Chapter 5

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.”

For a long time she remained there, listening for any sound which should disperse the silence. She thought of her husband, of the sweet security of her home, of the things which she had forfeited because of this mad quest of adventure. And presently a key grated in a lock.

Lady Pat started to her feet with a wild, swift action which must have reminded a beholder of a startled gazelle. The drapery masking the door which she had first investigated was drawn aside. A man entered and dropped the curtain behind him.

Exactly what she had expected she could not have defined, but the presence of this perfect stranger was a complete surprise. The man, who wore embroidered slippers and a sort of long blue robe, stood there regarding her with an expression which, even in her frantic condition, she found to be puzzling. He had long, untidy gray hair brushed back from his low brow; eyes strangely like the eyes of Lou Chada, except that they were more heavy-lidded; but his skin was as yellow as a guinea, and his gaunt, cleanshaven face was the face of an Oriental.

The slender hands, too, which he held clasped before him, were yellow, and possessed a curiously arresting quality. Pat imagined them clasped about her white throat, and her very soul seemed to shrink from the man who stood there looking at her with those long, magnetic, inscrutable eyes.

She wondered why she was surprised, and suddenly realized that it was because of the expression in his eyes, for it was an expression of cold anger. Then the intruder spoke.

“Who are you?” he demanded, speaking with an accent which was unfamiliar to her, but in a voice which was not unlike the voice of Lou Chada. “Who brought you here?”

This was so wholly unexpected that for a moment she found herself unable to reply, but finally:

“How dare you!” she cried, her native courage reasserting itself. “I have been drugged and brought to this place. You shall pay for it. How dare you!”

“Ah!” The long, dark eyes regarded her unmovingly. “But who are you?”

“I am Lady Rourke. Open the door. You shall bitterly regret this outrage.”

“You are Lady Rourke?” the man repeated. “Before you speak of regrets, answer the question which I have asked: Who brought you here?”

“Lou Chada.”

“Ah!” There was no alteration of pose, no change of expression, but slightly the intonation had varied.

“I don't know who you are, but I demand to be released from this place instantly.”

The man standing before the curtained door slightly inclined his head.

“You shall be released,” he replied, “but not instantly. I will see the one who brought you here. He may not be entirely to blame. Before you leave we shall understand one another.”

Tone and glance were coldly angry. Then, before the frightened woman could say another word, the man in the blue robe robe withdrew, the curtain was dropped again, and she heard the grating of a key in the lock. She ran to the door, beating upon it with her clenched hands.

“Let me go!” she cried, half hysterically. “Let me go! You shall pay for this! Oh, you shall pay for this!”

No one answered, and, turning, she leaned back against the curtain, breathing heavily and fighting for composure, for strength.

IV

ZANI CHADA, THE EURASIAN

“I can't help thinking, Chief Inspector,” said the officer in charge at Limehouse Station, “that you take unnecessary risks.”

“Can't you?” said Kerry, tilting his bowler farther forward and staring truculently at the speaker.

“No, I can't. Since you cleaned up the dope gang down here you've been a marked man. These murders in the Chinatown area, of which this one to-night makes the third, have got some kind of big influence behind them. Yet you wander about in the fog without even a gun in your pocket.”

“I don't believe in guns,” rapped Kerry. “My bare hands are good enough for any yellow smart in this area. And if they give out I can kick like a mule.”

The other laughed, shaking his head.

“It's silly, all the same,” he persisted. “The man who did the job out there in the fog to-night might have knifed you or shot you long before you could have got here.”

“He might,” snapped Kerry, “but he didn't.”

Yet, remembering his wife, who would be waiting for him in the cosy sitting-room he knew a sudden pang. Perhaps he did take unnecessary chances. Others had said so. Hard upon the thought came the memory of his boy, and of the telephone message which the episodes of the night had prevented him from sending.

He remembered, too, something which his fearless nature had prompted him to forget: he remembered how, just as he had arisen from beside the body of the murdered man, oblique eyes had regarded him swiftly out of the fog. He had lashed out with a boxer's instinct, but his knuckles had encountered nothing but empty air. No sound had come to tell him that the thing had not been an illusion. Only, once again, as he groped his way through the shuttered streets of Chinatown and the silence of the yellow mist, something had prompted him to turn; and again he had detected the glint of oblique eyes, and faintly had discerned the form of one who followed him.

Kerry chewed viciously, then:

“I think I'll 'phone the wife,” he said abruptly. “She'll be expecting me.”

