by Sax Rohmer
I caught Harley’s glance and divided the remainder of the whisky evenly between the three glasses.
“Good ‘ealth,” said the fireman, and disposed of his share at a draught. “That’s bucked me up wonderful.”
He lay back in his chair and from a little tobacco-box began to fill a short clay pipe.
“Look ‘ere, mates, I’m soberin’ up, like, after the smoke, an’ I can see, I can see plain, as nobody’ll ever believe me. Nobody ever does, worse luck, but ‘ere goes. Pass the matches.”
He lighted his pipe, and looking about him in a sort of vaguely aggressive way:
“Last night,” he resumed, “after I was chucked out of the Dock Gates, I made up my mind to go and smoke a pipe with old Ma Lorenzo. Round I goes to Pennyfields, and she don’t seem glad to see me. There’s nobody there only me. Not like the old days when you ‘ad to book your seat in advance.”
He laughed gruffly.
“She didn’t want to let me in at first, said they was watched, that if a Chink ‘ad an old pipe wot ‘ad b’longed to ‘is grandfather it was good enough to get ‘im fined fifty quid. Anyway, me bein’ an old friend she spread a mat for me and filled me a pipe. I asked after old Kwen Lung, but, of course, ‘e was out gamblin’, as usual; so after old Ma Lorenzo ‘ad made me comfortable an’ gone out I ‘ad the place to myself, and presently I dozed off and forgot all about bloody ship’s bunkers an’ nigger-drivin’ Scotchmen.”
He paused and looked about him defiantly.
“I dunno ‘ow long I slept,” he continued, “but some time in the night I kind of ‘alf woke up.”
At that he twisted violently in his chair and glared across at Harley:
“You been a pal to me,” he said; “but tell me I was dreamin’ again and I’ll smash yer bloody face!”
He glared for a while, then addressing his narrative more particularly to me, he resumed:
“It was a scream wot woke me — a woman’s scream. I didn’t sit up; I couldn’t. I never felt like it before. It was the same as bein’ buried alive, I should think. I could see an’ I could ‘ear, but I couldn’t move one muscle in my body. Foller me? An’ wot did I see, mates, an’ wot did I ‘ear? I’m goin’ to tell yer. I see old Kwen Lung’s daughter —— —”
“I didn’t know ‘e ‘ad one,” murmured Harley.
“Then you don’t know much!” shouted the fireman. “I knew years ago, but ‘e kept ‘er stowed away somewhere up above, an’ last night was the first time I ever see ‘er. It was ‘er shriek wot ‘ad reached me, reached me through the smoke. I don’t take much stock in Chink gals in general, but this one’s mother was no Chink, I’ll swear. She was just as pretty as a bloomin’ ivory doll, an’ as little an’ as white, and that old swine Kwen Lung ‘ad tore the dress off of ‘er shoulders with a bloody great whip!”
Harley was leaning forward in his seat now, intent upon the man’s story, and although I could not get rid of the idea that our friend was relating the events of a particularly unpleasant opium dream, nevertheless I was fascinated by the strange story and by the strange manner of its telling.
“I saw the blood drip from ‘er bare shoulders, mates,” the man continued huskily, and with his big dirty hands he strove to illustrate his words. “An’ that old yellow devil lashed an’ lashed until the poor gal was past screamin’. She just sunk down on the floor all of a ‘cap, moanin’ and moanin’ — Gawd! I can ‘ear ‘er moanin’ now!”
“Meanwhile, ‘ere’s me with murder in me ‘eart lyin’ there watchin’, an’ I can’t speak, no! I can’t even curse the yellow rat, an’ I can’t move — not a ‘and, not a foot! Just as she fell there right up against the joss an’ ‘er blood trickled down on ‘is gilded feet, old Ma Lorenzo comes staggerin’ in. I remember all this as clear as print, mates, remember it plain, but wot ‘appened next ain’t so good an’ clear. Somethink seemed to bust in me ‘ead. Only just before I went off, the winder — there’s only one in the room — was smashed to smithereens an’ somebody come in through it.”
“Are you sure?” said Harley eagerly. “Are you sure?”
