coat.
It bore an ornate monogram worked in gold, and representing the letters “L. C.” Oddly enough, it was the corner that bore the monogram which was also bloodstained.
III
THE ROOM OF THE GOLDEN BUDDHA
It was a moot point whether Lady Pat Rourke merited condemnation or pity. She possessed that type of blonde beauty which seems to be a lodestone for mankind in general. Her husband was wealthy, twelve years her senior, and, far from watching over her with jealous care — an attitude which often characterizes such unions — he, on the contrary, permitted her a dangerous freedom, believing that she would appreciate without abusing it.
Her friendship with Lou Chada had first opened his eyes to the perils which beset the road of least resistance. Sir Noel Rourke was an Anglo-Indian, and his prejudice against the Eurasian was one not lightly to be surmounted. Not all the polish which English culture had given to this child of a mixed union could blind Sir Noel to the yellow streak. Courted though Chada was by some of the best people, Sir Noel remained cold.
The long, magnetic eyes, the handsome, clear-cut features, above all, that slow and alluring smile, appealed to the husband of the wilful Pat rather as evidences of Oriental, half-effeminate devilry than as passports to decent society. Oxford had veneered him, but scratch the veneer and one found the sandal-wood of the East, perfumed, seductive, appealing, but something to be shunned as brittle and untrustworthy.
Yet he hesitated, seeking to be true to his convictions. Knowing what he knew already, and what he suspected, it is certain that, could he have viewed Lou Chada through the eyes of Chief Inspector Kerry, the affair must have terminated otherwise. But Sir Noel did not know what Kerry knew. And the pleasure-seeking Lady Rourke, with her hair of spun gold and her provoking smile, found Lou Chada dangerously fascinating; almost she was infatuated — she who had known so much admiration.
Of those joys for which thousands of her plainer sisters yearn and starve to the end of their days she had experienced a surfeit. Always she sought for novelty, for new adventures. She was confident of herself, but yet — and here lay the delicious thrill — not wholly confident. Many times she had promised to visit the house of Lou Chada’s father — a mystery palace cunningly painted, a perfumed page from the Arabian poets dropped amid the interesting squalor of Limehouse.
Perhaps she had never intended to go. Who knows? But on the night when she came within the ken of Chief Inspector Kerry, Lou Chada had urged her to do so in his poetically passionate fashion, and, wanting to go, she had asked herself: “Am I strong enough? Dare I?”
They had dined, danced, and she had smoked one of the scented cigarettes which he alone seemed to be able to procure, and which, on their arrival from the East, were contained in queer little polished wooden boxes.
Then had come an unfamiliar nausea and dizziness, an uncomfortable recognition of the fact that she was making a fool of herself, and finally a semi-darkness through which familiar faces loomed up and were quickly lost again. There was the soft, musical voice of Lou Chada reassuring her, a sense of chill, of helplessness, and then for a while an interval which afterward she found herself unable to bridge.
Knowledge of verity came at last, and Lady Pat raised herself from the divan upon which she had been lying, and, her slender hands clutching the cushions, stared about her with eyes which ever grew wider.
She was in a long, rather lofty room, which was lighted by three silver lanterns swung from the ceiling. The place, without containing much furniture, was a riot of garish, barbaric colour. There were deep divans cushioned in amber and blood-red. Upon the floor lay Persian carpets and skins of beasts. Cunning niches there were, half concealing and half revealing long-necked Chinese jars; and odd little carven tables bore strangely fashioned vessels of silver. There was a cabinet of ebony inlaid with jade, there were black tapestries figured with dragons of green and gold. Curtains she saw of peacock-blue; and in a tall, narrow recess, dominating the room, squatted a great golden Buddha.
The atmosphere was laden with a strange perfume.
But, above all, this room was silent, most oppressively silent.
Lady Pat started to her feet. The whole perfumed place seemed to be swimming around her. Reclosing her eyes, she fought down her weakness. The truth, the truth respecting Lou Chada and herself, had uprisen starkly before her. By her own folly �
� and she could find no tiny excuse — she had placed herself in the power of a man whom, instinctively, deep within her soul, she had always known to be utterly unscrupulous.
How cleverly he had concealed the wild animal which dwelt beneath that suave, polished exterior! Yet how ill he had concealed it! For intuitively she had always recognized its presence, but had deliberately closed her eyes, finding a joy in the secret knowledge of danger. Now at last he had discarded pretense.
The cigarette which he had offered her at the club had been drugged. She was in Limehouse, at the mercy of a man in whose veins ran the blood of ancestors to whom women had been chattels. Too well she recognized that his passion must have driven him insane, as he must know at what cost he took such liberties with one who could not lightly be so treated. But these reflections afforded poor consolation. It was not of the penalties that Lou Chada must suffer for this infringement of Western codes, but of the price that she must pay for her folly, of which Pat was thinking.
There was a nauseating taste upon her palate. She remembered having noticed it faintly while she was smoking the cigarette; indeed, she had commented upon it at the time.
“The dirty yellow blackguard!” she said aloud, and clenched her hands.
She merely echoed what many a man had said before her. She wondered at herself, and in doing so but wondered at the mystery of womanhood.
Clarity was returning. The room no longer swam around her. She crossed in the direction of a garish curtain, which instinctively she divined to mask a door. Dragging it aside, she tried the handle, but the door was locked. A second door she found, and this also proved to be locked.
There was one tall window, also covered by ornate draperies, but it was shuttered, and the shutters had locks. Another small window she discovered, glazed with amber glass, but set so high in the wall as to be inaccessible.
Dread assailed her, and dropping on to one of the divans, she hid her face in her hands.
“My God!” she whispered. “My God! Give me strength — give me courage.”