Almost before he had finished speaking the 'phone bell rang, and a few moments later:

“Someone to speak to you, Chief Inspector,” cried the officer in charge.

“Ah!” exclaimed Kerry, his fierce eyes lighting up. “That will be from home.”

“I don't think so,” was the reply. “But see who it is.”

“Hello!” he called.

He was answered by an unfamiliar voice, a voice which had a queer, guttural intonation. It was the sort of voice he had learned to loathe.

“Is that Chief Inspector Kerry?”

“Yes,” he snapped.

“May I take it that what I have to say will be treated in confidence?”

“Certainly not.”

“Think again, Chief Inspector,” the voice continued. “You are a man within sight of the ambition of years, and although you may be unaware of the fact, you stand upon the edge of a disaster. I appreciate your sense of duty and respect it. But there are times when diplomacy is a more potent weapon than force.”

Kerry, listening, became aware that the speaker was a man of cultured intellect. He wondered greatly, but:

“My time is valuable,” he said rapidly. “Come to the point. What do you want and who are you?”

“One moment, Chief Inspector. An opportunity to make your fortune without interfering with your career has come in your way. You have obtained possession of what you believe to be a clue to a murder.”

The voice ceased, and Kerry remaining silent, immediately continued:

“Knowing your personal character, I doubt if you have communicated the fact of your possessing this evidence to anyone else. I suggest, in your own interests, that before doing so you interview me.”

Kerry thought rapidly, and then:

“I don't say you're right,” he rapped back. “But if I come to see you, I shall leave a sealed statement in possession of the officer in charge here.”

“To this I have no objection,” the guttural voice replied, “but I beg of you to bring the evidence with you.”

“I'm not to be bought,” warned Kerry. “Don't think it and don't suggest it, or when I get to you I'll break you in half.”

His red moustache positively bristled, and he clutched the receiver so tightly that it quivered against his ear.

“You mistake me,” replied the speaker. “My name is Zani Chada. You know where I live. I shall not detain you more than five minutes if you will do me the honour of calling upon me.”

Kerry chewed furiously for ten momentous seconds, then:

“I'll come!” he said.

He replaced the receiver on the hook, and, walking across to the charge desk, took an official form and a pen. On the back of the form he scribbled rapidly, watched with curiosity by the officer in charge.

“Give me an envelope,” he directed.

An envelope was found and handed to him. He placed the paper in the envelope, gummed down the lapel, and addressed it in large, bold writing to the Assistant Commissioner of the Criminal Investigation Department, who was his chief. Finally:

“I'm going out,” he explained.

“After what I've said?”

“After what you've said. I'm going out. If I don't come back or don't telephone within the next hour, you will know what to do with this.”

The Limehouse official stared perplexedly.

“But meanwhile,” he protested, “what steps am I to take about the murder? Durham will be back with the body at any moment now, and you say you've got a clue to the murderer.”

“I have,” said Kerry, “but I'm going to get definite evidence. Do nothing until you hear from me.”

“Very good,” answered the other, and Kerry, tucking his malacca cane under his arm, strode out into the fog.

His knowledge of the Limehouse area was extensive and peculiar, so that twenty minutes later, having made only one mistake in the darkness, he was pressing an electric bell set beside a door which alone broke the expanse of a long and dreary brick wall, lining a street which neither by day nor night would have seemed inviting to the casual visitor.

The door was opened by a Chinaman wearing national dress, revealing a small, square lobby, warmly lighted and furnished Orientally. Kerry stepped in briskly.

“I want to see Mr. Zani Chada. Tell him I am here. Chief Inspector Kerry is my name.”

The Chinaman bowed, crossed the lobby, and, drawing some curtains aside, walked up four carpeted stairs and disappeared into a short passage revealed by the raising of the tapestry. As he did so Kerry stared about him curiously.

He had never before entered the mystery house of Zani Chada, nor had he personally encountered the Eurasian, reputed to be a millionaire, but who chose, for some obscure reason, to make his abode in this old rambling building, once a country mansion, which to-day was closely invested by dockland and the narrow alleys of Chinatown. It was curiously still in the lobby, and, as he determined, curiously Eastern. He was conscious of a sense of exhilaration. That Zani Chada controlled powerful influences, he knew well. But, reviewing the precautions which he had taken, Kerry determined that the trump card was in his possession.

The Chinese servant descended the stairs again and intimated that the visitor should follow him. Kerry, carrying his hat and cane, mounted the stairs, walked along the carpeted passage, and was ushered into a queer, low room furnished as a library.