That he was intensely absorbed in the story he revealed by a piece of bad artistry, very rare in him. He temporarily forgot his dialect. Our marine friend, however, was too much taken up with his own story to notice the slip, and:
“Dead sure!” he shouted.
He suddenly twisted around in his chair.
“Tell me I was dreamin’, mate,” he invited, “and if you ain’t dreamin’ in ‘arf a tick it won’t be because I ‘aven’t put yer to sleep!”
“I ain’t arguin’, old son,” said Harley soothingly. “Get on with your yarn.”
“Ho!” said the fireman, mollified, “so long as you ain’t. Well, then, it’s all blotted out after that. Somebody come in at the winder, but ‘oo it was or wot it was I can’t tell yer, not for fifty quid. When I woke up, which is about ‘arf an hour before you see me, I’m all alone — see? There’s no sign of Kwen Lung nor the gal nor old Ma Lorenzo nor anybody. I sez to meself, wot you keep on sayin’. I sez, ‘You’re dreamin’, Bill.’”
“But I don’t think you was,” declared Harley. “Straight I don’t.”
“I know I wasn’t!” roared the fireman, and banged the table lustily. “I see ‘er blood on the joss an’ on the floor where she lay!”
“This morning?” I interjected.
“This mornin’, in the light of the little oil lamp where old Ma Lorenzo ‘ad roasted the pills! It’s all still an’ quiet an’ I feel more dead than alive. I’m goin’ to give ‘er a hail, see? When I sez to myself, ‘Bill,’ I sez, ‘put out to sea; you’re amongst Kaffirs, Bill.’ It occurred to me as old Kwen Lung might wonder ‘ow much I knew. So I beat it. But when I got in the open air I felt I’d never make my lodgin’s without a tonic. That’s ‘ow I come to meet you, mates.
“Listen — I’m away in the old Seahawk in the mornin’, but I’ll tell you somethink. That yellow bastard killed his daughter last night! Beat ‘er to death. I see it plain. The sweetest, prettiest bit of ivory as Gawd ever put breath into. If ‘er body ain’t in the river, it’s in the ‘ouse. Drunk or sober, I never could stand the splits, but mates” — he stood up, and grasping me by the arm, he drew me across the room where he also seized Harley in his muscular grip— “mates,” he went on earnestly, “she was the sweetest, prettiest little gal as a man ever clapped eyes on. One of yer walk into Limehouse Station an’ put the koppers wise. I’d sleep easier at sea if I knew old Kwen Lung ‘ad gone west on a bloody rope’s end.”
II
AT KWEN LUNG’S
For fully ten minutes after the fireman had departed Paul Harley sat staring abstractedly in front of him, his cold pipe between his teeth, and knowing his moods I intruded no words upon this reverie, until:
“Come on, Knox,” he said, standing up suddenly, “I think this matter calls for speedy action.”
“What! Do you think the man’s story was true?”
“I think nothing. I am going to look at Kwen Lung’s joss.”
Without another word he led the way downstairs and out into the deserted street. The first gray halftones of dawn were creeping into the sky, so that the outlines of Limehouse loomed like dim silhouettes about us. There was abundant evidence in the form of noises, strange and discordant, that many workers were busy on dock and riverside, but the streets through which our course lay were almost empty. Sometimes a furtive shadow would move out of some black gully and fade into a dimly seen doorway in a manner peculiarly unpleasant and Asiatic. But we met no palpable pedestrian throughout the journey.
Before the door of a house in Pennyfields which closely resembled that which we had left in Wade Street, in that it was flatly uninteresting, dirty and commonplace, we paused. There was no sign of life about the place and no lights showed at any of the windows, which appeared as dim cavities — eyeless sockets in the gray face of the building, as dawn proclaimed the birth of a new day.
Harley sei
zed the knocker and knocked sharply. There was no response, and he repeated the summons, but again without effect. Thereupon, with a muttered exclamation, he grasped the knocker a third time and executed a veritable tattoo upon the door. When this had proceeded for about half a minute or more:
“All right, all right!” came a shaky voice from within. “I’m coming.”
Harley released the knocker, and, turning to me:
“Ma Lorenzo,” he whispered. “Don’t make any mistakes.”
