Tales of Chinatown

by Sax Rohmer

  "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 seized 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 tim
e 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 was 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:

  "Yes, I have given up the dope, Jim," he said—-"done with it for ever. There's not a soul in this neighbourhood I can trust, yet if ever a man wanted a pal, I want one to-day. Now, you're square, my lad. I always knew that, in spite of the dope; and if I ask you to do a little thing that means a lot to me, I think you will do it. Am I right?"

  "If it can be done, I'll do it," said I.

  "Then, listen. I'm leaving England in the Patna for Singapore. She sails at noon to-morrow, and passengers go on board at ten o'clock. I've got my ticket, papers in order, but"—he paused impressively, grasping my shoulders hard—"I must get on board to-night."

  I stared him in the face.

  "Why?" I asked.

  He returned my look with one searching and eager; then:

  "If I show you the reason," said he, "and trust you with all my papers, will you go down to the dock—it's no great distance— and ask to see Marryat, the chief officer? Perhaps you've sailed with him?"

  "No," I replied guardedly. "I was never in the Patna."

  "Never mind. When you give him a letter which I shall write he will make the necessary arrangements for me to occupy my state- room to-night. I knew him well," he explained, "in—the old days. Will you do it, Jim?"

  "I'll do it with pleasure," I answered.

  "Shake!" said Captain Dan.

  We shook hands heartily, and:

  "Now I'll show you the reason," he added. "Come upstairs."

  Turning, he led the way upstairs to his own room, and wondering greatly, I followed him in. Never having been in Captain Dan's apartments I cannot say whether they, like their occupant, had changed for the better. But I found myself in a room surprisingly clean and with a note of culture in its appointments which was even more surprising.

  On a couch by the window, wrapped in a fur rug, lay the prettiest half-caste girl I had ever seen, East or West. Her skin was like cream rose petals and her abundant hair was of wonderful lustrous black. Perhaps it was her smooth warm colour which suggested the idea, but as her cheeks flushed at sight of Captain Dan and the long dark eyes lighted up in welcome, I thought of a delicate painting on ivory and I wondered more and more what it all could mean.

  "I have brought Jim to see you," said Captain Dan. "No, don't trouble to move dear."

  But even before he had spoken I had seen the girl wince with pain as she had endeavoured to sit up to greet us. She lay on her side in a rather constrained attitude, but although her sudden movement had brought tears to her eyes she smiled bravely and extended a tiny ivory hand to me.

  "This is my wife, Jim!" said Captain Dan.

  I could find no words at all, but merely stood there looking very awkward and feeling almost awed by the indescribable expression of trust in the eyes of the little Eurasian, as with her tiny fingers hidden in her husband's clasp she lay looking up at him.

  "Now you know, Jim," said he, "why we must get aboard the Patna to-night. My wife is really too ill to travel; in fact, I shall have to carry her down to the cab, and such a proceeding in daylight would attract an enormous crowd in this neighbourhood!"

  "Give me the letters and the papers," I answered. "I will start now."

  His wife disengaged her hand and extended it to me.

  "Thank you," she said, in a queer little silver-bell voice; "you are good. I shall always love you."

  IV. THE SECRET OF MA LORENZO

  It must have been about eleven o'clock that night when Paul Harley rang me up. Since we had parted in the early morning I had had no word from him, and I was all anxiety to tell him of the quaint little romance which unknown to us had had its setting in the room above.

  In accordance with my promise I had seen the chief officer of the Patna; and from the start of surprise which he gave on opening "Captain Dan's" letter, I judged that Mr. Marryat and the man who for so long had sunk to the lowest rung of the ladder had been close friends in those "old days." At any rate, he had proceeded to make the necessary arrangements without a moment's delay, and the couple were to go on board the Patna at nine o'clock.

  It was with a sense of having done at least one good deed that I finally quitted our Limehouse base and returned to my rooms. Now, at eleven o'clock at night:

  "Can you come round to Chancery Lane at once?" said Harley. "I want you to run down to Pennyfields with me."

  "Some development in the Kwen Lung business?"

  "Hardly a development, but I'm not satisfied, Knox. I hate to be beaten."

  Twenty minutes later I was sitting in Harley's study, watching him restlessly promenading up and down before the fire.

  "The police searched Kwen Lung's place from foundation to tiles," he said. "I was there myself. Old Kwen Lung conveniently kept out of the way—still playing fan-tan, no doubt! But Ma Lorenzo was in evidence. She blandly declared that Kwen Lung never had a daughter! And in the absence of our friend the fireman, who sailed in the Seahawk, and whose evidence, by the way, is legally valueless—what could we do? They could find nobody in the neighbourhood prepared to state that Kwen Lung had a daughter or that Kwen Lung had no daughter. There are all sorts of fables about the old fox, but the facts about him are harder to get at."

  "But," I explained, "the bloodstains on the joss!"

&nb
sp; "Ma Lorenzo stumbled and fell there on the previous night, striking her skull against the foot of the figure."

  "What nonsense!" I cried. "We should have seen the wound last night."

  "We might have done," said Harley musingly; "I don't know when she inflicted it on herself; but I did see it this morning."

  "What!"

  "Oh, the gash is there all right, partly covered by her hair."

  He stood still, staring at me oddly.

  "One meets with cases of singular devotion in unexpected quarters sometimes," he said.

  "You mean that the woman inflicted the wound upon herself in order———"

  'To save old Kwen Lung—exactly! It's marvellous."

  "Good heavens!" I exclaimed. "And the window?"

  "Oh! it was broken right enough—by two drunken sailormen fighting in the court outside! Sash and everything smashed to splinters."

  He began irritably to pace the carpet again.

  "It must have been a devil of a fight!" he added savagely.

  "Meanwhile," said I, "where is old Kwen Lung hiding?"

  "But more particularly," cried Harley, "where has he hidden the poor victim? Come along, Knox! I'm going down there for a final look round."

  "Of course the premises are being watched?"

  "Of course—and also, of course, I shall be the laughing stock of Scotland Yard if nothing results."

  It was close on midnight when once more I found myself in Pennyfields. Carried away by Harley's irritable excitement I had quite forgotten the romance of Captain Dan; and when, having exchanged greetings with the detective on duty hard by the house of Kwen Lung, we presently found ourselves in the presence of Ma Lorenzo, I scarcely knew for a moment if I were "Jim" or my proper self.

  "Is Kwen Lung in?" asked Harley sternly.

  The woman shook her head.

  "No," she replied; "he sometimes stop away a whole week."

  "Does he?" jerked Harley. "Come in, Knox; we'll take another look round."

  A moment later I found myself again in the room of the golden joss. The red curtain had been removed from before the shattered window, but otherwise the place looked exactly as it had looked before. The atmosphere was much less stale, however, but there was something repellent about the great gilded idol smiling eternally from his pedestal beside the door.