It was lined with shelves containing strange-looking books, none of which appeared to be English. Upon the top of the shelves were grotesque figures of gods, pieces of Chinese pottery and other Oriental ornaments. Arms there were in the room, and rich carpets, carven furniture, and an air of luxury peculiarly exotic. Furthermore, he detected a faint smell of opium from which fact he divined that Zani Chada was addicted to the national vice of China.

Seated before a long narrow table was the notorious Eurasian. The table contained a number of strange and unfamiliar objects, as well as a small rack of books. An opium pipe rested in a porcelain bowl.

Zani Chada, wearing a blue robe, sat in a cushioned chair, staring toward the Chief Inspector. With one slender yellow hand he brushed his untidy gray hair. His long magnetic eyes were half closed.

“Good evening, Chief Inspector Kerry,” he said. “Won't you be seated?”

“Thanks, I'm not staying. I can hear what you've got to say standing.”

The long eyes grew a little more narrow--the only change of expression that Zani Chada allowed himself.

“As you wish. I have no occasion to detain you long.”

In that queer, perfumed room, with the suggestion of something sinister underlying its exotic luxury, arose a kind of astral clash as the powerful personality of the Eurasian came in contact with that of Kerry. In a sense it was a contest of rapier and battle-axe; an insidious but powerful will enlisted against the bulldog force of the Chief Inspector.

Still through half-closed eyes Zani Chada watched his visitor, who stood, feet apart and chin thrust forward aggressively, staring with wide open, fierce blue eyes at the other.

“I'm going to say one thing,” declared Kerry, snapping out the words in a manner little short of ferocious. He laid his hat and cane upon a chair and took a step in the direction of the narrow, laden table. “Make me any kind of offer to buy back the evidence you think I've got, and I'll bash your face as flat as a frying-pan.”

The yellow hands of Zani Chada clutched the metal knobs which ornamented the arms of the chair in which he was seated. The long eyes now presented the appearance of being entirely closed; otherwise he remained immovable.

Following a short, portentous silence:

“How grossly you misunderstood me, Chief Inspector,” Chada replied, speaking very softly. “You are shortly to be promoted to a post which no one is better fitted to occupy. You enjoy great domestic happiness, and you possess a son in whom you repose great hopes. In this respect Chief Inspector, I resemble you.”

Kerry's nostrils were widely dilated, but he did not speak.

“You see,” continued the Eurasian, “I know many things about you. Indeed, I have watched your career with interest. Now, to be brief, a great scandal may be averted and a woman's reputation preserved if you and I, as men of the world, can succeed in understanding one another.”

“I don't want to understand you,” said Kerry bluntly. “But you've said enough already to justify me in blowing this whistle.” He drew a police whistle from his overcoat pocket. “This house is being watched.”

“I am aware of the fact,” murmured Zani Chada.

“There are two people in it I want for two different reasons. If you say much more there may be three.”

Chada raised his hand slowly.

“Put back your whistle, Chief Inspector.”

There was a curious restraint in the Eurasian's manner which Kerry distrusted, but for which at the time he was at a loss to account. Then suddenly he determined that the man was waiting for something, listening for some sound. As if to confirm this reasoning, just at that moment a sound indeed broke the silence of the room.

Somewhere far away in the distance of the big house a gong was beaten three times softly. Kerry's fierce glance searched the face of Zani Chada, but it remained mask-like, immovable. Yet that this had been a signal of some kind the Chief Inspector did not doubt, and:

“You can't trick me,” he said fiercely. “No one can leave this house without my knowledge, and because of what happened out there in the fog my hands are untied.”

He took up his hat and cane from the chair.

“I'm going to search the premises,” he declared.

Zani Chada stood up slowly.

“Chief Inspector,” he said, “I advise you to do nothing until you have consulted your wife.”

“Consulted my wife?” snapped Kerry. “What the devil do you mean?”

“I mean that any steps you may take now can only lead to disaster for many, and in your own case to great sorrow.”

Kerry took a step forward, two steps, then paused. He was considering certain words which the Eurasian had spoken. Without fearing the man in the physical sense, he was not fool enough to underestimate his potentialities for evil and his power to strike darkly.

“Act as you please,” added Zani Chada, speaking even more softly. “But I have not advised lightly. I will receive you, Chief Inspector, at any hour of the night you care to return. By to-morrow, if you wish, you may be independent of everybody.”

Kerry clenched his fists.

“And great sorrow may be spared to others,” concluded the Eurasian.

Kerry's teeth snapped together audibly; then, putting on his hat, he turned and walked straight to the door.

V

DAN KERRY, JUNIOR