Indeed, even as he warned me, heralded by a creaking of bolts and the rattling of a chain, the door was opened by a fat, shapeless, half-caste woman of indefinite age; in whose dark eyes, now sunken in bloated cheeks, in whose full though drooping lips, and even in the whole overlaid contour of whose face and figure it was possible to recognize the traces of former beauty. This was Ma Lorenzo, who for many years had lived at that address with old Kwen Lung, of whom strange stories were told in Chinatown.
As Bill Jones, A.B., my friend, Paul Harley, was well known to Ma Lorenzo as he was well known to many others in that strange colony which clusters round the London docks. I sometimes enjoyed the privilege of accompanying my friend on a tour of investigation through the weird resorts which abound in that neighbourhood, and, indeed, we had been returning from one of these Baghdad nights when our present adventure had been thrust upon us. Assuming a wild and boisterous manner which he had at command:
“‘Urry up, Ma!” said Harley, entering without ceremony; “I want to introduce my pal Jim ‘ere to old Kwen Lung, and make it all right for him before I sail.”
Ma Lorenzo, who was half Portuguese, replied in her peculiar accent:
“This no time to come waking me up out of bed!”
But Harley, brushing past her, was already inside the stuffy little room, and I hastened to follow.
“Kwen Lung!” shouted my friend loudly. “Where are you? Brought a friend to see you.”
“Kwen Lung no hab,” came the complaining tones of Ma Lorenzo from behind us.
It was curious to note how long association with the Chinese had resulted in her catching the infection of that pidgin-English which is a sort of esperanto in all Asiatic quarters.
“Eh!” cried my friend, pushing open a door on the right of the passage and stumbling down three worn steps into a very evil-smelling room. “Where is he?”
“Go play fan-tan. Not come back.”
Ma Lorenzo, having relocked the street door, had rejoined us, and as I followed my friend down into the dim and uninviting apartment she stood at the top of the steps, hands on hips, regarding us.
The place, which was quite palpably an opium den, must have disappointed anyone familiar with the more ornate houses of Chinese vice in San Francisco and elsewhere. The bare floor was not particularly clean, and the few decorations which the room boasted were garishly European for the most part. A deep divan, evidently used sometimes as a bed, occupied one side of the room, and just to the left of the steps reposed the only typically Oriental object in the place.
It was a strange thing to see in so sordid a setting; a great gilded joss, more than life-size, squatting, hideous, upon a massive pedestal; a figure fit for some native temple but strangely out of place in that dirty little Limehouse abode.
I had never before visited Kwen Lung’s, but the fame of his golden joss had reached me, and I know that he had received many offers for it, all of which he had rejected. It was whispered that Kwen Lung was rich, that he was a great man among the Chinese, and even that some kind of religious ceremony periodically took place in his house. Now, as I stood staring at the famous idol, I saw something which made me stare harder than ever.
The place was lighted by a hanging lamp from which depended bits of coloured paper and several gilded silk tassels; but dim as the light was it could not conceal those tell-tale stains.
There was blood on the feet of the golden idol!
All this I detected at a glance, but ere I had time to speak:
“You can’t tell me that tale, Ma!” cried Harley. “I believe ‘e was smokin’ in ‘ere when we knocked.”
The woman shrugged her fat shoulders.
“No, hab,” she repeated. “You two johnnies clear out. Let me sleep.”
But as I turned to her, beneath the nonchalant manner I could detect a great uneasiness; and in her dark eyes there was fear. That Harley also had seen the bloodstains I was well aware, and I did not doubt that furthermore he had noted the fact that the only mat which the room boasted had been placed before the joss — doubtless to hide other stains upon the boards.
As we stood so I presently became aware of a current of air passing across the room in the direction of the open door. It came from a window before which a tawdry red curtain had been draped. Either the window behind the curtain was wide open, which is alien to Chinese habits, or it was shattered. While I was wondering if Harley intended to investigate further:
“Come on, Jim!” he cried boisterously, and clapped me on the shoulder; “the old fox don’t want to be disturbed.”
