IX
Blake stood regarding the door. Then he lifted his revolver from hisbreast pocket and dropped it into his side pocket, with his hand on thebutt. Then with his left hand he quietly opened the door, pushed it back,and as quietly stepped into the room.
On the floor, in the center of a square of orange-colored matting, he sawa white woman sitting. She was drinking tea out of an egg-shell of a cup,and after putting down the cup she would carefully massage her lips withthe point of her little finger. This movement puzzled the newcomer untilhe suddenly realized that it was merely to redistribute the rouge onthem.
She was dressed in a silk petticoat of almost lemon yellow and anazure-colored silk bodice that left her arms and shoulders bare to thelight that played on them from three small oil lamps above her. Her feetand ankles were also bare, except for the matting sandals into which hertoes were thrust. On one thin arm glimmered an extraordinarily heavybracelet of gold. Her skin, which was very white, was further albificatedby a coat of rice powder. She was startlingly slight. Blake, as hewatched her, could see the oval shadows under her collar bones and thealmost girlish meagerness of breast half-covered by the azure silkbodice.
She looked up slowly as Blake stepped into the room. Her eyes widened,and she continued to look, with parted lips, as she contemplated theintruder's heavy figure. There was no touch of fear on her face. It wasmore curiosity, the wilful, wide-eyed curiosity of the child. She evenlaughed a little as she stared at the intruder. Her rouged lips weretinted a carmine so bright that they looked like a wound across her whiteface. That gash of color became almost clown-like as it crescented upwardwith its wayward mirth. Her eyebrows were heavily penciled and the lidsof the eyes elongated by a widening point of blue paint. Her bare heel,which she caressed from time to time with fingers whereon the nails werestained pink with henna, was small and clean cut, as clean cut, Blakenoticed, as the heel of a razor, while the white calf above it was asthin and flat as a boy's.
"Hello, New York," she said with her foolish and inconsequential littlelaugh. Her voice took on an oddly exotic intonation, as she spoke. Herteeth were small and white; they reminded Blake of rice, while sherepeated the "New York," bubblingly, as though she were a child with anewly learned word.
"Hello!" responded the detective, wondering how or where to begin. Shemade him think of a painted marionette, so maintained were her poses, sounreal was her make up.
"You're the party who's on the man hunt," she announced.
"Am I?" equivocated Blake. She had risen to her feet by this time, withmonkey-like agility, and showed herself to be much taller than he hadimagined. He noticed a knife scar on her forearm.
"You're after this man called Binhart," she declared.
"Oh, no, I'm not," was Blake's sagacious response. "I don't wantBinhart!"
"Then what do you want?"
"I want the money he's got."
The little painted face grew serious; then it became veiled.
"How much money has he?"
"That's what I want to find out!"
She squatted ruminatively down on the edge of her divan. It was low andwide and covered with orange-colored silk.
"Then you'll have to find Binhart!" was her next announcement.
"Maybe!" acknowledged Blake.
"I can show you where he is!"
"All right," was the unperturbed response. The blue-painted eyes werestudying him.
"It will be worth four thousand pounds, in English gold," she announced.
Blake took a step or two nearer her.
"Is that the message Ottenheim told you to give me?" he demanded. Hisface was red with anger.
"Then three thousand pounds," she calmly suggested, wriggling her toesinto a fallen sandal.
Blake did not deign to speak. His inarticulate grunt was one of disgust.
"Then a thousand, in gold," she coyly intimated. She twisted about topull the strap of her bodice up over her white shoulder-blades. "Or Iwill kill him for you for two thousand pounds in gold!"
Her eyes were as tranquil as a child's. Blake remembered that he was in aworld not his own.
"Why should I want him killed?" he inquired. He looked about for someplace to sit. There was not a chair in the room.
"Because he intends to kill _you_," answered the woman, squatting on theorange-covered divan.
"I wish he'd come and try," Blake devoutly retorted.
"He will not come," she told him. "It will be done from the dark. _I_could have done it. But Ottenheim said no."
"And Ottenheim said you were to work with me in this," declared Blake,putting two and two together.
The woman shrugged a white shoulder.
"Have you any money?" she asked. She put the question with theartlessness of a child.
"Mighty little," retorted Blake, still studying the woman from where hestood. He was wondering if Ottenheim had the same hold on her that theauthorities had on Ottenheim, the ex-forger who enjoyed his parole onlyon condition that he remain a stool-pigeon of the high seas. He ponderedwhat force he could bring to bear on her, what power could squeeze fromthose carmine and childish lips the information he must have.
He knew that he could break that slim body of hers across his knee. Buthe also knew that he had no way of crushing out of it the truth hesought, the truth he must in some way obtain. The woman still squatted onthe divan, peering down at the knife scar on her arm from time to time,studying it, as though it were an inscription.
Blake was still watching the woman when the door behind him was slowlyopened; a head was thrust in, and as quietly withdrawn again. Blakedropped his right hand to his coat pocket and moved further along thewall, facing the woman. There was nothing of which he stood afraid: hemerely wished to be on the safe side.
"Well, what word'll I take back to Ottenheim?" he demanded.
The woman grew serious. Then she showed her rice-like row of teeth as shelaughed.
"That means there's nothing in it for me," she complained withpouting-lipped moroseness. Her venality, he began to see, was merely theinstinctive acquisitiveness of the savage, the greed of the petted child.
"No more than there is for me," Blake acknowledged. She turned and caughtup a heavily flowered mandarin coat of plaited cream and gold. She wasthrusting one arm into it when a figure drifted into the room from thematting-hung doorway on Blake's left. As she saw this figure she suddenlyflung off the coat and stooped to the tea tray in the middle of thefloor.
Blake saw that the newcomer was a Chinaman. This newcomer, he also saw,ignored him as though he were a door post, confronting the woman andassailing her with a quick volley of words, of incomprehensible words inthe native tongue. She answered with the same clutter and clack ofunknown syllables, growing more and more excited as the dialoguecontinued. Her thin face darkened and changed, her white arms gyrated,the fires of anger burned in the baby-like eyes. She seemedexpostulating, arguing, denouncing, and each wordy sally was met by anequally wordy sally from the Chinaman. She challenged and rebuked withher passionately pointed finger; she threatened with angry eyes; shestormed after the newcomer as he passed like a shadow out of the room;she met him with a renewed storm when he returned a moment later.
The Chinaman now stood watching her, impassive and immobile, as though hehad taken his stand and intended to stick to it. Blake studied him withcalm and patient eyes. That huge-limbed detective in his day had"pounded" too many Christy Street Chinks to be in any way intimidated bya queue and a yellow face. He was not disturbed. He was merely puzzled.
Then the woman turned to the mandarin coat, and caught it up, shook itout, and for one brief moment stood thoughtfully regarding it. Then shesuddenly turned about on the Chinaman.
Blake, as he stood watching that renewed angry onslaught, paid littleattention to the actual words that she was calling out. But as he stoodthere he began to realize that she was not speaking in Chinese, but inEnglish.
"Do you hear me, white man? Do y
ou hear me?" she cried out, over and overagain. Yet the words seemed foolish, for all the time as she utteredthem, she was facing the placid-eyed Chinaman and gesticulating in hisface.
"Don't you see," Blake at last heard her crying, "he doesn't know whatI'm saying! He doesn't understand a word of English!" And then, and thenonly, it dawned on Blake that every word the woman was uttering wasintended for his own ears. She was warning him, and all the whilepretending that her words were the impetuous words of anger.
"Watch this man!" he heard her cry. "Don't let him know you're listening.But remember what I say, remember it. And God help you if you haven't gota gun."
Blake could see her, as in a dream, assailing the Chinaman with hergestures, advancing on him, threatening him, expostulating with him, butall in pantomime. There was something absurd about it, as absurd as amoving-picture film which carries the wrong text.
"He'll pretend to take you to the man you want," the woman was panting."That's what he will say. But it's a lie. He'll take you out to a sampan,to put you aboard Binhart's boat. But the three of them will cut yourthroat, cut your throat, and then drop you overboard. He's to get so muchin gold. Get out of here with him. Let him think you're going. But dropaway, somewhere, before you get to the beach. And watch them all theway."
Blake stared at the immobile Chinaman, as though to make sure that theother man had not understood. He was still staring at that impassiveyellow face, he was still absorbing the shock of his news, when the outerdoor opened and a second Chinaman stepped into the room. The newcomercluttered a quick sentence or two to his countryman, and was stilltalking when a third figure sidled in.
Those spoken words, whatever they were, seemed to have little effect onany one in the room except the woman. She suddenly sprang about andexploded into an angry shower of denials.
"It's a lie!" she cried in English, storming about the impassive trio."You never heard me peach! You never heard me say a word! It's a lie!"
Blake strode to the middle of the room, towering above the other figures,dwarfing them by his great bulk, as assured of his mastery as he wouldhave been in a Chatham Square gang fight.
"What's the row here?" he thundered, knowing from the past that powerpromptly won its own respect. "What're you talking about, you two?" Heturned from one intruder to another. "And you? And you? What do you want,anyway?"
The three contending figures, however, ignored him as though he were atobacconist's dummy. They went on with their exotic cackle, as though hewas no longer in their midst. They did not so much as turn an eye in hisdirection. And still Blake felt reasonably sure of his position.
It was not until the woman squeaked, like a frightened mouse, and ranwhimpering into the corner of the room, that he realized what washappening. He was not familiar with the wrist movement by which thesmallest bodied of the three men was producing a knife from his sleeve.The woman, however, had understood from the first.
"White man, look out!" she half sobbed from her corner. "Oh, white man!"she repeated in a shriller note as the Chinaman, bending low, scuttledacross the room to the corner where she cowered.
Blake saw the knife by this time. It was thin and long, for all the worldlike an icicle, a shaft of cutting steel ground incredibly thin, so thin,in fact, that at first sight it looked more like a point for stabbingthan a blade for cutting.
The mere glitter of that knife electrified the staring white man intosudden action. He swung about and tried to catch at the arm that held thesteel icicle. He was too late for that, but his fingers closed on thebraided queue. By means of this queue he brought the Chinaman up short,swinging him sharply about so that he collided flat faced with the roomwall.
Then, for the first time, Blake grew into a comprehension of whatsurrounded him. He wheeled about, stooped and caught up the papier-machetea-tray from the floor and once more stood with his back to the wall. Hestood there, on guard, for a second figure with a second steel icicle wassidling up to him. He swung viciously out and brought the tea-tray downon the hand that held this knife, crippling the fingers and sending thesteel spinning across the room. Then with his free hand he tugged therevolver from his coat pocket, holding it by the barrel and bringing themetal butt down on the queue-wound head of the third man, who had noknife, but was struggling with the woman for the metal icicle she hadcaught up from the floor.
Then the five seemed to close in together, and the fight became general.It became a melee. With his swinging right arm Blake battered and poundedwith his revolver butt. With his left hand he made cutting strokes withthe heavy papier-mache tea-tray, keeping their steel, by those fiercesweeps, away from his body. One Chinaman he sent sprawling, leaving himhuddled and motionless against the orange-covered divan. The second,stunned by a blow of the tea-tray across the eyes, could offer noresistance when Blake's smashing right dealt its blow, the metal gun buttfalling like a trip hammer on the shaved and polished skull.
As the white man swung about he saw the third Chinaman with his hand onthe woman's throat, holding her flat against the wall, placing her thereas a butcher might place a fowl on his block ready for the blow of hiscarver. Blake stared at the movement, panting for breath, overcome bythat momentary indifference wherein a winded athlete permits withoutprotest an adversary to gain his momentary advantage. Then will triumphedover the weakness of the body. But before Blake could get to the woman'sside he saw the Chinaman's loose-sleeved right hand slowly anddeliberately ascend. As it reached the meridian of its circular upsweephe could see the woman rise on her toes, rise as though with some quickeffort, yet some effort which Blake could not understand.
At the same moment that she did so a look of pained expostulation creptinto the staring slant eyes on a level with her own. The yellow jawgaped, filled with blood, and the poised knife fell at his side, stickingpoint down in the flooring. The azure and lemon-yellow that covered thewoman's body flamed into sudden scarlet. It was only as the figure withthe expostulating yellow face sank to the ground, crumpling up on itselfas it fell, that Blake comprehended. That quick sweep of scarlet,effacing the azure and lemon, had come from the sudden deluge of bloodthat burst over the woman's body. She had made use of the upstroke,Mexican style. Her knife had cut the full length of the man's abdominalcavity, clean and straight to the breastbone. He had been ripped up likea herring.
Blake panted and wheezed, not at the sight of the blood, but at theexertion to which his flabby muscles had been put. His body was moistwith sweat. His asthmatic throat seemed stifling his lungs. A faintnausea crept through him, a dim ventral revolt at the thought that suchthings could take place so easily, and with so little warning.
His breast still heaved and panted and he was still fighting for breathwhen he saw the woman stoop and wipe the knife on one of the fallenChinaman's sleeves.
"We've got to get out of here!" she whimpered, as she caught up themandarin coat and flung it over her shoulders, for in the struggle herbody had been bared almost to the waist. Blake saw the crimson thatdripped on her matting slippers and maculated the cream white of themandarin coat.
"But where's Binhart?" he demanded, as he looked stolidly about for hisblack boulder.
"Never mind Binhart," she cried, touching the eviscerated body at herfeet with one slipper toe, "or we'll get what _he_ got!"
"I want that man Binhart!" persisted the detective.
"Not here! Not here!" she cried, folding the loose folds of the cloakcloser about her body.
She ran to the matting curtain, looked out, and called back, "Quick! Comequick!" Then she ran back, slipped the bolt in the outer door andrejoined the waiting detective.
"Oh, white man!" she gasped, as the matting fell between them and theroom incarnadined by their struggle. Blake was not sure, but he thoughthe heard her giggle, hysterically, in the darkness. They were gropingtheir way along a narrow passage. They slipped through a second door,closed and locked it after them, and once more groped on through thedarkness.
How many turns they took, Blake could not reme
mber. She stopped andwhispered to him to go softly, as they came to a stairway, as steep anddark as a cistern. Blake, at the top, could smell opium smoke, and onceor twice he thought he heard voices. The woman stopped him, withoutstretched arms, at the stair head, and together they stood andlistened.
Blake, with nerves taut, waited for some sign from her to go on again. Hethought she was giving it, when he felt a hand caress his side. He feltit move upward, exploringly. At the same time that he heard her littlegroan of alarm he knew that the hand was not hers.
He could not tell what the darkness held, but his movement was almostinstinctive. He swung out with his great arm, countered on the crouchingform in front of him, caught at a writhing shoulder, and tightening hisgrip, sent the body catapulting down the stairway at his side. He couldhear a revolver go off as the body went tumbling and rolling down--Blakeknew that it was a gun not his own.
"Come on, white man!" the girl in front of him was crying, as she tuggedat his coat. And they went on, now at a run, taking a turn to the right,making a second descent, and then another to the left. They came to stillanother door, which they locked behind them. Then they scrambled up aladder, and he could hear her quick hands padding about in the dark. Amoment later she had thrust up a hatch. He saw it led to the open air,for the stars were above them.
He felt grateful for that open air, for the coolness, for the sense ofdeliverance which came with even that comparative freedom.
"Don't stop!" she whispered. And he followed her across the slant of theuneven roof. He was weak for want of breath. The girl had to catch himand hold him for a moment.
"On the next roof you must take off your shoes," she warned him. "You canrest then. But hurry--hurry!"
He gulped down the fresh air as he tore at his shoe laces, thrusting eachshoe in a side pocket as he started after her. For by this time she wasscrambling across the broken sloping roofs, as quick and agile as a cat,dropping over ledges, climbing up barriers and across coping tiles. Whereshe was leading him he had no remotest idea. She reminded him of acream-tinted monkey in the maddest of steeplechases. He was glad when shecame to a stop.
The town seemed to lay to their right. Before them were the scatteredlights of the harbor and the mild crescent of the outer bay. They couldsee the white wheeling finger of some foreign gunboat as its searchlightplayed back and forth in the darkness.
She sighed with weariness and dropped cross-legged down on the copingtiles against which he leaned, regaining his breath. She squatted there,cooingly, like a child exhausted with its evening games.
"I'm dished!" she murmured, as she sat there breathing audibly throughthe darkness. "I'm dished for this coast!"
He sat down beside her, staring at the searchlight. There seemedsomething reassuring, something authoritative and comforting, in thethought of it watching there in the darkness.
The girl touched him on the knee and then shifted her position on thecoping tiles, without rising to her feet.
"Come here!" she commanded. And when he was close beside her she pointedwith her thin white arm. "That's Saint Poalo there--you can just make itout, up high, see. And those lights are the Boundary Gate. And this sweepof lights below here is the _Praya_. Now look where I'm pointing. That'sthe Luiz Camoes lodging-house. You see the second window with the lightin it?"
"Yes, I see it."
"Well, Binhart's inside that window."
"You know it?"
"I know it."
"So he's there?" said Blake, staring at the vague square of light.
"Yes, he's there, all right. He's posing as a buyer for a tea house, andcalls himself Bradley. Lee Fu told me; and Lee Fu is always right."
She stood up and pulled the mandarin coat closer about her thin body. Thecoolness of the night air had already chilled her. Then she squintedcarefully about in the darkness.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"I'm going to get Binhart," was Blake's answer.
He could hear her little childlike murmur of laughter.
"You're brave, white man," she said, with a hand on his arm. She wassilent for a moment, before she added: "And I think you'll get him."
"Of course I'll get him," retorted Blake, buttoning his coat. The fireshad been relighted on the cold hearth of his resolution. It came to himonly as an accidental afterthought that he had met an unknown woman andhad passed through strange adventures with her and was now about to passout of her life again, forever.
"What'll you do?" he asked.
Again he heard the careless little laugh.
"Oh, I'll slip down through the Quarter and cop some clothes somewhere.Then I'll have a sampan take me out to the German boat. It'll start forCanton at daylight."
"And then?" asked Blake, watching the window of the Luiz Camoeslodging-house below him.
"Then I'll work my way up to Port Arthur, I suppose. There's a navy manthere who'll help me!"
"Haven't you any money?" Blake put the question a little uneasily.
Again he felt the careless coo of laughter.
"Feel!" she said. She caught his huge hand between hers and pressed itagainst her waist line. She rubbed his fingers along what he accepted asa tightly packed coin-belt. He was relieved to think that he would nothave to offer her money. Then he peered over the coping tiles to makesure of his means of descent.
"You had better go first," she said, as she leaned out and looked down athis side. "Crawl down this next roof to the end there. At the corner,see, is the end of the ladder."
He stooped and slipped his feet into his shoes. Then he let himselfcautiously down to the adjoining roof, steeper even than the one on whichthey had stood. She bent low over the tiles, so that her face was veryclose to his as he found his footing and stood there.
"Good-by, white man," she whispered.
"Good-by!" he whispered back, as he worked his way cautiously andponderously along that perilous slope.
She leaned there, watching him as he gained the ladder-end. He did notlook back as he lowered himself, rung by rung. All thought of her, infact, had passed from his preoccupied mind. He was once more intent onhis own grim ends. He was debating with himself just how he was to get inthrough that lodging-house window and what his final move would be forthe round up of his enemy. He had made use of too many "molls" in histime to waste useless thought on what they might say or do or desire.When he had got Binhart, he remembered, he would have to look about forsomething to eat, for he was as hungry as a wolf. And he did not evenhear the girl's second soft whisper of "Good-by."
The Shadow Page 9
