by Sax Rohmer
Sin Sin Wa regarded him smilingly.
“Yes, yes, my little friend,” he crooned in Chinese, while Tling-a-Ling rattled ghostly castanets. “In Ho-Nan they will say that you are a devil and I am a wizard. That which is unknown is always thought to be magical, my Tling-a-Ling.”
Mrs. Sin, who was rapidly throwing off the effects of opium and recovering her normal self-confident personality, glanced at her husband scornfully.
“Tell me,” she said, “what has happened? How did he come here?”
“Blinga filly doggy,” murmured Sin Sin Wa. “Knockee Ah Fung on him head and comee down here, lo. Ah Fung allee lightee now — topside. Chasee filly doggy. Allee velly proper. No bhobbery.”
“Talk less and act more,” said Mrs. Sin. “Tie him up, and if you must talk, talk Chinese. Tie him up.”
She pointed to Kerry. Sin Sin Wa tucked his hands into his sleeves and shuffled towards the masked door communicating with the inner room.
“Only by intelligent speech are we distinguished from the other animals,” he murmured in Chinese.
Entering the inner room, he began to extricate a long piece of thin rope from amid a tangle of other materials with which it was complicated. Mrs. Sin stood looking down at the fallen man. Neither Kerry nor Sam Tuk gave the slightest evidence of life. And as Sin Sin Wa disentangled yard upon yard of rope from the bundle on the floor by the bed where Rita Irvin lay in her long troubled sleep, he crooned a queer song. It was in the Ho-Nan dialect and intelligible to himself alone.
“Shoa, the evil woman (he chanted), the woman of
many strange loves....
Shoa, the ghoul....
Lo, the Yellow River leaps forth from the nostrils
of the mountain god....
Shoa, the betrayer of men....
Blood is on her brow.
Lo, the betrayer is betrayed. Death sits at her elbow.
See, the Yellow River bears a corpse upon its tide...
Dead men hear her secret.
Shoa, the ghoul....
Shoa, the evil woman. Death sits at her elbow.
Black, the vultures flock about her....
Lo, the Yellow River leaps forth from the nostrils
of the mountain god.”
Meanwhile Kerry, lying motionless at the feet of Sam Tuk was doing some hard and rapid thinking. He had recovered consciousness a few moments before Mrs. Sin had come into the vault from the inner room. There were those, Seton Pasha among them, who would have regarded the groan and the convulsive movements of Kerry’s body with keen suspicion. And because the Chief Inspector suffered from no illusions respecting the genius of Sin Sin Wa, the apparent failure of the one-eyed Chinaman to recognize these preparations for attack nonplussed the Chief Inspector. His outstanding vice as an investigator was the directness of his own methods and of his mental outlook, so that he frequently experienced great difficulty in penetrating to the motives of a tortuous brain such as that of Sin Sin Wa.
That Sin Sin Wa thought him to be still unconscious he did not believe. He was confident that his tactics had deceived the Jewess, but he entertained an almost superstitious respect for the cleverness of the Chinaman. The trick with the ball of leaf opium was painfully fresh in his memory.
Kerry, in common with many members of the Criminal Investigation Department, rarely carried firearms. He was a man with a profound belief in his bare hands — aided when necessary by his agile feet. At the moment that Sin Sin Wa had checked the woman’s murderous and half insane outburst Kerry had been contemplating attack. The sudden change of language on the part of the Chinaman had arrested him in the act; and, realizing that he was listening to a confession which placed the hangman’s rope about the neck of Mrs. Sin, he lay still and wondered.
Why had Sin Sin Wa forced his wife to betray herself? To clear Mareno? To clear Mrs. Irvin — or to save his own skin?
It was a frightful puzzle for Kerry. Then — where was Kazmah? That Mrs. Irvin, probably in a drugged condition, lay somewhere in that mysterious inner room Kerry felt fairly sure. His maltreated skull was humming like a bee-hive and aching intensely, but the man was tough as men are made, and he could not only think clearly, but was capable of swift and dangerous action.
He believed that he could tackle the Chinaman with fair prospects of success; and women, however murderous, he habitually disregarded as adversaries. But the mummy-like, deceptive Sam Tuk was not negligible, and Kazmah remained an unknown quantity.
From under that protective arm, cast across his face, Kerry’s fierce eyes peered out across the dirty floor. Then quickly he shut his eyes again.
Sin Sin Wa, crooning his strange song, came in carrying a coil of rope — and a Mauser pistol!
“P’licemanee gotchee catchee sleepee,” he murmured, “or maybe he catchee die!”
He tossed the rope to his wife, who stood silent tapping the floor with one slim restless foot.
“Number one top-side tie up,” he crooned. “Sin Sin Wa watchee withum gun!”
Kerry lay like a dead man; for in the Chinaman’s voice were menace and warning.
CHAPTER XXXIX. THE EMPTY WHARF
The suspected area of Limehouse was closely invested as any fortress of old when Seton Pasha once more found himself approaching that painfully familiar neighborhood. He had spoken to several pickets, and had gathered no news of interest, except that none of them had seen Chief Inspector Kerry since some time shortly before dusk. Seton, newly from more genial climes, shivered as he contemplated the misty, rain-swept streets, deserted and but dimly lighted by an occasional lamp. The hooting of a steam siren on the river seemed to be in harmony with the prevailing gloom, and the most confirmed optimist must have suffered depression amid those surroundings.
He had no definite plan of action. Every line of inquiry hitherto followed had led to nothing but disappointment. With most of the details concerning the elaborate organization of the Kazmah group either gathered or in sight, the whereabouts of the surviving members remained a profound mystery. From the Chinese no information could be obtained. Distrust of the police resides deep within the Chinese heart; for the Chinaman, and not unjustly, regards the police as ever ready to accuse him and ever unwilling to defend him; knows himself for a pariah capable of the worst crimes, and who may therefore be robbed, beaten and even murdered by his white neighbors with impunity. But when the police seek information from Chinatown, Chinatown takes its revenge — and is silent.
Out on the river, above and below Limehouse, patrols watched for signals from the Asiatic quarter, and from a carefully selected spot on the Surrey side George Martin watched also. Not even the lure of a neighboring tavern could draw him from his post. Hour after hour he waited patiently — for Sin Sin Wa paid fair prices, and tonight he bought neither opium nor cocaine, but liberty.
Seton Pasha, passing from point to point, and nowhere receiving news of Kerry, began to experience a certain anxiety respecting the safety of the intrepid Chief Inspector. His mind filled with troubled conjectures, he passed the house formerly occupied by the one-eyed Chinaman — where he found Detective-Sergeant Coombes on duty and very much on the alert — and followed the bank of the Thames in the direction of Limehouse Basin. The narrow, ill-lighted street was quite deserted. Bad weather and the presence of many police had driven the Asiatic inhabitants indoors. But from the river and the docks arose the incessant din of industry. Whistles shrieked and machinery clanked, and sometimes remotely came the sound of human voices.
Musing upon the sordid mystery which seems to underlie the whole of this dingy quarter, Seton pursued his way, crossing inlets and circling around basins dimly divined, turning to the right into a lane flanked by high eyeless walls, and again to the left, finally to emerge nearly opposite a dilapidated gateway giving access to a small wharf.
All unconsciously, he was traversing the same route as that recently pursued by the fugitive Sin Sin Wa; but now he paused, staring at the empty wharf. The annexed building, a mer
e shell, had not escaped examination by the search party, and it was with no very definite purpose in view that Seton pushed open the rickety gate. Doubtless Kismet, of which the Arabs speak, dictated that he should do so.
The tide was high, and the water whispered ghostly under the pile-supported structure. Seton experienced a new sense of chill which did not seem to be entirely physical as he stared out at the gloomy river prospect and listened to the uncanny whisperings of the tide. He was about to turn back when another sound attracted his attention. A dog was whimpering somewhere near him.
At first he was disposed to believe that the sound was due to some other cause, for the deserted wharf was not a likely spot in which to find a dog, but when to the faint whimpering there was added a scratching sound, Seton’s last doubts vanished.
“It’s a dog,” he said, “a small dog.”
Like Kerry, he always carried an electric pocket-lamp, and now he directed its rays into the interior of the building.
A tiny spaniel, whining excitedly, was engaged in scratching with its paws upon the dirty floor as though determined to dig its way through. As the light shone upon it the dog crouched affrightedly, and, glancing in Seton’s direction, revealed its teeth. He saw that it was covered with mud from head to tail, presenting a most woe-begone appearance, and the mystery of its presence there came home to him forcibly.
It was a toy spaniel of a breed very popular among ladies of fashion, and to its collar was still attached a tattered and muddy fragment of ribbon.
The little animal crouched in a manner which unmistakably pointed to the fact that it apprehended ill-treatment, but these personal fears had only a secondary place in its mind, and with one eye on the intruder it continued to scratch madly at the floor.
Seton acted promptly. He snapped off the light, and, replacing the lamp in his pocket, stepped into the building and dropped down upon his knees beside the dog. He next lay prone, and having rapidly cleared a space with his sleeve of some of the dirt which coated it, he applied his ear to the floor.
In spite of that iron control which habitually he imposed upon himself, he became aware of the fact that his heart was beating rapidly. He had learned at Leman Street that Kerry had brought Mrs. Irvin’s dog from Prince’s Gate to aid in the search for the missing woman. He did not doubt that this was the dog which snarled and scratched excitedly beside him. Dimly he divined something of the truth. Kerry had fallen into the hands of the gang, but the dog, evidently not without difficulty, had escaped. What lay below the wharf?
Holding his breath, he crouched, listening; but not a sound could he detect.
“There’s nothing here, old chap,” he said to the dog.
Responsive to the friendly tone, the little animal began barking loudly with high staccato notes, which must have been audible on the Surrey shore.
Seton was profoundly mystified by the animal’s behavior. He had personally searched every foot of this particular building, and was confident that it afforded no hiding-place. The behavior of the dog, however, was susceptible of only one explanation; and Seton recognizing that the clue to the mystery lay somewhere within this ramshackle building, became seized with a conviction that he was being watched.
Standing upright, he paused for a moment, irresolute, thinking that he had detected a muffled shriek. But the riverside noises were misleading and his imagination was on fire.
That almost superstitious respect for the powers of Sin Sin Wa, which had led Chief Inspector Kerry to look upon the Chinaman as a being more than humanly endowed, began to take possession of Seton Pasha. He regretted having entered the place so overtly, he regretted having shown a light. Keen eyes, vigilant, regarded him. It was perhaps a delusion, bred of the mournful night sounds, the gloom, and the uncanny resourcefulness, already proven, of the Kazmah group. But it operated powerfully.
Theories, wild, improbable, flocked to his mind. The great dope cache lay beneath his feet — and there must be some hidden entrance to it which had escaped the attention of the search-party. This in itself was not improbable, since they had devoted no more time to this building than to any other in the vicinity. That wild cry in the night which had struck so mournful a chill to the hearts of the watchers on the river had seemed to come out of the void of the blackness, had given but slight clue to the location of the place of captivity. Indeed, they could only surmise that it had been uttered by the missing woman. Yet in their hearts neither had doubted it.
He determined to cause the place to be searched again, as secretly as possible; he determined to set so close a guard over it and over its approaches that none could enter or leave unobserved.
Yet Kismet, in whose omnipotence he more than half believed, had ordained otherwise; for man is merely an instrument in the hand of Fate.
CHAPTER XL. COIL OF THE PIGTAIL
The inner room was in darkness and the fume-laden air almost unbreathable. A dull and regular moaning sound proceeded from the corner where the bed was situated, but of the contents of the place and of its other occupant or occupants Kerry had no more than a hazy idea. His imagination supplied those details which he had failed to observe. Mrs. Monte Irvin, in a dying condition, lay upon the bed, and someone or some thing crouched on the divan behind Kerry as he lay stretched upon the matting-covered floor. His wrists, tied behind him, gave him great pain; and since his ankles were also fastened and the end of the rope drawn taut and attached to that binding his wrists, he was rendered absolutely helpless. For one of his fiery temperament this physical impotence was maddening, and because his own handkerchief had been tied tightly around his head so as to secure between his teeth a wooden stopper of considerable size which possessed an unpleasant chemical taste and smell, even speech was denied him.
How long he had lain thus he had no means of judging accurately; but hours — long, maddening hours — seemed to have passed since, with the muzzle of Sin Sin Wa’s Mauser pressed coldly to his ear, he had submitted willy-nilly to the adroit manipulations of Mrs. Sin. At first he had believed, in his confirmed masculine vanity, that it would be a simple matter to extricate himself from the fastenings made by a woman; but when, rolling him sideways, she had drawn back his heels and run the loose end of the line through the loop formed by the lashing of his wrists behind him, he had recognized a Chinese training, and had resigned himself to the inevitable. The wooden gag was a sore trial, and if it had not broken his spirit it had nearly caused him to break an artery in his impotent fury.
Into the darkened inner chamber Sin Sin Wa had dragged him, and there Kerry had lain ever since, listening to the various sounds of the place, to the coarse voice, often raised in anger, of the Cuban-Jewess, to the crooning tones of the imperturbable Chinaman. The incessant moaning of the woman on the bed sometimes became mingled with another sound more remote, which Kerry for long failed to identify; but ultimately he concluded it to be occasioned by the tide flowing under the wharf. The raven was silent, because, imprisoned in his wicker cage, he had been placed in some dark spot below the counter. Very dimly from time to time a steam siren might be heard upon the river, and once the thudding of a screw-propeller told of the passage of a large vessel along Limehouse Reach.
In the eyes of Mrs. Sin Kerry had read menace, and for all their dark beauty they had reminded him of the eyes of a cornered rat. Beneath the contemptuous nonchalance which she flaunted he read terror and remorse, and a foreboding of doom — panic ill repressed, which made her dangerous as any beast at bay. The attitude of the Chinaman was more puzzling. He seemed to bear the Chief Inspector no personal animosity, and indeed, in his glittering eye, Kerry had detected a sort of mysterious light of understanding which was almost mirthful, but which bore no relation to Sin Sin Wa’s perpetual smile. Kerry’s respect for the one-eyed Chinaman had increased rather than diminished upon closer acquaintance. Underlying his urbanity he failed to trace any symptom of apprehension. This Sin Sin Wa, accomplice of a murderess self-confessed, evident head of a drug syndicate which had l
ed to the establishment of a Home office inquiry — this badly “wanted” man, whose last hiding-place, whose keep, was closely invested by the agents of the law, was the same Sin Sin Wa who had smilingly extended his wrists, inviting the manacles, when Kerry had first made his acquaintance under circumstances legally very different.
Sometimes Kerry could hear him singing his weird crooning song, and twice Mrs. Sin had shrieked blasphemous execrations at him because of it. But why should Sin Sin Wa sing? What hope had he of escape? In the case of any other criminal Kerry would have answered “None,” but the ease with which this one-eyed singing Chinaman had departed from his abode under the very noses of four detectives had shaken the Chief Inspector’s confidence in the efficiency of ordinary police methods where this Chinese conjurer was concerned. A man who could convert an elaborate opium house into a dirty ruin in so short a time, too, was capable of other miraculous feats, and it would not have surprised Kerry to learn that Sin Sin Wa, at a moment’s notice, could disguise himself as a chest of tea, or pass invisible through solid walls.
For evidence that Seton Pasha or any of the men from Scotland Yard had penetrated to the secret of Sam Tuk’s cellar Kerry listened in vain. What was about to happen he could not imagine, nor if his life was to be spared. In the confession so curiously extorted from Mrs. Sin by her husband he perceived a clue to this and other mysteries, but strove in vain to disentangle it from the many maddening complexities of the case.
So he mused, wearily, listening to the moaning of his fellow captive, and wondering, since no sign of life came thence, why he imagined another presence in the stuffy room or the presence of someone or of some thing on the divan behind him. And in upon these dreary musings broke an altercation between Mrs. Sin and her husband.
“Keep the blasted thing covered up!” she cried hoarsely.
“Tling-a-Ling wantchee catchee bleathee sometime,” crooned Sin Sin Wa.
“Hello, hello!” croaked the raven drowsily. “Smartest — smartest — smartest leg.”