He turned to the woman:
“Tell him when he wakes up, Ma,” he said, “that if ever my pal Jim wants a pipe he’s to ‘ave one. Savvy? Jim’s square.”
“Savvy,” replied the woman, and she was wholly unable to conceal her relief. “You clear out now, and I tell Kwen Lung when he come in.”
“Righto, Ma!” said Harley. “Kiss ‘im on both cheeks for me, an’ tell ‘im I’ll be ‘ome again in a month.”
Grasping me by the arm he lurched up the steps, and the two of us presently found ourselves out in the street again. In the growing light the squalor of the district was more evident than ever, but the comparative freshness of the air was welcome after the reek of that room in which the golden idol sat leering, with blood at his feet.
“You saw, Harley?” I exclaimed excitedly. “You saw the stains? And I’m certain the window was broken!”
Harley nodded shortly.
“Back to Wade Street!” he said. “I allow myself fifteen minutes to shed Bill Jones, able seaman, and to become Paul Harley, of Chancery Lane.”
As we hurried along:
“What steps shall you take?” I asked.
“First step: search Kwen Lung’s house from cellar to roof. Second step: entirely dependent upon result of first. The Chinese are subtle, Knox. If Kwen Lung has killed his daughter, it may require all the resources of Scotland Yard to prove it.”
“But —— —”
“There is no ‘but’ about it. Chinatown is the one district of London which possesses the property of swallowing people up.”
III
“CAPTAIN DAN”
Half an hour later, as I sat in the inner room before the great dressing-table laboriously removing my disguise — for I was utterly incapable of metamorphosing myself like Harley in seven minutes — I heard a rapping at the outer door. I glanced nervously at my face in the mirror.
Comparatively little of “Jim” had yet been removed, for since time was precious to my friend I had acted as his dresser before setting to work to remove my own make-up. There were two entrances to the establishment, by one of which Paul Harley invariably entered and invariably went out, and from the other of which “Bill Jones” was sometimes seen to emerge, but never Paul Harley. That my friend had made good his retirement I knew, but, nevertheless, if I had to open the door of the outer room it must be as “Jim.”
Thinking it impolite not to do so, since the one who knocked might be aware that we had come in but not gone out again, I hastily readjusted that side of my moustache which I had begun to remove, replaced my cap and muffler, and carefully locking the door of the dressing-room, crossed the outer apartment and opened the door.
It was Harley’s custom never to enter or leave these rooms except under the mantle of friendly night, but at so early an hour I confess I had not expected a visitor. Wondering whom I should find there I opened the door.
Standing on the landing wa
s a fellow-lodger who permanently occupied the two top rooms of the house. Paul Harley had taken the trouble to investigate the man’s past, for “Captain Dan,” the name by which he was known in the saloons and worse resorts which he frequented, was palpably a broken-down gentleman; a piece of flotsam caught in the yellow stream. Opium had been his downfall. How he lived I never knew, but Harley believed he had some small but settled income, sufficient to enable him to kill himself in comfort with the black pills.
As he stood there before me in the early morning light, I was aware of some subtle change in his appearance. It was fully six months since I had seen him last, but in some vague way he looked younger. Haggard he was, with an ugly cut showing on his temple, but not so lined as I remembered him. Some former man seemed to be struggling through the opium-scarred surface. His eyes were brighter, and I noted with surprise that he wore decent clothes and was clean shaved.
“Good morning, Jim,” he said; “you remember me, don’t you?”
As he spoke I observed, too, that his manner had altered. He who had consorted with the sweepings af the doss-houses now addressed me as a courteous gentleman addresses an inferior — not haughtily or patronizingly, but with a note of conscious superiority and self-respect wholly unfamiliar. Almost it threw me off my guard, but remembering in the nick of time that I was still “Jim”:
“Of course I remember you, Cap’n,” I said. “Step inside.”
“Thanks,” he replied, and followed me into the little room.
I placed for him the arm-chair which our friend the fireman had so recently occupied, but:
“I won’t sit down,” he said.
And now I observed that he was evidently in a condition of repressed excitement. Perhaps he saw the curiosity in my glance, for he suddenly rested both his hands on my shoulders, and: